DI is a difficult concept to wrap your head around. It is so different from what we are used to and have come to expect that it is difficult to accept. It is a domain knowledge issue.

The DI articles, no matter who writes them, are difficult to read and understand until you understand the underlying concepts. Eventually, you get the "that makes perfect sense" moment, but it is a slog to get over the hump until then, especially if you've read all the ridiculous Ed school criticisms.

I originally learned about DI about five years ago, but dismissed it. When I picked reading and math curricula for my kids I didn't go the DI route. I picked other curricula that I think (and still do) are far superior than anything they'll get in school and perfectly adequate for teaching above average performers.

However, now I can spot flaws when I'm using these curricula that I've learned from reading the DI stuff. Too much material is presented at once, confusing topics are not spaced apart, not nearly enough practice is provided, concepts are not always presented as clearly as they should be, etc.

This is the diffrence between DI and everything else out there. In DI everything has been tested, retested and revised to make cetain that students are actually capable of learning what is being taught. Now that we now it can be done, schools need to take responsibility to make sure learning is taking place.

If I were a surgeon using some antiquated surgical procedure that routinely killed 60% of my patients while other surgeon's only kiled 10%, it would be malpractice for me to continue to use these failed techniques. And, although we can't sue schools for educational malpratice, we certainly can blame them when for not doing their job properly.

DI is certainly not perfect; some aspects (scripting, unison responses, etc.) turn people off until it is understood why those things are being done. They are being done because they have proven to be the most effective. engelmann, himself, has said that the child-centered classroom is a great thing except for the fact that too many kids don't learn in them.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

did I get them both back?

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

right, one more.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

let me look

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

where are we now?

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

You have one repeated. I actually just lost another comment that said you had them both. Something is up

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

ok, wait.

I think I've got two screens working at the same time

why don't i not do that

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

1 and 2 are right, delete the last one

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

I'm going to work from one page now; I've closed the other.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

there we go

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

I wonder if that's what has been causing the comment losing bug. Two open screens at one IP address doing editing. It may be confusing the wiki software. Then again I think I did check the "edit release" box once by mistake.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

what does 'edit release' mean?

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

3 is just a repeat of 1, maybe with some spellingedits

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts and present them coherently.

Definitely.

Also shows you where all your holes and confusions are

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

They are talking about providing enough practice for kids who are falling behind and instituting the same honors math curriculum for all students (some expert from a school Rockville Long Island is coming to give a talk).

I heard something very cool about Long Island!

When I met with the Executive Board of the PTSA, the ex-president said that "On Long Island they set the bar high, and give kids help so everyone can hit it."

She said this when I pointed out that in Singapore all kids have the same curriculum, and slower kids are given an extra half-hour a day plus better teachers.

I'm very keen to learn what's happening on Long Island now.

Though they're pretty fuzzified, I think.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

edit this page/ preview / then you have two options

release edit lock and do not notify minor change

the minor change box doesn't seem to work and I'm thinking the release edit lock may be causing problems.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts and present them coherently.

Definitely.

Also shows you where all your holes and confusions are

Also, the subsequent comments and criticims help to refine the points.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

Eventually, you get the "that makes perfect sense" moment, but it is a slog to get over the hump until then, especially if you've read all the ridiculous Ed school criticisms.

Not necessarily!

That's what my endlessly long comment was about, the one that I erased when I may have erased your comments.

In one conversation today, I brought a friend around.

I'm telling you, people do have these ideas inside their heads. They're all there.

I'll have to become more articulate in explaining what I mean (I'll have to figure out what I mean).

But I know that these ideas are inside people's heads.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

One good way to go about this kind of thing is to take note of which arguments click.

What clicked with my friend (she's such a quick thinker that frankly everything clicked....) was Engelmann's stat about gifted kids learning the exact same material twice as fast.

Putting a number on it like that worked.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

The other thing I say to people, which always works, is: This material isn't rocket science.

In K-8 (and frankly 9-12, too) we're teaching material every child can learn.

The difference is that some children learn it faster than others. And some children learn it way faster.

When you put it that way, you see the tumblers start to click.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

Yes, I can see that because DI has been marginalized as a special ed curriculum, so that is an important talking point to get out.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

In DI everything has been tested, retested and revised to make certain that students are actually capable of learning what is being taught.

