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The Components of Direct Instruction*

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The Components of Direct Instruction* CATHY L. WATKINS, California State University, Stanislaus and TIMOTHY A. SLOCUM, Utah State University Instruction is designed to serve this purpose. The Components Accomplishing this goal requires keen atten- tion to all aspects of teaching. It would be of Direct Instruction* much easier if we could focus on one or two “key issues” and produce measurably superior instruction, but this is not the case. Producing highly effective teaching requires that we Objectives attend to a wide variety of details concerning After studying this chapter you should be able the design, organization, and delivery of to instruction. If any one element of instruction is not done well, high-quality instruction in 1. Identify the three major elements of Direct other areas may not compensate for it. For Instruction. example, superior instructional delivery cannot make up for poorly designed instructional 2. Explain what it means to teach a general materials. Likewise, well-designed programs case. cannot compensate for poor organization. 3. Describe each of the five juxtaposition prin- Three main components enable Direct ciples and explain how they contribute to Instruction to accomplish the goal of teaching clear communication. all children effectively and efficiently: (a) pro- gram design that identifies concepts, rules, 4. Explain the shifts that occur in formats over strategies, and “big ideas” to be taught and time. clear communication through carefully con- 5. Explain what tracks are and how track design structed instructional programs to teach these; differs from more traditional instruction. (b) organization of instruction, including scheduling, grouping, and ongoing progress 6. Explain the guidelines for sequencing tasks. monitoring to assure that each student receives appropriate and sufficient instruction; 7. Describe effective student–teacher interac- and (c) student–teacher interaction tech- tion techniques. niques that assure that each student is actively 8. Summarize the results of Project Follow Through. Journal of Direct Instruction, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 75–110. From The purpose of Direct Instruction is to teach Nancy Marchand-Martella, Timothy Slocum, and Ronald Martella, Introduction to Direct Instruction. Published by Allyn subject matter efficiently so that all the stu- and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright (c) 2004 by Pearson dents learn all the material in the minimum Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. amount of time. Every strategy, tactic, and * This article is a re-publication of Chapter 2 from specific technique employed in Direct Introduction to Direct Instruction. Journal of Direct Instruction 75 engaged with instruction and masters the Content Analysis. The goal of Direct objectives of each lesson. Instruction is to teach generalized skills; thus, the first step in developing a Direct Direct Instruction has been the focus of a vast Instruction program is analysis of the content amount of research and has been shown to be and identification of concepts, rules, strate- highly effective for a wide range of content gies, and “big ideas” (i.e., those concepts that and with diverse learners—from those identi- provide strategies that students can use to fur- fied as gifted, to students who require special ther develop their expertise in a subject mat- education services. Studies have shown excel- ter) to be taught. The content area, such as lent outcomes in basic skills, complex cogni- reading or earth science, is carefully analyzed tive tasks, and affective areas such as to find key big ideas that can be taught to stu- students’ self-concepts and confidence. This dents to enable them to exhibit generalized chapter will describe the three main compo- performance to the widest possible range of nents of Direct Instruction, and briefly review examples and situations. Identification of the research base on the effectiveness of these generalizations is the foundation of Direct Instruction. Direct Instruction. Becker (1971) illustrated the power and effi- Main Components ciency of strategy-based instruction with an example from the area of basic reading. A non- of Direct Instruction strategic or rote teaching approach would teach students to recognize whole words. In In this section, we describe the three main this rote approach, each word would be taught components of Direct Instruction: the pro- as a separate entity with no system for teach- gram design, organization of instruction, and ing generalizable strategies for decoding new student–teacher interactions that make Direct words. In the rote approach, after the teacher Instruction effective. has taught 10 words, students should be able to read (at best) 10 useful words. In contrast, Program Design a strategic approach would be to teach 10 let- Program design includes five main elements. ter–sound relations and the skill of sounding First, program design begins by carefully ana- out words. When students have learned these lyzing the content matter and identifying 10 sounds and the sounding-out skill, they can central organizing ideas and generalizable read 720 words made up of 3 sounds (e.g., cat), strategies that enable students to learn more 4,320 words of 4 sounds (e.g., cram), and in less time. Second, clear communication is 21,600 words of 5 sounds (e.g., scram) for a designed to minimize ambiguity for stu- total of over 25,000 words. Not all of these dents. Third, instructional formats are words would be real words, some would be designed to structure the dialogue between pseudowords (e.g., blums), but the example teachers and students. Fourth, skills are illustrates the power of strategic instruction. sequenced to maximize student success and (This strategy and other reading strategies are minimize points of confusion. Fifth, instruc- described in more detail in Chapter 4.) The tional topics and objectives are organized efficiency that results from teaching generaliz- into tracks that allow for systematic skill able big ideas is the goal of the content analy- development across the length of a program sis that underlies Direct Instruction. This and support cumulative review and applica- example also illustrates that even in difficult tion. Together, these elements result in content areas that are fraught with exceptions, instructional programs that are highly effec- such as reading in English, powerful general- tive for a wide range of learners. izations are possible. 76 Summer 2003 Spelling is often taught by rote memoriza- A common and persistent misunderstanding is tion of whole words resulting in little or no that Direct Instruction teaches students to generalization. However, wide generaliza- memorize simple responses to specific stimuli, tions are possible. Teaching the skill of commonly referred to as rote learning. In reality, detecting individual sounds in a spoken word Direct Instruction programs enable students and matching sounds to written letters is a to learn more in less time for the very reason very efficient beginning point. In addition, if that they are not learning isolated, unrelated students learn to spell the parts of words bits of information by rote, but are learning called morphographs (prefixes, base words, strategies that can be broadly applied across and suffixes) and rules for combining them, numerous examples, problems, and situations. they can correctly spell many new words that they have never encountered. Table 2.1 This mistaken notion that Direct Instruction shows seven morphographs and some of the is a rote learning approach not only reflects a words that can be correctly spelled by using fundamental misunderstanding of the rules to combine them. The Direct approach but also fails to recognize that so- Instruction program, Spelling Mastery, teaches called higher order thinking depends on the 750 morphographs that can be combined to mastery of more basic skills and involves the form over 12,000 words. (This program is integration of concepts, rules, and strategies. described in detail in Chapter 6.) Virtually all Direct Instruction programs con- cern higher order thinking skills: classifying, These examples from reading and spelling learning rules, making inferences, testing illustrate the goal and importance of content generalizations, analyzing arguments, and analysis to Direct Instruction. Direct solving problems. Carnine and Kameenui Instruction is about teaching strategies that (1992) have described how the principles of enable students to go beyond the particular design have been applied to teach sophisti- items that are taught and to apply their learn- cated problem-solving skills to a variety of ing to new items or situations. learners and across various domains. As the Table 2.1 Seven Morphographs and Some of the Words Derived From Them Prefixes Bases Suffixes re cover ed dis pute able un Words Formed recover, recoverable, recovered, unrecoverable, unrecovered, repute, reputable, reputed, disreputable, disrepute, coverable, covered, uncover, uncoverable, uncovered, discover, discoverable, discovered, undiscoverable, undiscovered, dispute, disputable, disputed, undisputable, undisputed, etc. Journal of Direct Instruction 77 American Federation of Teachers (1998a) friendly” instruction. In order to teach a gen- noted, although the early mastery of basic eral case, it is necessary to show students a skills is a key element, Direct Instruction set of items that includes examples and programs also address students’ general com- nonexamples arranged so that similarities and prehension and analytic skills. differences
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