Simply Teaching Well

It's everyone's nemesis ... pacing. A lesson goes too fast, and you feel like you haven't done it justice. A lesson goes too slow, and you've lost them. How do you get it all in, and well? If you've asked this, you're not alone. Pacing an EL lesson well, so that we know students have learned and worked AND we're able to teach one lesson in a day, is one of those things that novice and experienced teachers alike can find challenging.

But strong pacing is incredibly important, both within and across lessons. It's easy to get off pace and next thing you know, it's late spring, and we're struggling to even begin Module 4. We're frustrated and rushed, and the kids aren't producing like we want them to. 

What's a teacher to do? Here are 5 of my favorite ideas to help with strong lesson pacing.

1. Set and use timers - in places in a lesson where you know it'll be tempting to slow way down such as student transitions, protocols, turn and talks, discussions, and question sequences.

2. Reach out to your academic coach for a time audit. He or she can come in and time stamp your lesson to see where you might be spending too much time and how you can adjust pacing.

3. Don't spend more than 5-10 minutes on learning targets. If your pacing is brisk out of the gate, it's likely to stay that way, and it's easy to get bogged down early in learning targets.

4. Don't add things to a lesson. The materials are designed to scaffold naturally.

5. Work with your academic coach to make sure you're beginning a Module with the end in mind. When you know where you're going, and what's most important, you're less likely to get off track in the day-to-day.

Looking for more?

• Here are tips from EL

• Here are tips from MCS teachers

If you’re wondering about the difference between a gist and a main idea (or theme), you’re not alone. It’s a common question because the terms are closely related and often used interchangeably. While similar, they are not the same.

The gist is your initial sense of what a text is mostly about. The word literally means the essence of a text. You get the gist when you skim or lightly read, forming a first impression. The main idea, on the other hand, is the key point the author wants you to take away. It can only be identified through careful reading and attention to important details.

Sometimes your gist turns out to be the main idea, but other times it doesn’t. That’s because gist is based on limited information, while the main idea requires deeper analysis of the entire text.

Here’s how this plays out in real life. Every Sunday, my husband and I get The New York Times. I skim my favorite sections with a cup of coffee, looking for articles that catch my attention. I might quickly read part of an article to get the gist. For example, I might think an article is about the benefits of planting vegetables in raised beds and decide to read it more closely. After careful reading, I may discover that the article really focuses on how to build a raised bed instead. My gist helped me decide whether to read, but identifying the main idea helped me truly understand the article.

Both steps—finding the gist and identifying the main idea—are essential for comprehension. Together, they help readers make sense of what they read. Here's a great video of kids explaining it themselves.

If you want to improve student engagement, one powerful yet simple strategy is implementing a Cold Call. It means exactly what it sounds like: students don’t raise their hands to answer questions. Instead, the teacher calls on students whether they’ve volunteered or not. While simple in theory, it can be challenging to break the habit of calling only on eager volunteers.

When teachers rely on raised hands, many students can opt out of thinking and participating. This also limits accurate formative assessment, since responses come from only a small group. Cold Call sets the expectation that all students should always be ready to contribute. It improves pacing, strengthens checks for understanding, and, when delivered with warmth, communicates that every student’s thinking matters. Most importantly, it’s an inclusive and equitable practice that amplifies all voices.

To implement this strategy, you only need a random name generator, and it can be as low-tech as popsicle sticks. A few key principles help ensure success:

• Be consistent: Use Cold Call regularly so students expect it and feel prepared.

• Be systematic: A clear, fair process reinforces trust and equity.

• Be positive: Cold Call is not a punishment—it’s an opportunity to shine.

• Be prepared: Know your questions, ideal responses, and which ones lend themselves to Cold Call in advance.
  
  

It  may feel uncomfortable at first, but it ultimately leads to stronger classroom dialogue and a more supportive learning community.

• Master Cold Calling

• The First Days of Cold Calling

• Cold Call is Inclusive

• Classroom Experiment

• What the Kids Say

It's spring. The trees are greening, we're having more warm days than not, and Spring Break is right around the corner. All of this means it's that time of the school year.

The Test is coming.

To begin - and to be perfectly transparent - the purpose of this post isn't to debate whether or not we should administer standardized tests, argue about the heavy accountability they carry, or rail against the system of assessments in general. No matter how we feel about them, they are here, they have a purpose, they are a reality, and they carry weight. 

Instead, the purpose of this post is to talk about what we should - and shouldn't - do when we begin to feel the testing crunch that comes around every spring.

