Direct Instruction (DI), invented by Siegfried Engelman, is a tried and true method that has been developed and refined for over 30 years. In the largest, most carefully designed study of instructional effectiveness ever conducted, Project Follow Through, Direct Instruction outperformed other instructional approaches on all measures, including basic skills, higher-order cognitive skills, and student self-confidence. Direct Instruction presents scripted lessons to small groups of students, who upon signal from the teacher make choral responses to questions and commands.DI programs are specifically designed to teach sophisticated strategies in reading, arithmetic, language, and other basic skill areas.The lessons are presented in a structured sequence, with each building on concepts and skills developed previously in the series. Key elements of Direct Instruction include: * Explicit, teacher-led learning that develops students? ability to think and solve problems independently * Placement of students in instructional groups based on academic skill-level rather than grade, using a common curriculum with no separate tracks * Advancement of students to new material after they have mastered prior course work in a structured sequence * Polished, scripted lessons developed through rigorous testing and refinement
What Is Different About Direct Instruction?
Scripted Lessons
The most obvious difference between DI and other curriculums is that DI lessons are scripted.In most other reading programs, the teacher is given guidelines on how to present the material.For example, a teacher might be told, ?Discuss the concept of ?main idea.?Such guidelines leave tremendous latitude concerning what the teacher actually says and does, making it very easy for teachers to use vocabulary that is too sophisticated for some students, leaving success only to those who can understand the language. In a DI lesson, what the teacher says is actually printed on the page; lessons and language that has been researched and proven to work. Is There Research to Prove That Direct Instruction Programs Really Work? Yes, there is quite a lot.The most important research study is a federally funded project that began in the early 1970?s, called Project Follow Through. The results overwhelmingly supported the superiority of DI over all other programs.All tests of academic skills not only showed the DI programs to be superior, but DI was the only program to bring these low-performing students within the national norm.In addition, the DI programs proved superior in social measures, such as measures of ?self-esteem,? even when compared to programs that directed their energy specifically at improving self-esteem.