The DODO Method

A reference manual for navigators teaching the DODO Learning literacy program. Read it once when you start; return to specific sections when you need them.

This manual is the static portion of every Phase Prep Guide. The first part of the guide changes every phase — that's where you'll find what's specific to this program, this phase, this week's prep priorities. This part stays the same across programs. It teaches the method.

The lesson_guide.json (or its rendered PDF) carries everything that's specific to this lesson: the chapter, the dispositions chosen, the MCT units pairing, the bot's per-pillar notes, the admin decisions you should know about. This manual teaches you how to read that artifact.

B1. What this program is

Read this section first. Everything else in the manual is downstream of it.

Why DODO exists

Bilingual children grow up navigating two language systems and rarely have a place to make their own thinking visible to themselves. They study English. They speak Mandarin. Sometimes they can analyze a poem in one language and not the other. The work of integrating the two — noticing how a Latin stem behaves in English, hearing rhythm across languages, building a habit of saying what they actually think about a chapter — happens nowhere by default.

DODO is the place where that work happens. The novel gives them a story to think about. The MCT material gives them a structured language to think with. The Visible Thinking routines give them a habit of thinking out loud, with you as a partner, not a judge.

Your role: thinking partner, not lecturer

The single behavior that separates a strong DODO navigator from a strong tutor is this: you model first, then hand over.

A tutor explains the answer. A DODO navigator shows the student what thinking about the question looks like — by doing it aloud, in front of them, the first time — and then asks the student to try.

"When I look at the first paragraph of this chapter, here's what I notice — Mud is described twice as 'small,' once as 'restless.' I'm wondering whether 'small' is about size or about how he sees himself. Now you try. What do you notice in the first paragraph?"

Modelling out loud is uncomfortable at first. It feels slow. It feels like you're talking too much. You aren't. You're showing the student the move so they can do it themselves. The first three weeks of teaching this program, every navigator over-corrects toward not-modelling-enough; by month three, you'll catch yourself doing it before the student needs you to.

Three commitments

Carry these into every lesson. They are the operating discipline of the method.

1. Hold silence after questions. When you ask a question, count to five before you rephrase, hint, or fill the space. The student is thinking. If you fill the silence, you teach them that silence means the navigator will rescue me. If you hold it, you teach them that silence means I have time to actually think.

2. The student owns their conclusion. When the student finishes a Visible Thinking routine — particularly Pillar 4 (Student Formed Conclusion) — their conclusion is theirs. Don't fix it. Don't redirect it. Don't perform satisfaction at it. Don't follow up with "good — and what about…?" The conclusion belongs to the student. Yours is the next lesson.

3. Depth over coverage. One MCT unit done well outperforms two rushed ones. One discussion question pursued seriously outperforms four answered superficially. If you find yourself racing the clock, drop the second unit. The lesson_guide is your inspiration and safety net, not your ceiling.

If you internalize these three commitments, you can recover from almost any technique mistake. If you memorize the techniques without the commitments, even a perfect lesson plan will land flat.

B2. The five pillars

The DODO literacy lesson is structured as five pillars of roughly fifty minutes total. Each pillar has a distinct pedagogical purpose. The pillars are designed to flow into each other as one continuous arc of thinking, not as five separate activities.

The shape

Total roughly fifty minutes. See The flow below for how the five pillars connect.

Pillar 1 — The Spark (5 min)

Purpose. Activate the disposition the student will work in today. Open one provocation tied to the chapter or the MCT unit. The Spark is a door, not a lesson.

Your role. Run the assigned VT routine. At lower-grade tiers, model the thinking aloud first — show the student what observing or wondering looks like in your own voice — then hand the routine to them.

What good looks like. The student leans into the provocation with their own thinking, even if that thinking is tentative or partial.

Common failure mode. Spending too long. The Spark is five minutes, not a mini-lesson. If you find yourself ten minutes in, the warmth has cooled — transition to Pillar 2 even if the Spark feels unfinished.

Vignette. "Last time we left Mud at the edge of something. Today let's start with what you noticed — say one thing you remember about Mud from your reading, and one thing you're wondering about him as we go into Chapter 2."

Pillar 2 — Guided Reading (12–15 min)

Purpose. Facilitate discussion of the chapter the student has already read independently. Class time is for thinking together about the chapter, not for first-time encounter.