Absolutely.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

It also helps to see actual lessons. Then you can see with your own lying eyes that there's really nothing special or all that diffrent being taught. It's all in the sequencing and pacing.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

btw, rhetorically, it works very well to talk about flexible ability grouping (a term Susan introduced)—and then to give 2 examples:

• a child who's ready to speed up, so he does speed up

• a child who needs to slow down for awhile due to illness or problems in the family

This precise example works, because you get away from the anxiety of Is My Child Smart Enough?

You give people an image of a very bright child zipping through the curriculum, which is what we all want for our own kids, and then you give a second image of a very bright child being able to move to the slower track during a hard time in his life, and be nurtured and protected there—and not locked-in forever.

It's a powerful image; it's highly persuasive; and it's true.

With DI & formative assessment, this is what you would do.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

I've never even noticed the edit release

sigh

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

wait a minute

do I have all 3 of your comments???

i'm driving myself nuts

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

heck no

I've repeated that one comment again

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

It also helps to see actual lessons. Then you can see with your own lying eyes that there's really nothing special or all that diffrent being taught. It's all in the sequencing and pacing.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

ok, that one I didn't have

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

nope, that one I did have

what the heck am I missing?

Am I still missing one comment?

Yes, I can see that because DI has been marginalized as a special ed curriculum, so that is an important talking point to get out.

Absolutely.

DI wasn't remotely hard for me to absorb, because we've been doing it forever, and because I studied it in college, and had two college courses that were DI (that were behaviorally-based, teaching-to-mastery, formative-assessment courses).

And I wrote programmed instruction.

So DI was obvious to me, but even so I didn't think about it until you came along.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

I don't know why I wasn't looking at DI more.....probably partly because I'm a little tired of it; I've spent A LOT of years dealing with 'behavioral analysis'.....

Partly, too, because 'ABA,' which is what the hard-core behavioral programs for autistic kids are, doesn't work very well after a couple of years.

So I've seen it fail, many, many times. (That's another story; I don't think it's relevant to Engelmann's work, though it could be directly relevant to how long you can go on having tightly scripted classes, etc.)

The last thing was that no one was talking about it.

I went where the crowd went: to Saxon & to Singapore Math. (I'm the first on Russian Math....hoping to lead a crowd over that-a-way...)

So when you showed up talking about DI and bringing things to read, that was it.

That was all I needed.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

The other thing: I hadn't fully grasped & separated out the issue of formative assessment.

Once I started reading your posts & the DI stuff, I became very focused on formative assessment.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

There are only two comments that you need to worry about and you have them both (1 and 2). You can delete 3 it is a dup.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

If I'm still missing a comment, let me know.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

One of the factoids I'm going to commit to memory, and will hammer away at, is the OECD factoid about formative assessment being THE single most powerful educational ...... (I NEED A NOUN!)

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

intervention

that's the word they use:

In fact, Studies have shown it to be among the most effective educational interventions ever reported.

I'm committing this sentence to memory.

formative assessment post, ktm

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

Formative assessment – the frequent assessments of student progress to identify learning needs and shape teaching – has become a prominent issue in education reform. In fact, Studies have shown it to be among the most effective educational interventions ever reported. Between 2002 and 2004, CERI examined exemplary practice of teaching and formative assessment in secondary schools in eight OECD countries – Australia (Queensland), Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, Italy, New Zealand and Scotland – and brought together literature reviews from English, French and German research traditions, relating all this to the broader current policy environment.

The resulting publication, Formative Assessment: Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms, combines those elements to clarify the concept of, and approaches to, formative assessment and its relation to teaching strategies. The culmination of this study was a major international conference organised by CERI in Paris, on 2-4 February 2005. The conference highlighted international research and case study evidence from the CERI study.

CERI will co-sponsor a regional conference on formative assessment in Budapest, on 29 – 30 September 2005....

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

Politically and rhetorically, what is useful about formative assessment is that it doesn't force you to try to sell Engelmann to Westchester parents (or to any parents).

You don't have to hawk a curriculum.

You hawk assessment of the curriculum, and of student learning.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

Last but FAR from least, when you start telling parents, 'Grades shouldn't be punitive' or 'Grades shouldn't be about what your child is worth' you have an audience, and rightly so.

