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Saturday, May 31, 2014

Why child-led discovery leaves your child behind

No child should be left on her own for education. Child-led discovery leaves a child far behind his peers.

However, with Direct Instruction you can accomplish optimum results with any child, whose cognitive growth is accelerated by carefully engineered instruction, rather than waiting for him to learn through random experience. 

        Don’t let the boring definition fool you. It’s interesting when done the right way.

DI is the purposeful teaching of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the material, rather than exploratory models such as inquiry-based learning. 

There are ways to introduce material in a fun and joyous way. 

(One of the best books to use this method is, "A Funny Boy Was Prince River", possibly followed by "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".)

To develop a child’s intelligence, parents would do well to pursue the only teaching method proven to work: direct instruction. DI can be considered to be the ‘best practice’ of education for every subject, especially for the elementary school ages. 

DI is a teaching method that focuses on systematic, curriculum design and with a prescribed, behavioral script. (That is science-speak for guiding your child through easy steps that work.)

What was Project Follow Through? Why did we never hear of it?

        For almost 30 years (1967-1995), educrats experimented on U.S. kids in over 200 schools nationwide, with 22 different learning/teaching models.* Most of the failed models are still in use today. The data was intentionally kept from teachers and legislators.

The one and only successful method, direct instruction with phonics, has been mocked and ridiculed by ridiculous opponents, such as Frank Smith, who pushed the whole-language, sight-word propaganda (which causes dyslexia).

The Direct Instruction (DI) model was the only model that showed strong academic and effective gains at all sites. Some features of DI include: explicit, systematic instruction based on scripted lesson plans.

Emphasis on pace and efficiency of instruction, to accelerate student progress and bring students to mastery as quickly as possible. Frequent curriculum-based assessments help identify students who require additional intervention.

In other words, put your children on the launch pad of life and watch them soar!
   
Reason over rhetoric. Data over dogma.

*(Source: OVERVIEW: The Story Behind Project Follow Through, by Bonnie Grossen, Editor, University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/grossen.htm).

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/SeeingtheEmperorsNewClotheswhychildleddiscoveryleavesyourchildbehind

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