Your role. Select a live anchor passage from within the required reading range — a moment in the chapter that invites genuine discussion, not a comprehension check. Use the lesson_guide's questions as entry points, not a checklist. Follow the student's thinking when it pulls you somewhere interesting.

What good looks like. The student is doing most of the talking and pointing to specific moments in the text to support what they're saying.

Common failure mode. Treating the lesson_guide questions as a fixed sequence to get through. They are openings, not obligations. If question one opens a real conversation, stay there.

Vignette. "Mud said something on page 11 that surprised me — let me find it. Yes — 'I would rather be wrong than safe.' What do you make of that line? Is he being brave, or is he being reckless?"

Pillar 3 — The Workshop (15–18 min)

Purpose. Teach 1–2 MCT units — stems, etymology, poetic devices, sentence-craft, or literary analysis depending on the unit — and connect each concept back to the novel chapter so language study feels embedded in the story, not bolted on.

Your role. Introduce the MCT concept using the source page scans in your Navigator's Resource folder via screen share. Work through the lesson_guide's suggested_exercises, choosing the modality and tier that best fit your student. Model first; show the student what a completed example looks like before asking them to produce one. Keep the connection to the chapter explicit — name the link out loud.

What good looks like. The student can use the MCT concept — a stem, a device, a pattern — in their own words or with their own example, however simple.

Common failure mode. Rushing through two units when one done well would serve the student better. Depth over coverage.

Vignette. "Just now in Chapter 2, the author wrote 'Turner turns turtle.' Three words, all starting with the same sound. The MCT name for that pattern is alliteration — the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words. Let's look at how Lewis Carroll uses it on page 14, and then I want you to find one yourself in the chapter."

Pillar 4 — Student Formed Conclusion (5–7 min)

Purpose. Student articulates their own understanding using the assigned Visible Thinking routine, consolidating what they explored across the lesson.

Your role. Run the assigned VT routine to close. Hold the space. Do not re-teach. Do not correct. Do not fill silence. The thinking belongs to the student. At lower tiers you may scaffold the routine with a sentence starter or a gentle prompt, but resist the urge to shape the conclusion into what you hoped they would say.

What good looks like. The student produces a conclusion that is genuinely theirs — imperfect, partial, and owned.

Common failure mode. Jumping in to "fix" a student's conclusion or turning the closing routine into a review quiz. If the conclusion isn't what you expected, that is information about the student's thinking — not a problem to solve in this lesson.

Vignette. Student: "I used to think Mud was just brave. Now I think he might be lonely too. Maybe brave because he's lonely." — Navigator: nods, writes it down, moves to Pillar 5. Does not say "yes, and also stubborn." The student's conclusion stands.

Pillar 5 — Wrap-Up & Preview (5 min)

Purpose. Provide a brief, structured close using the lesson's assigned wrap-up format and set the student up for success before the next lesson.

Your role. Follow the wrap-up format specified in the lesson_guide — keep it tight and warm. State the next lesson's required reading range clearly. Confirm the student knows what they need to read before you meet again. If a Home Review is being assigned, hand it off here with a brief orientation to each section.

What good looks like. The student leaves knowing exactly what to read next, what to submit, and feeling good about what they accomplished today.

Common failure mode. Letting the wrap-up bleed into extra teaching time. Five minutes means five minutes.

The flow

The pillars are designed to feel like one continuous conversation rather than five separate activities. The disposition opened in Pillar 1 carries into Pillar 2; the chapter conversation in Pillar 2 frames the MCT concept in Pillar 3; the language work in Pillar 3 deepens the disposition; Pillar 4 lets the student integrate; Pillar 5 closes and looks forward.

The single hardest handoff is Pillar 2 → Pillar 3. The lesson shifts from novel discussion to MCT workshop, and it can feel abrupt if you don't bridge it. Use the pedagogical connection named in the lesson_guide:

"We just noticed how Lewis Carroll repeats those 't' sounds in Chapter 2. The Workshop today is going to give us the name for what he's doing and let us play with it ourselves."

One sentence is enough.

