A review by claudiaswisher
Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker

4.0

Schmoker acts as a role model in this book, by closely focusing his message. His message is very disciplined, and works across grade levels and content areas...Read the core standards for your area. Cross out all the verbs, choose 50% of the nouns that you believe are vital. Teach those nouns by doing close reading of varied texts, have discussions based on the close reading and annotation of the texts, and write to those texts that have been read closely, annotated, and discussed. There it is. He shows how this will work in elementary classes, English, social studies, science and math. He goes against common wisdom in science and math. He believes we need to do more reading and fewer labs in science, and he admits we will never use Algebra 1 or 2 in our real lives.

I read the kindle edition, but it's another book I need to highlight and mark up...I think I agree with him...get rid of the crayola curriculum and teach kids to read, to think, to write.