The Teaching Practice

Get your students working independently in the next 30 days.

A professional learning membership that helps you build the practices behind effective teaching—so your classroom runs on independence, not on you.

Start today → Launch price $99/year — locked in for life
The promise

When students can work on their own, everything else opens up.

You're free to pull small groups. To confer with one reader at a time. To teach the way you always meant to. Independence is the practice that makes the rest of your day possible and it can be taught, starting now.

Why this matters now

You have the curriculum. What's missing is the how.

Programs tell you what to teach. They rarely show you how to structure a day so students grow more independent, so small groups become possible, so learning carries past the lesson. That knowledge doesn't live inside a program. It's built deliberately, one practice at a time.

What programs give you

A scope and sequence. Lessons to deliver. Materials to work through. All useful and all built around what to teach.

What The Teaching Practice gives you

The craft underneath any program: how to build independence, run small groups, confer, and design a day where learning sticks. The part that makes everything else work.

What to expect

A clear path from day one.

Week 1

Start with independence

Begin teaching students how to sustain their own learning. Small shifts, felt immediately, that free you up to teach.

Weeks 2–4

Build the routines

Put the daily structures in place that make a classroom run with purpose and hold up when the day gets hard.

Month 2

Open up small groups

With independence in place, step away from the whole group and start the responsive, one-at-a-time teaching that moves students most.

Across the year

Deepen the craft

Work through each practice at your own pace, returning to the ones your classroom needs, building a way of teaching that lasts.

What's inside

Everything you need to build the practice.

Focused video lessons

Short, practical lessons you can watch on your own time. Watch one, apply it tomorrow.

Action items that transfer

Every lesson comes with concrete steps to bring straight into your classroom, so learning becomes practice.

Milestones that show progress

Each lesson ends with a clear checkpoint, so you always know whether the learning has landed before you move on.

A path you keep returning to

Membership access to a growing library and every practice, so you can revisit what your classroom needs, whenever it needs it.

The courses

The practices that shape effective teaching.

Each course builds on the last. Together they give you a clear, practical picture of what effective teaching looks like across a full day—in any classroom, any subject, any grade.

1

Building Trust and Belonging in the Classroom

The foundation of a classroom where students take risks, work hard, and grow.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
RELATIONSHIPS
2

Designing a Purposeful Learning Environment

What your classroom communicates to students about how learning happens here.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Environment
3

Reset Your Daily Routines

The structures that make a teaching day feel purposeful and predictable.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Daily Routines
4

Independent Practice in Action

How to explicitly teach students to work on their own. This practice makes everything else possible.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Independent Learning & Collaborative Learning
5

The Art of Responsive Conferring

How to hold meaningful conversations and what to record to accelerate student growth.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
CONFERRING
6

The Lesson Framework

Whole-group instruction that lands clearly and releases students into their own practice.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Brief and Effective Lessons
7

Guiding Student-Led Accountability

Help students understand their goals, track their progress, and take ownership of their learning.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Progress Monitoring & Accountability
8

Designing Meaningful Independent Practice

How to give students the opportunity to apply learning in authentic ways that deepen understanding and support transfer.

> high-impact practice it strengthens
Authentic Application
How each course works

Watch. Apply. Know it landed.

First

Watch the lesson

Start with a short video, with captions and playback speed built in. Watch it on your prep, your commute, your couch.

Then

Take the action

Concrete steps help you apply the learning right away. Some shift what you do in the classroom, some shift how you think.

Finally

Hit the milestone

A clear checkpoint tells you whether it's landed. When you can say yes, move on. When you can't, you'll know what to revisit.

Who it's for

Built for teachers who care about the craft.

Early-career teachers
Looking for the structure and clarity that teacher prep didn't always provide. A way to feel steady in your own room.
Experienced teachers
Wanting coherence and a next layer of craft, especially while navigating new adoptions and mandates.
Teachers under a program
Working within a required curriculum but still wanting agency, independence, and a classroom that feels like yours.
Anyone who loved Daily 5
Everything that made those frameworks work, brought together into one clear path for the classroom you're in today.
ABOUT YOUR GUIDE

Gail Boushey

Former first-grade teacher & literacy coach · Co-creator of The Daily 5 and CAFE

For decades, Gail has worked inside real classrooms, watching teachers teach, sitting beside students, and helping educators see the structure already present in their best work. The Teaching Practice takes everything that made those frameworks work and brings it into one clear path for today's classroom. Not a new thing to add. A clearer way to teach what you already care about most.

Join today

Start building your practice.

Work through it at your own pace, all year long. Your price locks in for as long as you stay a member.

The Teaching Practice · Launch Price
$99 / year
Locked in for life, even as the price rises
  • All eight courses, at your own pace
  • Focused video lessons with action items and milestones
  • A growing library you return to all year
  • Works alongside any curriculum, any grade
Join The Teaching Practice →

$99/year is our launch price and will rise over time. Join now and yours never changes as long as your membership stays active.

Questions

What teachers ask before they start.

Your curriculum tells you what to teach. The Teaching Practice builds how you teach it—the independence, routines, conferring, and lesson design that make any program work in a real classroom. It sits alongside whatever you're already using, not on top of it.

Less than you'd think. Video lessons are short and focused, and you work through one practice at a time at your own pace. Many teachers watch a lesson during prep and apply it the next day. There's no schedule to keep up with. You move as your classroom is ready.

It grows out of them. The Teaching Practice takes the heart of Daily 5 and CAFE and brings it into one clear structure for the whole teaching day. It's built out and organized for today's classroom, alongside whatever program you're teaching now.

Yes. The Teaching Practice isn't a reading program and doesn't replace one. It builds the teaching practices that help any program land in the classroom. Whatever you're required to use works better, not differently.

Yes. Join at $99/year and that's your price for as long as you stay a member, even as we raise it for new members over time. The sooner you join, the more you save.

If you want your students working more independently, your small groups actually happening, and your teaching to feel like a craft again—this is built for you. Whether you're in your first year or your twentieth, it meets you where you are.

Your classroom can run on independence.

Start today, and watch it begin to change within the month.

Join The Teaching Practice →
Launch price $99/year · Locked in for life · Works with any curriculum