Lesson format flexibility

The lesson is designed for a single 50-minute session, but it also runs as two 25-minute split sessions. In a split format, Session 1 covers the Spark and Guided Reading (Pillars 1 and 2), and Session 2 covers the Workshop, Conclusion, and Wrap-Up (Pillars 3, 4, 5). The break between sessions does not damage the flow if you begin Session 2 with a brief reconnection to the chapter.

If a session runs short or a student is absent for one session, use your professional judgement on whether to assign Home Review. The guiding principle: the student should have encountered both the novel discussion and the MCT Workshop before being asked to do independent work on them at home.

B3. Visible Thinking

Visible Thinking (VT) is the facilitation backbone of this program. The routines come from Harvard's Project Zero. They are not decoration. They are the habit the program is building in your student.

What VT is — and isn't

VT is a habit-building practice. The point is the student notices their own thinking, not that you extract the right answer from them. When you run a routine well, you should hear things from the student that genuinely surprise you — that's the signal it's working.

VT routines are not comprehension scripts. A new navigator's most common misread is to treat See-Think-Wonder or What-Makes-You-Say-That as a fancy way to ask comprehension questions. They aren't. The routine's job is to make the student's process visible, not to extract a correct answer.

When the student says something and you don't know what to do with it, your default move is to ask them to say more about that — not to evaluate, not to redirect. "Say more about that" and "What makes you say that?" are the two phrases you will use most often as a navigator. They are doing the same work: they keep the thinking with the student.

The seven dispositions — choosing which fits

Each lesson is assigned a single VT disposition by the educator-counterpart bot at scope time. The disposition shapes Pillar 1 (spark) and Pillar 4 (student-formed conclusion). When you see a particular disposition assigned to a lesson, the bot has read the chapter and decided this is what the chapter most invites.

When you see Reasoning with Evidence in a lesson_guide, the bot decided this chapter has a contested moment students will want to argue about. Trust the choice and run with it. If you genuinely disagree — for example, the chapter feels more like an Observing lesson to you — note it in your prep and follow the bot's choice anyway in delivery; the disposition is part of the phase's overall design and over the course of the phase, the variety matters more than per-lesson optimization.

The routines — reference cards

Each disposition has a family routine. Use these cards mid-week when you need to remember the steps.

See-Think-Wonder · Observing & Describing

• See: What do you SEE in this passage or scene?
• Think: What do you THINK about what you see?
• Wonder: What does it make you WONDER?

Best for: Opening a new chapter, introducing a setting or character for the first time.

Facilitation tip: Ask students to name specific things — people, objects, colors, actions. Accept all observations. Wonder questions can be simple curiosity: "I wonder why…?" is enough.

What Makes You Say That · Reasoning with Evidence

• Claim: What's your interpretation or claim?
• Evidence: What makes you say that — what specifically in the text supports it?

Best for: Character decisions, arguments, claims, contested moments.

Facilitation tip: The phrase itself — "What makes you say that?" — is the entire routine. Use it after every interpretation a student offers. Not as a challenge; as genuine curiosity.

Connect-Extend-Challenge · Making Connections / Synthesizing

• Connect: How does this CONNECT to what you already know — from life, other books, earlier chapters?
• Extend: What does it EXTEND or push further in your thinking?
• Challenge: What does it CHALLENGE you to reconsider or question?

Best for: Chapters that revisit earlier themes, introduce new information, or create tension with prior knowledge. Also the closing routine for synthesis lessons.

Facilitation tip: Use sentence frames — Connect = "This reminds me of…" · Extend = "Now I also think…" · Challenge = "This makes me less sure about…"

Circle of Viewpoints · Perspective Taking

• Identify different characters or voices in this scene.
• Choose one viewpoint: "I am thinking of this chapter from the viewpoint of ___."
• From that viewpoint: what do you think or believe? What questions do you have?
• What new questions does considering this viewpoint raise for you personally?

Best for: Scenes with multiple characters or conflicting perspectives; chapters with moral complexity.

Facilitation tip: Assign viewpoints rather than letting students choose — ensure less obvious characters get voiced. Use the sentence frame.

I Used to Think / Now I Think · Finding Complexity

• I USED TO THINK… (before this chapter / at the start of the book / earlier in our discussion)
• NOW I THINK… (what has changed in your thinking, and why)
• What caused the shift?

Best for: End of a chapter arc, turning point moments, revelations that change a character's or the reader's understanding.

