Teach Like a Champion 3.0: 63 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College

Citation

Lemov, D. (2021). Teach Like a Champion 3.0: 63 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Chapter Summary

The third edition runs to about 560 pages: a preface on equity, justice and the science of learning, an introduction on the art of teaching and its tools, a new opening chapter of principles, and 63 numbered techniques in eleven thematic chapters. Each technique has a short name meant to give teachers a shared vocabulary, and the text refers throughout to a companion video collection, which the publisher says includes more than a dozen longer "keystone" videos of 8 to 10 minutes of teaching.

Chapter 1: Five Themes: Mental Models and Purposeful Execution

New in this edition, the chapter argues that named techniques are not enough: teachers make rapid decisions all lesson, and a clear mental model of a good lesson helps them notice what matters and choose among techniques. Drawing on research on expert and novice teachers and on inattentional blindness, it sets out five principles: build long-term memory and manage working memory; habits accelerate learning; what students attend to is what they learn about; motivation is social; and teaching well is relationship building. The last section distinguishes "core" classroom relationships, in which students feel safe, successful and known, from supplementary personal ones.

Chapter 2: Lesson Preparation

A new chapter with five techniques (1–5): Exemplar Planning, Plan for Error, Delivery Moves, Double Plan and Knowledge Organizers. The titles point to preparing model answers, anticipating mistakes, planning how a lesson will be delivered and what students will be doing, and organising core knowledge; Chapter 1 presents preparation as a way of freeing the teacher's working memory during the lesson.

Chapter 3: Check for Understanding

Techniques 6–14 cover gathering and acting on evidence of learning: Replace Self-Report, Retrieval Practice, Standardize the Format, Active Observation, Show Me, Affirmative Checking, Culture of Error, Show Call, and Own and Track. Chapter 1 borrows a video from this chapter to show relationship building through close attention to students' work.

Chapter 4: Academic Ethos

Five techniques (15–19) about the standard of answers and expectations: No Opt Out, Right Is Right, Stretch It, Format Matters and Without Apology.

Chapter 5: Lesson Structures

Techniques 20–26 give a lesson its shape, from the opening Do Now through Take the Steps and Board = Paper to two reading techniques (Accountable Independent Reading and FASE Reading), Circulate, and the closing Exit Ticket.

Chapter 6: Pacing

Techniques 27–31: Change the Pace, Brighten the Lines, All Hands, Work the Clock and Every Minute Matters. The titles point to managing lesson time and transitions; Chapter 1 cites Brighten the Lines as a way of drawing students into activities.

Chapters 7–9: Building Ratio Through Questioning; Building Ratio Through Writing; Building Ratio Through Discussion

Three chapters on "ratio", the share of the thinking that students do. Questioning (techniques 32–37) includes Phrasing Fundamentals, Wait Time, Cold Call, Call and Response, Means of Participation and Break It Down. Writing (38–42) includes Everybody Writes, Silent Solo, Front the Writing, Art of the Sentence and Regular Revision. Discussion (43–46) covers Turn and Talk, Habits of Discussion, Batch Process and Disciplined Discussion.

Chapters 10–11: Procedures and Routines; High Behavioral Expectations

Chapter 10 (techniques 47–51: Threshold and Strong Start, Habits of Attention, Engineer Efficiency, Routine Building, Do It Again) concerns routines, which Chapter 1 links to the principle that habits free working memory for thinking. Chapter 11 (52–58: What to Do, Radar and Be Seen Looking, Make Expectations Visible, Least Invasive Intervention, Firm Calm Finesse, Art of the Consequence, Strong Voice) addresses behaviour, giving clear directions and responding to off-task behaviour.

Chapter 12: Building Student Motivation and Trust

The final five techniques (59–63): Positive Framing, Precise Praise, Warm/Strict, Emotional Constancy and Joy Factor. Chapter 1 previews Positive Framing, including its element "Assume the Best", as a tool for correcting students while showing belief in them.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1: Five Themes

• Mental model: a clear picture of what a successful lesson should look like, which lets a teacher perceive problems quickly and choose techniques with a purpose.
• Working and long-term memory: the chapter treats learning as change in long-term memory and warns that overloading working memory blocks both learning and perception.
• Core relationships: relationships built in the classroom through competent, warm teaching, in which students feel safe, successful and known.

Chapters 2–6: Preparation, Checking, Ethos, Structure and Pacing

• Check for understanding: gathering direct evidence of learning instead of relying on students' own reports, the idea behind Replace Self-Report.
• Retrieval practice: making students recall material after time has passed, which Chapter 1 connects to the forgetting curve and the limited value of end-of-lesson impressions.

