Guide No. 04 · The K-12 Series
The Strategy Playbook
Classroom-tested moves to make learning stick — for every grade band.
There is no shortage of teaching strategies — there is a shortage of strategies that survive contact with a real lesson on a wet Wednesday. This playbook collects the moves that reliably work, explains exactly why they work, and shows how to run them in K-2, middle, and senior classrooms.
Each strategy comes with a one-minute setup, a common failure mode, and the fix. The final chapter shows how to build a repertoire of five you own completely, instead of fifty you've read about.
What's inside
- 01
Retrieval Practice Every Day
The first-three-minutes habit that beats re-reading forever.
- 02
Cold Call & Whole-Class Thinking
How to ask so everyone answers in their head — without fear.
- 03
Discussion That Works
Think-pair-share and beyond: structures that stop the same three hands.
- 04
Feedback in Under 90 Seconds
Whole-class feedback, live marking, and comment banks.
- 05
The Task Must Do the Teaching
Designing practice where the activity itself produces the learning.
- 06
Building Your Repertoire
How to adopt, adapt, and automate five strategies until they're yours.
Read an excerpt
Chapter 1 — Retrieval Practice Every Day
Retrieval is not a quiz. It is a habit: the first three minutes of every lesson, students answer two questions from last week and one from last month — from memory, no notes.
The struggle to remember is the learning. The more it hurts, the better it works. Grade nothing, collect nothing; the questions cost you two minutes to write and buy your students the strongest study effect ever measured.
More in the series
No. 01
The Lesson Planning Field Guide
$12
No. 02
The Calm Classroom Handbook
$14
No. 03
The Worksheet Design Manual
$9
No. 05
Lesson Planning: English, Grades 1–5
$8
No. 06
Lesson Planning: Maths, Grades 1–5
$8
No. 07
Lesson Planning: Science, Grades 1–5
$7
No. 08
Lesson Planning: English, Grades 6–12
$9
No. 09
Lesson Planning: Maths, Grades 6–12
$10
No. 10
Lesson Planning: Science, Grades 6–12
$9
No. 11
Preparing for a Lesson Observation
$12
No. 12
Answering Inspection Questions
$15
No. 13
Prepping Lessons After School Vacations
$5
No. 14
Handling Teacher Burnout: UAE Edition
$10
No. 15
How to Handle Subject Coordinators
$6
No. 16
How to Thrive in a Subject Department
$6
No. 17
Managing School Expectations
$7