Facilitation tip: The sentence frame is essential — "I used to think ___ but now I think ___." The shift can be small. That is fine, especially at lower tiers.

Think-Puzzle-Explore · Wondering & Questioning

• Think: What do you THINK you know about what we just read?
• Puzzle: What PUZZLES you — what doesn't fit or makes you unsure?
• Explore: What would you like to EXPLORE further?

Best for: Pre-reading activation, complex chapters with unresolved tensions.

Facilitation tip: Keep the categories concrete. Think = what you already know. Puzzle = what confused you. Explore = what you want to find out. Don't over-distinguish — the categories overlap and that's okay.

Holding silence — the skill

Silence is the single hardest navigator skill. The instinct, when a student pauses, is to help — to rephrase, to hint, to nudge toward the answer you have in mind. Resist.

Count to five. If you must speak, ask "What are you thinking about right now?" rather than steering.

The purpose of every VT routine in this program is to make the student's thinking visible to the student, not to you. When you hold the space well, you will hear things that surprise you — and that is exactly the point.

B4. MCT and the Workshop

Michael Clay Thompson's design treats English as a structured, beautiful object. Stems compose. Devices have names. Sentences have architecture. Etymology has a story. The Workshop is where the student spends time with that structure.

What MCT is

MCT material is your content in the Workshop. The lesson_guide tells you which MCT unit pairs with today's chapter and which exercises to consider; the source page scans in your Navigator's Resource folder are your visual material for screen share.

Your job in the Workshop is to keep the MCT concept grounded in the chapter. When you teach a stem from Building Language, show the student where that stem lives in the chapter they just discussed. When you analyze a poetic device from Music of the Hemispheres, ask the student whether the novel's author does something similar. The concept becomes memorable when it has a home in the story.

If the Workshop ever starts to feel like a separate subject — like you're teaching a vocabulary lesson next to a literature lesson — slow down and re-anchor to the chapter. The lesson_guide always names the pedagogical connection between the unit and the chapter; lean on it explicitly.

Reading MCT notes to teachers

Most MCT units include short notes to teachers — usually at the start or end of the unit pages. Read the notes for any source you have not taught from before. They are MCT's own guidance on what each unit is designed to do and how to teach it.

The Phase Prep Guide's Source Introduction Calendar (Section 4) tells you when each MCT source first appears in this phase. Use that calendar as your reading schedule — read the notes for the upcoming source the weekend before its first lesson.

The source families you'll meet

The MCT product line covers several distinct kinds of language work. The bot will pair specific catalogs with your phase; here is what each family is teaching and how it wants to be taught.

Stem and etymology lessons (e.g. Building Language, Caesar's English)

Cumulative system. Every later lesson composes on earlier stems. Etymology bridges at unit ends — the connections from Latin/Greek roots to current vocabulary — are where the pedagogical magic happens. Don't trim those bridges to save time.

Teach in catalog order when you can. Out-of-order deployment loses the compositional benefit MCT designed in.

Poetic-device lessons (e.g. Building Poems, Music of the Hemispheres)

Sequential arc. Units 1 through ~7 build on each other; later units assume earlier ones. Each unit is short enough to teach fully in one Workshop. Do not pair two device units in one lesson — give each device the time to land.

Capstone units (typically the last few units in the book) are held for end-of-trilogy or end-of-arc synthesis. The bot won't deploy them mid-program without warrant.

Phonology and sound (e.g. Music of the Hemispheres)

Phonology pairs naturally with later poetic-device work. When a poetic-device unit and a phonology unit appear in the same phase, look for the pairing the bot designed and lean into it.

Grammar (e.g. Grammar Island, Sentence Island)

The grammar foundation underlies every later sentence-craft unit. When grammar appears in a phase, it usually appears early — Phase 1 — because it's foundational to everything that follows.

Practice books (e.g. Practice Island)

Application-focused. Practice units deploy alongside the parent instructor unit they practice. If you see a practice unit assigned without its parent unit anywhere in scope, surface it — that's usually a structural mistake the bot would have flagged.

The six exercise modalities

Each MCT unit in the lesson_guide carries suggested_exercises organized as three modality pairs × two tiers — Application (structured constraint) and Extension (open transfer). Six exercise options per unit. You choose which modality fits your student in the moment.

