Teach Effectively!

Zig Engelmann, principle author of a sweet suite of instructional materials that cover the range from beginning language skills to core concepts in physical sciences, has revised his Web site, Zig Site. If you’ve ever heard of “Direct Instruction” (sometimes said, “Big DI”), you’ve heard of Zig’s work. The new site has somethings new and somethings old. Rather than précis the changes, here’s how Zig describes it:

Starting in 2009, Zigsite is going to have an emphasis on training through videos. The first will be a series of 13 video sessions on teaching English pronunciation to non-English speakers. It will be followed by a series of training videos on teaching our new program, Direct Instruction Spoken English.

The longer printed works on Zigsite include, Rubric for Identifying Authentic DI Programs, Low Performers’ Manual, and the log of the first formal study I did in education—Comparative Preschool Study: High and Low SES Preschoolers Learning Advanced Cognitive Skills. These are constructive. Most of the other works are constructive only in the sense that they help clarify why education has gone basically nowhere in the past 40 years. Only now are educators starting to “invent” some of the stuff we used back in the 60s.

One of the new features is a video, filmed by Jon Palfreman (Emmy, Dupont, and Peabody Award-winning journalist), of Geoff Colvin interviewing Zig about high and low lights on his 45-year career.

The previously available content about Direct Instruction (DI) is still available. You can still find articles such as Rubric for Identifying Authentic DI Programs, The Curriculum as the Cause of Failure, and How Scientific is Reading First?, but the new content promises to be very valuable.

So hightail it over to Zig Site and delve in deeply. Teachers, teacher educators, coaches, instructional designers, policy makers, administrators, and a host of others interested in effective instruction will find valuable content over there.