School of Practice

It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher. 

A more effective approach, he says, is to design rigorous learning routines that unite the whole class—from fast finishers to kids who need extra support—with shared strategies, structures, and thinking moves. 

Think: Same surface, different deep problems, much more time in the “we do” space, and a big emphasis on high-quality classroom discussion.

In this episode of School of Practice, McDowell breaks down three low-prep differentiation strategies, explains how and when small groups fit into the picture, and makes the case for basketball over ping-pong question protocols. 

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

How to Differentiate Without Splitting Students Up

Teaching a Class With Big Ability Differences

AI Tool Demo: Differentiating Class Materials With Diffit (video)

A Starter Kit for Differentiated Instruction

4 Research-Backed Ways to Differentiate Instruction

Actionable Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide to Responsive Teaching and Student Growth

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost.

Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten within an hour of exposure. And if you wait a week, up to 90 percent fades into the mist.

But that’s not inevitable. In this critical episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard shares her top three strategies to help students remember what she’s just taught them. We’ll ask her how she weaves these strategies directly into the learning process as she works to “flatten the forgetting curve.”

Related resources:

3 Ways to Help Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve

How to Engage Elementary and Middle School Students’ Memory Processes to Improve Learning

Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It

Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine (video)

Connecting Science to Problem-Solving in the Real World (video)

Finding the Retrieval ‘Sweet Spot’ for Students

Research: A New Look at Memory Retention and Forgetting

Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram? 

How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources in social studies, and preparing for math assessments? 

In this super-engaging lesson developed by science teacher Katie Coppens and researcher and former STEM teacher Andy Zucker, students become digital detectives, analyzing a set of videos and websites to determine what’s real, what’s been altered, and what’s just pure misinformation. ⁠

The catch? They can’t just guess. They have to be able to defend their conclusions with evidence. ⁠

Join us for this unmissable episode of School of Practice, we’ll walk through detailed lesson instructions, explore the best strategies for zeroing in on digital misinformation, and share all the resources you’ll need to teach this 60-minute lesson in your own classroom. 

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

Real, Fake, or Deepfake? This Lesson Helps Students Decide

5 Ways to Build Critical Literacy in the Age of AI

What Fact-Checkers Know About Media Literacy—and Students Should, Too

Teaching Students to Evaluate Websites

Helping Students Find the Truth in Social Media

Teaching Students to Analyze Fake News

Giving Students the Skills to Spot Fake News (video)

Evaluating Primary Sources Through a See, Think, Wonder (video)

New Perspectives on Combating Misinformation

Research: People are More Susceptible to Misinformation with Realistic AI-Synthesized Images that Provide Strong Evidence to Headlines (2025)

Research: Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes (2022)

Research: Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait (2021)

www.katiecoppens.com 

Improvethengss.org 

Video clip: Bobsled and Snowboarder

Video clip: Deepfake Newscasters

Video clip: Waterskiing Squirrel

Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler. 

Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s mandated by a school or district is what they need to teach.

That’s where *rich tasks* can be transformative, Boaler argues, because they invite the type of reasoning and problem-solving that get kids digging in and taking risks. 

In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll chat with Boaler—who’s spent decades studying math teaching—about how to choose, adapt, and improve math tasks; the power of reasoning and visualizing math questions; and the impact of tiny tweaks, like asking students: “Can you prove it to me visually?”

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

5 Ways to Encourage Deep Mathematical Thinking

Are We Teaching the Math Kids Need?

Rough Draft Thinking Can Make Math Class More Inclusive

Should More Time Be Spent Learning Math Facts?

7 Ways to Balance Joy With Rigor in Math Class

If You’re Not Failing, You’re Not Learning

Research: Productive Failure in Learning Math (2014)

How to Build a Healthy Math Identity (video)

6 Unproductive Ways to Learn Math Basics—and What to Do Instead

Math-ish

YouCubed: Moving from Maths Anxiety (video)

YouCubed: Math-ish in the Classroom

YouCubed: Jo Teaching a Visual Dot Card Number Talk

YouCubed: Fluency without Fear

YouCubed: Wise Investments, Big Returns: Prioritizing Teachers for Districtwide Mathematics Success

Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching. 

Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how and when to support kids, then step back at just the right moment, building independence by removing the training wheels. 

In this episode of School of Practice, we get into it with Beck Alber, a former high school ELA teacher and UCLA School of Education instructor. She unpacks the evidence-based essentials of smart, timely scaffolding—both for new teachers, as well as classroom veterans (have you changed up your routines lately? No? Alber’s got suggestions for that). We’ll chat about how to determine if your scaffolds are working, what to do if they’re not, and what a strong scaffolding toolbox looks like. 

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

Empowering Middle School Students to Create Their Own Scaffolds

Scaffolding Like a Pro: Powerful Ways to Support Learning

6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning

Frayer Model (downloadable)

Fishbowl Method (downloadable)

60-Second Strategy: Fishbowl Discussion (video)

Choosing Words to Teach

Research: Benefits of Interactive Graphic Organizers in Online Learning: Evidence for Generative Learning Theory (2021)

Research: The Early History of the Scaffolding Metaphor: Bernstein, Luria, Vygotsky, and Before (2019)