The six options are a suggested framework, not a script. You know your student. If a Written exercise would land better as a Discussion exercise because your student thinks out loud, make that call. If you want to design a completely different activity that stays grounded in the MCT concept and connects to the novel chapter, do it.

The lesson_guide is your inspiration and your safety net. Not your ceiling.

B5. The reading side

Pre-read model

Class time is for thinking together about what the student has already read. The student reads the assigned chapter independently between lessons; class is for discussion and Workshop.

This model assumes the pre-read happens. When it doesn't — when a student arrives without having read — the lesson cannot run as designed. Your move is to redirect: offer to spend Pillar 2 on a chapter-recap recovery, shorten Pillar 3, and reset expectations for the next lesson. Don't try to run the full lesson on top of a missing pre-read; the depth won't be there and the student will know.

Reading-load language

Your lesson_guide carries a required_reading_load field with one of three values: Comfortable, Stretch, or Heavy. The bot derives this load tier from the program's thresholds and the chapter's page count.

• Comfortable — the student should arrive ready to discuss. Pre-read is private student time; no recovery needed.
• Stretch — the upper edge of what's reasonable. Build in 1–2 minutes of chapter recap at the start of Pillar 2 if the student seems uncertain about details.
• Heavy — the bot has flagged the pre-read as straining the threshold. Build in a full chapter-recap minute at the start of Pillar 2. Watch for fatigue in Pillar 3 and consider trimming to one MCT unit if the student is fading.

The Phase Prep Guide flags Heavy lessons in your Prep Priority list (Section 3) so you see them at phase start.

Anchor-passage selection

Pillar 2 names a suggested_passage in the lesson_guide. The choice is yours during the lesson, not a fixed script. Read the chapter the day before; mark a moment that invited you into thinking; that is your anchor.

A good anchor passage is short enough to read aloud (3–6 sentences) and contested enough to discuss (more than one reasonable interpretation). The student can disagree with you about it; that's the point.

B6. ClassIN, files, and handoffs

Your three artifacts per lesson

Each lesson lives as a self-contained folder on Google Drive. Inside you will find:

1. The Lesson Guide — walks you pillar by pillar through the session. Your primary preparation document. Open this first; read it front to back before you plan anything else.
2. The Home Review Guide — the student's take-home piece, submitted via ClassIN.
3. The Navigator's Resource folder — organized MCT source page scans for that lesson, ready for screen share. Open these before class; familiarize yourself with the page layout so you can navigate fluidly during Pillar 3.

ClassIN navigator workflow

ClassIN is the platform you and the student share for live sessions and homework submission. (Detailed ClassIN workflow steps live in the program's ClassIN reference; this manual notes only the navigator-side principles.)

Home Review handoff

Place the Home Review on ClassIN as an assignment only when the student has completed a whole lesson — meaning all five pillars have been delivered. This ensures the student has the chapter discussion and the MCT Workshop under their belt before working independently.

For 50-minute sessions, the Home Review goes up at the end of every lesson. For split sessions, it goes up after Session 2.

If a lesson is incomplete — a session was cut short, a student was absent, or you did not reach the Workshop — use your professional judgement. If the student engaged deeply with Pillar 2 and has enough to work with for the vocabulary and Visible Thinking questions, you may still assign it. If the lesson was too fragmented for the Home Review to be meaningful, skip it and note why.

The Home Review should reinforce learning, not create confusion.

Vocabulary words — Section 1 of the Home Review

At lesson time, you select two vocabulary words from the chapter footnotes. The student writes three sentences for each word in Section 1 of the Home Review — six sentences total.

You don't need to pre-plan which words. Choose in the moment based on what surfaced in discussion or what you noticed the student needs. This keeps vocabulary grounded in the reading experience rather than feeling like a separate task.

When handing off the Home Review in Pillar 5, walk the student through each section briefly. For Section 2, remind them they are recording their thinking, not performing a presentation — it is fine to pause, to change their mind, to think out loud. For Section 1, remind them that three sentences per word means three different sentences, not three copies of the same idea.

B7. Reading your lesson guide

The lesson guide carries fields the bot generated specifically for you. Knowing what each field is — and what to do with it — is the bridge between this manual and your daily prep.

deployment_mode

When you see an MCT unit in the Workshop, it carries a deployment_mode field. This tells you why the bot put this particular unit here.