Chapters 7–9: Building Ratio

• Ratio: the share of the thinking in a lesson that students do; Chapter 1 advises getting it high because students remember what they think about.
• Cold Call: calling on students whether or not they volunteer, done "inclusively" and with genuine interest, with variations such as timing the name, unbundling a question and follow-on calls.
• Means of participation: choosing deliberately between a Cold Call, a Turn and Talk, a short written prompt or Call and Response, depending on the question.

Chapters 10–12: Routines, Behaviour, Motivation and Trust

• Routines and habits: everyday procedures practised until they run automatically, so that attention goes to the content.
• What to Do: directions clear enough that students know exactly what is expected, which Chapter 1 presents as basic to trust.
• Positive Framing: correcting students in a way that shows belief in them, including "Assume the Best", which gives a plausible reason for minor lapses.
• Warm/Strict: being warm and, when needed, strict at the same time rather than choosing between them.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A shared, specific vocabulary. The book's central idea, set out in the opening pages with an analogy to the named joints of carpentry, is that naming classroom moves lets teachers refine them and discuss them precisely. This makes it easy for mentors and trainees to observe and coach the same thing.
• Principles as well as tricks. The new first chapter explains why the techniques work, drawing on cognitive science (working and long-term memory, retrieval and forgetting, attention) and on research on social norms and motivation. It warns that technique cannot make up for unclear content.
• Video-linked examples. The text refers to named classroom videos, and the publisher describes an expanded collection, including longer keystone videos that show techniques combined over several minutes of teaching rather than in isolation.

Limitations

• A definite position. Chapter 1 sides with explicit, knowledge-rich teaching and cites critiques of minimally guided, discovery-based instruction. Readers whose courses favour inquiry-based approaches should read it alongside other perspectives.
• American setting. The subtitle's "path to college", the grade-level references and the author's work with the Uncommon Schools network reflect the United States; readers elsewhere will need to translate some examples and expectations, although the book also draws on schools and writers in England.
• Length and dependence on video. At about 560 pages it is long for a handbook, and many explanations point to videos that sit outside the printed text.
• Relationships spread across the book. The author acknowledges that there is no dedicated chapter on relationships and argues that the whole book is about them; readers looking for a sustained treatment of pastoral care will find it mainly in Chapters 1 and 12.

Where It Fits in the Course

In this course Lemov is a catalogue of named, ready-to-use techniques and a natural first book for trainees about to go on placement. Bill Rogers's Classroom Behaviour overlaps with Chapters 10–12 from a behaviour-management angle, with more on what to say during disruption and on colleague support. The Skillful Teacher by Saphier, Haley-Speca and Gower is a broader, more systematic resource organised around building a repertoire of strategies and matching them to situations, a good next step once Lemov's techniques are familiar.

Carol Ann Tomlinson's The Differentiated Classroom centres on adapting teaching methods, content and assessment to varied learners, a useful counterweight to Lemov's whole-class techniques. The two research-oriented books in the course come later: the Handbook of Classroom Management edited by Sabornie and Espelage synthesises the empirical evidence on management, and Reassessing 'Ability' Grouping by Francis, Taylor and Tereshchenko examines grouping decisions in English secondary schools. Both help students test the claims of practical handbooks.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for practising and trainee teachers rather than researchers; placement experience makes the techniques much easier to picture. No background in psychology is needed, since Chapter 1 explains the cognitive science it relies on.

A practical reading plan:

• Read first: the introduction and Chapter 1 in full. The author added the five principles to this edition to put more emphasis on the purpose of the techniques, and they are the frame for choosing among them.
• Core for new teachers: Chapter 10 (Procedures and Routines), Chapter 3 (Check for Understanding) and Chapter 7 (questioning, especially Cold Call and Wait Time), followed by Chapter 2 on lesson preparation.
• Next: Chapters 8 and 9 on writing and discussion, then Chapters 11 and 12 on behaviour, motivation and trust.
• Later or as needed: Chapters 4–6 on academic ethos, lesson structure and pacing, which are easiest to apply once routines are in place.

Work on one or two techniques at a time: read the section, watch the related videos where available, plan exactly where the technique will appear in a real lesson, and ask a mentor to observe for it. When a technique seems not to fit a class or subject, return to the five principles in Chapter 1 to decide whether to adapt it or choose another.