Archive for the 'Primary' Category

Free Funnix returns!

Published on 17 January 2012 in Administration, News, Primary, Reading, Technology and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Loyal readers of TE will recall that the folks at Royal Limited Partnership gave away copies of the Funnix Beginning Reading program in 2011. Welp, it’s going to happen again! Yes indeedy! Quoting from a page on the Funnix Web site:

From February 1 through 16th, the Funnix Beginning Reading program will be free for download–no strings, no hidden costs.

The Funnix sequence teaches 2 year’s worth of reading skills. During last year’s promotion, more than 40,000 people received the Funnix Beginning Reading program free. Even higher numbers are anticipated for this year.

If you’re in the market for an excellent beginning reading program, sign up for your free download of Funnix Beginning Reading. The program has been offered for $25 during most of 2011; however, the price will rise to $38 following the giveaway in February.

Funnix is a computer-based early reading program that delivers the essential components for decoding instruction. A teacher, parent, teaching assistant, or other competent reader can work with an individual child or small group and provide the guidance needed by the student or students as they go through the instructional activities provided via the computer. It’s predicated on all the principles of Direct Instruction (its authors are Zig and Owen Engelmann). The lessons are lively and fun. There’s plenty of monitoring and opportunities for individualization.

Now, you can’t register early for this giveaway. You have to arrive after 1 February 2012. But, you can go to the Funnix giveaway announcement and look at the various offerings now, and you can become familiar with the products in advance, and you can be prepared (i.e., bookmark the site, put a reminder in your calendar, and so forth).

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Free gift from Education Consumers Foundation!

Published on 6 December 2011 in Administration, Arithmetic and mathematics, Assessment, Behavior Management, Bookshelf, Content learning, Elementary, News, Policy, Primary, Reading, Research, Secondary, Spelling, Standards, Teacher education, The press and Written Expression. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

partial image of cover of Clear Teaching

Isn’t it unusual to get something for free that is actually worth a lot? The good folks over at Education Consumers Foundation (ECF) are giving away a small book that is quite valuable, and I encourage readers to download it, read it, and tell their friends to get it, too.

What are they giving away? It’s a book called Clear Teaching: With Direct Instruction, Siegfried Engelmann Discovered a Better Way of Teaching by Shep Barbash. As one can tell from the subtitle, it’s about Zig Engelmann’s work on education. I talked with Mr. Barbash as he worked on the manuscript for the book, read an earlier version of it, and am very impressed with this finished product. It’s even more impressive that the book is now out in the wild for free. Kudos to Mr. Barbash, John Stone, and all the others at ECF who made this happen.

Clear Teaching – The Book
Written by veteran journalist Shepard Barbash over a period of 10 years, Clear Teaching is a well-researched, highly readable introduction to Direct Instruction (DI), a systematic teaching approach which for more than 40 years has dramatically improved learning outcomes for students of all abilities and from all walks of life. The book looks at the development of DI through the early experiences of its creator, Zig Engelmann; explains the principles that underpin this approach; and looks at DI’s reception in the world of teaching, where it has been effectively shunned despite a formidable research base and example after example of transformative success.

The image at the top of the post is hot, but readers can also click here to go to the ECF page where they can download the PDF.

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Funnix is free for a few more days

Published on 14 January 2011 in News, Parents, Primary, Reading and Technology. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Until 31 January 2011, one can download a copy of Funnix a tutorial program for teaching beginning reading skills just for the asking. Yes, you have to submit a name and an e-mail address, that’s the catch.

Funnix, authored by Siegfied Engelmann, Owen Engelmann, and Karen Davis, is composed of 120 30-minute lessons delivered via compact disk on a computer. An adult coaches the child as she learns fundamentals of decoding (e.g., letter-sound correspondences, blending), practices reading words (lists, sentences, and passages), and develops basic comprehension skills (e.g., literal connections). Children answer some questions verbally, click answers to others directly on the computer, and write responses to others in workbooks. The adult monitors and provides feedback. (The package includes materials guiding the adult’s support.)
Continue reading ‘Funnix is free for a few more days’

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GBG recognized again

Published on 23 November 2010 in Administration, Behavior Management, News, Primary, Social behavior and The press. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

In its announcement mechanism, Top Tier Evidence, the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy has given another boost to that venerable intervention, the Good Behavior Game (GBG). Top Tier Evidence judged a combination of the GBG and a special academic curriculum to meet nearly all its standards for a “Top Tier” classification, failing only the standard of having been tested in multiple sites.