• first_application — the unit is being taught for the first time in this program. Treat as foundational.
• r7a_reuse — the unit was taught earlier in the program and is being reused now in a new context. The warrant field tells you what's different about this deployment. Lean on the prior context — "Remember when we looked at this stem in Lesson 3? Today we're going to use it on…"
• spiral_review — same content as before, but the student now has system context that lets them see the foundation differently. Treat as deepening, not repeating.
• capstone — this unit is held for synthesis. Usually appears in final lessons of a phase or program. Pace accordingly.

facilitation_context[]

When you open a lesson_guide and see entries here, those are admin decisions and bot observations carried forward specifically for your awareness. Each entry has a short recommended_navigator_action written for you in plain navigator-action language — typically twenty words or less, action-verb opener.

Read these. They are the educator-counterpart bot's notes from scope time, distilled into one line you can act on. Examples:

• "Acknowledge the split mid-lesson; the Ch. 3a stop-point is the natural narrative break."
• "Pre-read may be heavy; build in a chapter-recap minute at the start of Pillar 2."
• "This is the first Music of the Hemispheres unit — orient the student to the new book before starting Pillar 3."

The Phase Prep Guide's Admin Notes section (at the back of the guide) rolls up every facilitation entry across the phase, so you can read them once at phase start and revisit per lesson when a flagged lesson is up next.

facilitation_insight — per pillar

Inside each pillar object, you'll see a facilitation_insight field. This is the bot's note on what to watch for in this specific pillar of this specific lesson — not generic advice. Distinct from facilitation_note, which is grade-tier delivery guidance and stays the same across lessons in your tier.

Read the insight; it's pillar-and-lesson-specific.

Reuse rule glossary

You'll see these tags in deployment_mode and warrant fields. Brief reference:

• First Application — unit's first appearance in any phase. Default for early phases.
• R7(a) Reuse — same unit, new context. Warrant points outward — new texts, new vocabulary, new application.
• R7(b) Sequential arc — unit is part of a sequential arc; no reuse permitted across phases.
• R7(c) Non-arc — capstone or review units within an otherwise-sequential book.
• Spiral Review — same content, deeper student. Warrant points inward — student has accumulated system context.
• R8 Split — a long novel chapter split across two lessons; never an MCT unit split.
• R9 Read-first — the bot reads all chapters before proposing lesson count. Lesson count follows pedagogy, not external rhythm.

The bot enforces these rules at scope time; you'll typically just read the resulting tag and trust that the warrant is sound.

Machine references you may see in raw fields

DLCW outputs always name books, novels, and routines in full in any rendered content you read — your lesson_guide PDF, your Home Review, your Phase Prep Guide. Catalog IDs and routine codes (the table below) are machine references that appear only in raw JSON fields, filenames, and the auto-maintained docs/ABBREVIATIONS.md glossary.

You should rarely need to read or use them. They are listed here so that on the rare occasion you open a raw JSON field — or grep through a folder — you can map a code back to its full name.

VT routine codes:

• STW → See-Think-Wonder
• WMYS → What Makes You Say That
• CEC → Connect-Extend-Challenge
• COV → Circle of Viewpoints
• IUTNI → I Used to Think / Now I Think (sometimes IUT)
• TPE → Think-Puzzle-Explore

Catalog IDs are program-specific and listed (with full book names) in the Phase Prep Guide's Section 1 (Phase at a Glance) and in docs/ABBREVIATIONS.md.

A note on growth

You will read this manual differently at month one than at month six. In your first month, the commitments in B1 will feel awkward — holding silence will feel like dead air, modelling out loud will feel like talking too much, refusing to fix a student's conclusion will feel like negligence. By month three, the awkwardness fades. By month six, you will catch yourself instinctively asking "What makes you say that?" before the lesson_guide reminds you to.

This is the curve. It is real. It is what makes the difference between a navigator who runs DODO lessons and a navigator who teaches DODO. Trust the curve. Read this manual again at month three; sections will land differently.

The lesson_guide and the Phase Prep Guide will tell you what to teach. This manual tells you how to be the kind of navigator the program is designed around. Both matter. The first is regenerated each phase; the second stays.