Although it is the story of an apparent success, I was saddened to read the account by Susan Engel in the New York (NY, US) Times about a young boy improving in reading. Professor Engel—she teaches psychology and directs the teaching program at Williams College—writes a column called “Lessons” for the Times, and in the installment for 10 January 2007 she described the case of a 9-year-old boy who had not become proficient in decoding.
At the beginning of the school year, his teacher, Eileen Brennan, paired the children in his class and asked them to read aloud to one another. The boy would hesitate over the first unfamiliar words, Ms. Brennan said, and then take so long to read anything that he and the partner would both give up, or run out of time.
Continue reading ‘Sad story’
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Siegfried Engelmann is publishing a new book, The Outrage of Project Follow Through: 5 million failed kids later, and it will initially (but only temporarily) be available via the Internet. An anonymous friend sent me this information:
Every week for the next seven weeks, starting Jan 22, Zig will post one chapter of the unpublished trade book he has just written. Each chapter will remain on http://zigsite.com for two weeks. Once it’s off, it’s off and will not return. There are seven chapters.
- Before Project Follow Through (Jan 22)
- Project Follow Through Begins (Jan 29)
- Follow Through continues (Feb 5)
- During Follow Through (Feb 12)
- Follow Through Evaluation (Feb 19)
- Follow Through Aftermath (Feb 26)
- The New Millennium (Mar 5)
You may download chapters, but understand that the material is copyrighted by Zig and is not to be distributed or published without Zig’s consent.
All chapters except the one on evaluation are at least 80 pages. The book is not designed for educators but for the general public. The events start in 1964, when Zig got his first job in education (at the Institute for Research on Exceptional Children at the University of Illinois) and proceeds from there to the present through a series of first-person vignettes and episodes that present the human side of what Zig and his collegues did and why they did it. The book delivers a powerful message in showing how DI was shaped by evidence on how teachers and kids performed.
Many episodes are dramatic. Together, they show that those involved in the DI Follow Through model knew what they were talking about because they had done more than theorize or observe through the sterile literature. They were completely involved in working with teachers, kids and schools for more than 20 years in different manifestations of Follow Through. The book also provides short tours of work Zig and his collegues have done with various types of learners, from autistic, those with traumatic brain damage, and deaf, to preschoolers, at-risk high school students, and the gifted.
The theme of the book is that urban school districts, as they are currently configured, can’t possibly work because their structure, logic, and philosophy are anti-scientific. Overall, the book will probably sadden you, but hopefully, it will provide an interesting journey and won’t discourage you.
I’m going to post reminders each day that a new chapter appears.
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On 8 January 2007, the Morning Edition show on (US) National Public Radio carried a report by Beth Fertig on the use of the Wilson reading program in remedial instruction with middle-school aged children in New York City (NY, US). Wilson Reading System is one of the Orton-Gillingham family of multi-sensory structured language programs that are popular among those advocating tutorial remediation of reading problems (e.g., dyslexia).
Continue reading ‘Wilson reading’
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Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) provides a database of US federally supported teaching resources. It provides links to resources that participating agencies have recommended as potentially useful for education. In the fall of 2006, FREE was redesigned and it is now available in its new guise.
Although I’m sure that FREE is provided in the spirit of altruism and collaboration, and although it links to many appealing Web sites, it misses the mark on at least two points.
Continue reading ‘FREE’
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This is national de-lurking week. Come on out and play. Shoot, commenters can even leave notes using a pseudonym. Teach Effectively! missed participating last year and it appears few sites are participating this year (even Sheryl over PaperNapkin isn’t participating this year), but I wanted to promote interaction on this site.
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Trina Spencer and Tim Slocum of Utah State University report that they are hoping to develop a line of research on using Direct Instruction (DI) with children with Autism. As a first step, they are creating a comprehensive catalog of current DI practices with this population. They hope to use the results of their survey to plan a series of research projects on the topic.
Tim sent this set of requests:
- If you use DI with children with Autism we ask that you take a few minutes to complete the brief survey below and return it to Trina at tds [at] cc [dot] usu [dot] edu.
- If you know of others who use DI with this population please forward this message to them.
- If you are interested in collaborating on future research, please let us know. Please respond to Trina at tds [at] cc [dot] usu [dot] edu.
Link for downloading the survey.
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We’re back!
It took me a lot longer than I’d anticipated to get the blogs functioning again, but I believe that Teach Effectively is now ensconsed in its own little home. There are, to be sure, a few remaining bits of packing material and similar remnants of the move lying about the space, and I’ll be working on tidying them. However, I think that the posts, comments, images, and etc. are working properly now.
It will take the search engines and tag systems a bit to refresh their records about Teach Effectively, so I shan’t expect Google entries or Technorati tags to be up to date for a few days or weeks. However, readers (both of you, please) can help by updating any Web links you have to TE; here’s the code to use:
<a href="http://TeachEffectively.com/">TeachEffectively.com</a>
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