Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect, a show sponsored by John Catt from Hachette Learning and hosted by me, Dr. Zach Groshell. My guest today is Christopher Such, literacy expert, former primary teacher, and author of Primary Reading Simplified. Chris makes his epic return to the show to tackle several debates currently shaping reading instruction in … Continue reading S5E20: Christopher Such on Action Steps for Reading and the Latest Literacy Debates

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. This season, I’ve been diving deeply into writing instruction — what the research actually says, where classroom practice often drifts, and what it truly takes to help students become confident, capable writers. Writing is one of the most cognitively demanding things we ask students … Continue reading S5E19: Leslie Laud on Writing Instruction and Self-Regulated Strategy Development

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I sit down with Ian Kelleher and Glenn Whitman of the Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning (CTTL). We began with the origin story of CTTL — how they set out to bridge mind, brain, and education science with real classroom … Continue reading S5E18: Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher on Bridging Learning Science and Classroom Reality

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I’m joined by the always fabulous, Femi Adeniran, to continue a conversation that started when I appeared on the Beyond Good podcast about math, coaching, and instruction. We discuss: How to begin a maths lesson How not to begin a maths … Continue reading S5E17: Femi Adeniran on Explicit Math Instruction and Coaching for Better Math Teaching

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I’m joined by Scotty Jackson to talk about how summer camp can create the experiences—and build the kinds of values—that help kids be better people: honesty, respect, responsibility, caring, and belonging. I’m not coming at this as a distant observer. I … Continue reading S5E16: Scott Jackson on Summer Camp

In this episode, I sit down with Barbara Oakley—engineer, bestselling author, and one of the most influential voices in the science of learning—to talk about why so much instruction still misses the mark, what “good teaching” looks like when you take cognition seriously, and what’s at stake if we keep defaulting to methods that feel … Continue reading S5E15: Barbara Oakley on Constructivism vs. Learning Science

The “Thinking Out Loud” episodes on Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works are a running set of conversations to make sense of instruction, coaching, and implementation as they actually function in schools—not as we wish they did. The premise is straightforward: Gene Tavernetti and I take a concrete problem of practice, name what tends to go wrong, … Continue reading S5E14: Thinking Out Loud… What comes first in coaching, techniques or lesson design?

Mike Schmoker is one of the most influential voices in school improvement, urging schools to recommit to the fundamentals: coherent curriculum, strong lesson design, and authentic literacy—reading, discussion, and writing—throughout the school day. Across books like Focus and Results Now 2.0, and decades of essays and commentary, his through-line is the same: schools don’t usually … Continue reading S5E13: Mike Schmoker on How Schools Can Get Results Now

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Brian Poncy to explore a claim you’ve probably heard in schools: “Teaching math facts interferes with understanding.” From there, we dig into better ways to think about math facts, what schools can do differently, and the practical decisions that show up when schools decide to take facts … Continue reading S5E12: Brian Poncy on Better Ways to Teach Math Facts

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Gingell to unpack what it actually takes to make instructional coaching work in a school. Alex explains why his first priority wasn’t improving teaching, but stabilizing behavior, curriculum, and trust—and why coaching can only succeed once those foundations are secure. We talk through how he used Steplab … Continue reading S5E11: Alex Gingell on Setting the Culture and Conditions for Effective Instructional Coaching