Texas is providing a great new free resource for Texas Teachers so that they can learn and practice some ‘Teach Like a Champion’ techniques online at the new Texas TLAC website! These new free teaching assets will help educators become incredibly more effective in the classroom. ‘Teach Like a Champion’ was developed by Doug Lemov to help first year teachers truly reach their students. The national ‘Teach Like a Champion’ website has a ton of helpful information as well!

What is ‘Teach Like a Champion’?

From their website –

62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College

Ever since the emergence of Teach Like a Champion, teachers across the globe have practiced, refined, and adapted Doug Lemov’s simple, yet powerful teaching techniques to improve their teaching practice and help their students become college and career ready. Teach Like a Champion 2.0, inspired by these champion teachers, is much more than a new edition. The techniques are still practical, engaging, and easy to implement, but include more concrete guidance, thoughts on rigor, and useful tools. The revised book also includes seventy-five new video clips of real teachers modeling the techniques in the classroom. Once the reader learns the ins and outs of the techniques, and after watching the accompanying clips, author Doug encourages educators to make these techniques their own–and to participate in the champion community.”

What does the TEA TLAC do for you? (in case you haven’t guessed – TLAC is an abbreviation for Teach Like a Champion) –

There are three main sections that Texas teachers can access to improve their teaching practice –

  1. Behavior and Culture
  • ‘What To Do’ directions communicate what students SHOULD be doing, not what they SHOULDN’T be doing. Learn more about this technique with the training that follows.
  • ‘Radar’ is your ability to see what happens in your classroom. Check out the training below to learn more about ‘Radar’.
  • The goal of ‘Least Invasive Intervention’ is to make your redirection nearly invisible so that you can keep teaching and students can keep learning. Explore the training below to learn about several different kinds of ‘Least Invasive Interventions’.
  • ‘Strong Voice’ is a technique for adjusting your speech and body language to ensure students listen carefully to what you say. Learn more about ‘Strong Voice’ in the training that follows.
  1. Planning for Achievement
  • ‘Double Planning’ is the process of planning what both you and your students will do at each point in the lesson. Engage with the training below to learn more.
  • ‘Plan for Error’ is the process of anticipating student misunderstandings and determining how you will respond to them in the moment. Check out the training below to learn more about this technique
  • When you use ‘Art of the Sentence’, you ask students to synthesize a conclusion, describe an insight, or summarize a complex idea in a single, well-crafted sentence. Check out the following training to learn how to apply this technique in your classroom.
  • An ‘Exit Ticket’ is a short, formative assessment that you can use to evaluate your students’ success with the lesson objective. Check out the training below to learn how to design ‘Exit Tickets’ effectively and how to analyze and act on the data you collect.
  1. Engaging Academics
  • When you ‘Cold Call’ students, you call on them regardless of whether they have raised their hands or not. Explore the training below to learn more about ‘Cold Call’.
  • ‘Show Call’ is a variation on ‘Cold Call’. When you ‘Show Call’, you use student work to prompt further learning, analysis, and revision. Explore the training below to learn more about this technique.
  • When you ‘Stretch It’, you respond to students’ correct answers with more challenging questions. Check out the training that follows to learn more about this technique.

Click here to sign up for a new Texas TLAC account. NOTE: To verify your eligibility, you must sign up with an email from a recognized education institution in Texas. Registrations from personal emails such as gmail.com, yahoo.com or outlook.com will not be accepted.