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Home : 2001 : August : 20

DI
By Em

The Direct Instruction program that I am most familiar with is the Reading Mastery Series. It is published by SRA and used to be called the Distar program. It was written by Seigfreid Engelmen (sp?) During a typical lesson
for grade three, the children read (and sometimes spell) columns of words called word attack with an emphasis on reading them at the exact same moment. Then students read the columns of words individually to earn points. The second part of the lesson consists of reading a story in two parts. The first part is about 100 words long and the students take turns reading this part with

less than two errors. The teacher then re-reads the passage and asks comprehension questions at designated points and these questions are scripted. Students then read the remainder of the story orally with the teacher keeping track of errors and asking the scripted comprehension questions. Then the students complete workbook pages that pertain to the material read that day as well as previously read stories. There are oral reading tests called checkouts every ten lessons with students reading passages of 100 words in less than 1 minute with as few errors as possible.

I hope what I have written makes sense to you. I am not familiar with Saxon or the Reading Initiative program so I am not sure whether they would be considered Direct Instruction or not.