Here's what often happens. Right around Spring Break, text-centered lesson preparation talk turns to "comprehension skills" we think kids are lacking, the Test-like writing prompts they need to learn to unpack, and how much time there is before The Test to have kids practice taking The Test with passages that come from ... you guessed it. The Test. Usually, you can cut the stress and tension with a knife.

And I get it. As a third grade teacher myself, I've done these things, and they're an understandable reaction to the anxiety we can feel related to The Test. There is a lot of accountability tied to it, and we all want our students (and, if we're being honest, our teachers and schools) to do well on it.

But I am here to tell you this. 

Reacting to The Test with lots of test preparation activities will not help students do well on it. It hasn't in the past, and there is no evidence to support the idea that it will now. 

After all, as a nation, we have had about 1/3 of our students reading at proficient levels since at least 1992, and we have done a LOT of test prep since then. 

Now, I'm not saying that students shouldn't have some familiarity with the format of standardized tests or the types of questions and tasks they encounter on them. The purpose of an assessment isn't for our students to do well; it's for us to see how well they can do. And I don't want the format of a test or question to be a barrier to students performing as well as they can so that we can make good decisions based on what we see. That's why, in our district at least, we give students occasional practice with cold-read passages throughout the year, using items released by the Tennessee Department of Education. 

But I am saying that stopping regular instruction with the curriculum after Spring Break to test prep, or spending large amounts of time during the school year using The Test passages or instruction targeted to specific skills or strategies, will not help our students. In fact, it can actually harm their ability to learn at levels that will help them do well, because each time we make a decision about how to spend our time, we are choosing what we will do and what we will not do. If we choose to spend our time doing lots of Test-related activities that don't work, that means we're choosing not to provide the kind of instruction that research shows actually makes a difference for kids.

So, what is the best test prep? As usual, I'll turn to Tim Shanahan and here's what he suggests.

1. Have students read extensively within instruction across the school year. These tests measure reading ability, and you are not likely to develop reading ability without letting students read. A lot. I'm talking time in text, miles on the road-type of reading.

2. Have students read increasing amounts of text without guidance or support. Independence is our goal, always.

3. Make sure that the texts we put in front of kids are rich in content and challenging. Lots of reading of easy texts won't prepare students for navigating difficult texts on their own.

4. Have students explain their answers and provide text evidence supporting their claims. They need to engage with the type of thinking that moves past simply picking evidence and to reasoning about why they chose it, how it supports their ideas and thinking, and whether they could choose something better.

5. Engage students in regularly writing about text, not just in replying to multiple-choice questions. Want to give student a chance to process their own learning AND see visible evidence of what each and every student is thinking and what misconceptions they've got, so you can make adjustments accordingly? Let them write. A lot.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. It's the type of instruction that happens every day when we use our curricular materials really well. And when we do this - when every single day, every single student gets their hands and heads in complex texts and does increasingly sophisticated work and thinking with them - then The Test will NOT be the hardest thing they've done all year. The daily work they've done under your guidance will be the most rigorous thinking they've done, and The Test will seem simpler by comparison.

There are lots of reasons why what we typically do to prep for The Test doesn't work, and why we should instead choose to continue to give all kids access to very complex texts, challenging work, and strong instruction every single day of the school year. I encourage you to read through the articles and resources cited below to learn more about them. They are research-based and have stood the test of time. 

But in the end, really, it comes down to you. 

You have the power to control how you choose to spend your precious time at this point of the year and put The Test in its place. You can choose to react to The Test with stress and anxiety and a narrowed focus on what we've typically done - even though it hasn't moved the needle for our students. Or you can choose to respond with trust and confidence that the work you've done all year - and that you continue to do until the very last day - is preparing your students to do well on whatever task is put in front of them. Then, the Test will be just a matter of course.

As Tim writes, "If you want your students to perform at their best ... you will accomplish that not by having students practice items ... but by teaching students to read."

Want to learn more? Here's what I recommend:

• Shanahan, 2017: If You Really Want Higher Test Scores: Rethink Reading Comprehension Instruction

• Shanahan, 2017: Welcome 2017: Let's Teach, Not Test

• Shanahan, 2018: My Principal Wants to Improve Test Scores ... Is He Right?

• ACT, 2016: Reading Between the Lines

• Freitag, 2023: Keep the Tests, but Reform the Test Prep

• Shanahan, 2024: 'Tis the Season of Test Prep: Bah Humbug