Teach Effectively!

Over on Reading Rockets Kathleen McLane has an entry about monitoring progress that’s got a good intro and some valuable links. Take a look at it. There’s also video about progress monitoring in action, a link to a Web cast featuring Roland Good, Mary Ruth Coleman, and Michael C. McKenna discussing assessment including progress monitoring, and an opportunity to ask CBM guru Lynn Fuchs questions about monitoring progress (click the dropdown menu to select Professor Fuchs as the target of your question).

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.

Continue reading ‘Zig site morphs’

My colleague Dan Willingham produced a brief video explaining why basing instruction on learning styles is bologna. Here it is:

Here’s the YouTube link for Dan Willingham on Learning Styles and here’s a link to Dan’s Web site where one can learn plenty of useful things. Also, see the extended discussion on D-Ed Reckoning.

My colleague Dan Willingham has posted a marvelous video that’s an introduction to thinking about neuroscience and education. Under the title “Brain-based Education: Fad or Breakthrough,” he illustrates important elements about what are reasoned extrapolations from cognitive neuroscience to education and what are not.

• D-Ed Reckoning
• Eduwonkette
• Will Talheimers’ Will at Work (an unusually well reasoned commentary on digital learning): Be Skeptical of Brain-Based Learning

Update (7 June 2008): A couple of days ago, Dan posted a new version of the video; I’ve modified the links in the box accordingly.

Don Hirsch published an editorial in Education Week that tells it true. We need, he argues, to place a greater emphasis on what and how we teach during children’s early school years. Of course, he champions his recommendation for adopting a clear curriculum during the early years, too. But, the big idea is that the primary and elementary grades are very important if students are to be able to excel in high school and college.
Continue reading ‘Hirsch hits homer’

Our tour of the Republic of Korea has been wonderful. The temples, the foods, and (especially) the people have been quite delightful. Although Pat Lloyd and I have been seeing some sights, I’ve also been meeting with special educators in Changwon, Busan, and Seoul.
Continue reading ‘Korea talks’

Several years ago I published a paper for some folks. Carl Binder, Elizabeth Haughton, and Barbara Bateman had written Fluency: Achieving True Mastery in the Learning Process and were looking for a way to disseminate it. It’s been out in the wild since 2002 and I know a few folks have read it. But lots more folks should read it, in my view. So I’m issuing a reminder about it here.

How can you tell whether someone has truly mastered a skill? What is the measurable indicator that a person really knows how to do something? These questions should be at the heart of every teaching decision, every observation of a child’s performance, and every evaluation we make about the success of an educational program. Yet for many educators, and certainly for most parents, answers to these questions are anything but clear. Most of us have grown up in a “percentage correct world” where 100% correct is the best anyone can do. But is perfect accuracy the definition of mastery? Or is there another dimension that makes the difference? In fact, we see many children and adults who can perform skills and demonstrate knowledge accurately enough – given unlimited time to do so. But the real difference that we see in expert performers is that they behave fluently – both accurately and quickly, without hesitation.

Continue reading ‘Promoting mastery’

Zig Engelmann’s original plan for publishing his recollections of the Follow Through Project called for PDFs of chapters to be available on Zigsite.com for two weeks each. In response to people who learned of their availability too late, he as created “something of a curtain call.” Get ‘em while you can!

DURING THE WEEK OF MONDAY, MARCH 12, ALL CHAPTERS WILL BE ON FOR ONE WEEK, THROUGH SUNDAY MARCH 18. Then, for sure, they will not return.