The GBG was originally reported by Harriet Barrish in a masters thesis while working with Mont Wolf at Kansas University in the 1960s. Others—particularly Shep Kellam at Johns Hopkins University and his colleagues—recognized the utility of the practice and studied it more extensively. Professor Kellam and his team conducted a large-scale study in Baltimore and from that study and follow-up reports about it and others, the Top Tier Evidence folks have drawn their analysis.
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Merrow on reading

Published on 3 August 2010 in News, Primary, Reading and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Over on Learning Matters in his blog, Taking Note, John Merrow published an entry entitled “On Learning to Read” that raises some good points, but nearly omits a terrifically important one. I suspect regular readers (whom I’ve neglected terribly in the recent months—sorry) can guess which one was omitted.

Here’s Mr. Merrow’s lead:

Why children want to be able to read is not open for debate. It’s for the same reasons that they want to walk: to control their own destiny. It’s purely pragmatic; children understand that, when they know how to read, they are better able to navigate their environment successfully, just as they intuitively understand that walking is better than crawling or toddling.

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Genetics and teaching effects

Published on 27 April 2010 in News, Primary, Reading, Research and The press. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Although genetic factors make substantial contributions to reading performance, it is important not to overlook the contribtutions of teaching and the interplay between genetics and teaching, according to Jeannette Taylor and colleagues from Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL, US). Professor Taylor and the research team with which she’s affiliated used the oral reading fluency (ORF; simply words per minute) of twins’ (280 monzygotic and 526 dizygotic) classmates as a proxy for teacher quality, and the found that when twins were in classrooms where their peers were making lots of progress, the effects of genetic factors became more obvious: “Genetic variance in ORF was greater at higher levels of teacher quality.”

The bad news is that the reverse is true, too. Poor teaching, to the extent that it’s measured by gain in ORF, decreased the effects of genetics on reading growth.

Children’s reading achievement is influenced by genetics as well as by family and school environments. The importance of teacher quality as a specific school environmental influence on reading achievement is unknown. We studied first- and second-grade students in Florida from schools representing diverse environments. Comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, differentiating genetic similarities of 100% and 50%, provided an estimate of genetic variance in reading achievement. Teacher quality was measured by how much reading gain the non-twin classmates achieved. The magnitude of genetic variance associated with twins’ oral reading fluency increased as the quality of their teacher increased. In circumstances where the teachers are all excellent, the variability in student reading achievement may appear to be largely due to genetics. However, poor teaching impedes the ability of children to reach their potential.

This is an especially interesting finding in light of the recent report, as noted over on LD Blog, that among twins with high IQs, the genetic contribution to reading is also more salient.

Taylor, J., Roehrig, A. D., Hensler, B. S., & Schatschneider, C. (2010). Teacher quality moderates the genetic effects on early reading. Science, 328, 512-514.

Link to “Teacher quality moderates the genetic effects on early reading.” It appears to me that this article is available to the general public. Note that there is also an interview with Professor Taylor; the narrator puts the point about teacher quality right squarely in front of the listener.

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Children of the Code posts Engelmann 2

Published on 13 April 2010 in Arithmetic and mathematics, Behavior Management, Content learning, Elementary, News, Policy, Primary, Reading, Research, Secondary, Spelling, Teacher education, The press and Written Expression. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Over on Children of the Code, David Boulton and colleagues affiliated with Learning Stewards, a non-profit organization, posted the second segment of an extended video interview entitled “Professor Siegfried Engelmann Part 2: Improving the Quality of Learning.” Here’s a snippet from the the announcement:

Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann is Professor of Education at the University of Oregon, the Director of the National Institute for Direct Instruction, and President of Engelmann-Becker Corporation, which develops instructional materials and provides educational services for students with various educational needs. The creator of “Direct Instruction”, Professor Engelmann is also the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and chapters of professional books, and more than a dozen professional books and monographs.

“It doesn’t matter what your theory of learning is, all you need to do is look at the facts of what you did and the facts of what the kids are doing.”

I like that quote. It captures the raw empiricism that undergirds Professor Engelmann’s approach to teaching and instructional design.

Siegfried Engelmann 2: Improving the Quality of Learning
Read an earlier entry from Teach Effectively that links to the first part of the interview: “Engelmann interview on instructional design.”

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Evidence-based education in Head Start?

Published on 2 March 2010 in Administration, News, Policy, Primary, Research and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Isabel Sawhill and Jon Baron published an editorial in Education Week calling for a new approach to the venerable Head Start program, one founded on evidence about effectiveness. They argue that in the wake of the discouraging Head Start Impact Study reported by US Department of Health & Human Services, it’s time to bring research into the nation’s play pre-schools.

A new approach is needed. One that has been suggested—defunding these programs—would amount to giving up the fight against major social problems such as educational failure and poverty that damage millions of American lives. A far better alternative is to use rigorous evidence about “what works” to evolve Head Start and other federal efforts into truly effective programs over time, and to use sophisticated models to trace their longer-term effects on children’s life prospects.

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