What is Direct Instruction?

Direct Instruction programs are designed to control all the variables that make a difference in how students learn-how fast new material is introduced, the amount of practice provided on new material, the sequence of skills that are taught to teach a complex skill like reading. The goal of Direct Instruction programs is to teach everything the children need to master a particular subject or skill and to teach it efficiently, but not to teach them things they don't need.

Direct Instruction programs differ from traditional ones in 5 principal ways.

  1. Direct Instruction lessons do not focus on a single topic, (such as contractions or determining if something is a fact or an opinion). Instead, Direct Instruction lessons work on 5 or more different skills and work on these skills lesson after lesson.
  2. Only about 10% of what occurs on a lesson is being introduced for the first time. The rest has either been introduced on the preceding two lessons or earlier in the program. This small-step design and constant review guarantees that all children will learn everything the program presents.
  3. To assure that teachers give adequate explanations, quickly and efficiently, the Direct Instruction programs specify the exact wording and the examples the teacher is to present for each exercise in the program.
  4. The structure of the program permits predictions about where children will be performing at the end of the year. If the teacher follows the program carefully, an average group will progress at the rate of 1 lesson per day. All children within the group will be at mastery, so there are no surprises, no children who fail to learn to read by the end of kindergarten, for instance. These predictions cannot be made with traditional programs because the design of these programs permits a lot of children to slip through the cracks.
  5. All Direct Instruction programs are extensively field tested, and revised on the basis of how children perform. When published, the program will work. Note that such field-testing is not done as part of the development of other published programs. That's why they tend not to work well with the full range of students.

In summary, the Direct Instruction program presents the material the way an expert would present it. By following the program specifications, any teacher or parent becomes an expert. For more information about Funnix, visit Funnix.com.

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