The minute you start talking about assessment instead of tests, and about assessment as information not a grade, parents hear you.

The fact is, they don't want teachers & administrators 'grading' their children.

They want them teaching their children.

Which means they want their children to learn.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

Doesn't engelmann list this and a few other factors at the end of his book when he describes what every curriculum needs to be successful.

-- KDeRosa - 09 Dec 2005

Doesn't engelmann list this and a few other factors at the end of his book when he describes what every curriculum needs to be successful.

You know, I found the last chapter to be the least effective in terms of material I can use to persuade people.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

I'm not sure why, though I could probably figure it out if I went back to it.

He has all kinds of passages & vignettes in the book that are very powerful.....but the list at the end was too list-y.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

I'm sure he lists formative assessment; that's practically the heart of his technique.

He doesn't call it formative assessment, I don't think.

The phrase is SO fantastic. It's got ALL the lingo-power you can possibly want, unlike the language we're working with in the math wars.

When I talk about formative assessment to people they always ask me to repeat the word, and sometimes they'll repeat it a couple of times themselves, to make sure they remember it.

That's meaningful.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

It was an important moment for me, discovering that there was a Specific Word for the kind of assessment/testing/whatever I was wanting.

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

The other phrase is 'summative assessment.'

That's your standard grading-on-a-curve, big-red-D-on-the-paper evaluative assessment.

(This is probably an unfair & inaccurate characterization.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 09 Dec 2005

You know, I found the last chapter to be the least effective in terms of material I can use to persuade people.

It was chapter before that.

Here's the list:

1. Don't install any practice or reform unless you have substantial reason to believe that it will result in improvement of student performance.

Test on small scale before wider implementation. Research validation. Field tested.

2. Don't install any approach without making projections about student learning.

The benefits of the approach must be measurable. Tests are needed to determine success. The tests should be "do it" tests, one that requires actual reading, answering questions, working math problems, etc (not multiple choice).

3. Don't install any practice without monitoring it and comparing performance in the classroom with projections.

formative assessment. Installed programs should be limited to a reasonable period of time such as no more than an hour aday for reading. The monitoring should deal with what the teachers do and how it relates to what the students have learned. Is the projected material being presented on schedule? Do the teacherfs need help? Is the program being followed faithfully? Are the kids mastering the material in the projected time.

4. Don't install an approach without having a back-up plan.

5. Don't maintain practices that are obviously not working as planned.

6. Don't blame parents, kids, or other extraneous factors if the plan fails.

The only factor that affects the plan is whether the kids and teacher are in attendance on a regular basis."If the teaching failed, it was because the teaching failed, not beacause the parents didn't get involved."

-- KDeRosa - 10 Dec 2005

You know......I may prefer this to the DI contract for the same reason I think ABA may fall apart with autistic kids.

The rap on ABA was always that it turned autistic kids into 'robots.' (I wish!)

Still, there was an element of truth to this criticism, as there often is.

The Koegels created a child-centered ABA that explicitly focused on 'building motivation.' That was their 'pivotal behavior,' the one deficit that, when remediated, resulted in a 'cascade of change.'

Now that I know more about the brain, I realize that the Koegels were remediating frontal lobe dysfunction, which is important in autism.

Children's frontal lobes are immature, which is why they aren't 'responsible' for themselves, and why the Irvington Middle School obsession with responsibility is misplaced.

However.....it's almost certainly the case that during these middle school years parents (and teachers) are 'building motivation'; they're taking steps to support and sustain frontal lobe growth and development.....which is why the whole question is tricky and confusing.

When the Study Skills teacher was berating me about Christopher 'being responsible,' I said, 'he's not responsible, he's a child. The school is responsible, you are the adults.'

Or words to that effect.

She retreated to the idea that Christopher 'shares half the responsibility' or some such, and I batted that one right back across the net, too.

Boy, did that tick her off.

I plan to carry on in this manner, because I am implacable, but I am interested in thinking about what exactly it means to be responsible at this age.

I think Smartest Tractor's form is an effort to answer this question—to signal an assumption of responsibility by the middle schooler (8th graders in this case) that's supported by parents and teachers.

It also signals respect for the student's view of his progress (and, since it's not required, this isn't the kind of phony respect we see in the contract Christopher was given).

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Dec 2005