Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Anyone had experience with DI schools?

I don't nescessarily agree with everything here, but I do agree with lots of it. I think that if teachers were able to think logically about what skills are needed for other skills in a very granular way, they would be better able to observe the different readiness levels that students exhibit.

I especially like the part about how developmental models aren't developed enough to be useful in the classroom and that we should instead observe the actual student.

Smiles,
Grinity

Although we do have a local DI school, I haven't been there. I have used D.I. in the classroom, but primarily as an intervention for students who are struggling with decoding. It has been an EXTREMELY effective reading intervention, but is generally frowned on in the district, for many of the reasons addressed in the chapter you linked (I just skimmed the chapter). I personally think that it should be used much more often in our district than it is, although I can't see using it with a student who easily picks up reading, and I wouldn't use it as a child's "only" reading. I personally was not a fan of the math when I tried it several years back. I can see how it could be effective, but it seemed more focused on discrete skills than on a more problem solving/creative approach to math.

If it were up to me (it's not ), I would use it with every 1st grade student who was not rapidly picking up decoding and fluency on their own. I find most of the critiques of the reading program to be baseless. However, I also wouldn't continue using the program once a student was a fluent decoder (although there are some good aspects to it). My primary use is with fourth and fifth graders who are still struggling with decoding.

Anyway...that's my two cents. I should say that the families I've run into who are the D.I. school have been very happy with it. I've also had some great conversations with a teacher who works there and who also feels good about what they're doing and how it's going. The population that gravitates to the school is mostly solid middle to upper middle class, fwiw.

[quote=] especially on the new material presented in the preceeding ten lesson period. �Remedies are specified for unacceptable performance. �(A remedy consists of repeating specified parts of different lessons.). Furthermore all programs admit to a functional test that determines weither each child in the group is appropriately placed.

No magic is to be found in repeating statements that are relatively trivial or in engaging in tasks that do not have identifyable instructional functions. �If the instructional sequence is weak the effective-school trappings will not make it strong."
[/quote]

I googled it to see if it looked like they have been delivering on their promises. �It was designed by a Johns Hopkins professor and they been known for metacognative studying over there. �I see the say they are systematically teaching foundational skills, frequently testing and adjusting the student's placement. �No lock-step, even to your own past performance. �Nice!

I agree with Taminy it sounds best for early elementary, if memory serves me public schools have you drilling basic functional skills until second grade. �I've never heard of this school, but like the way they do some thing by the sound of it. �Of course it depends on how it looks in real life. � � � �

Thanks Taminy and Tex,

I am fasinated with the idea that learning tasks could be broken down into concrete steps and that the methods that work could be shared from one person to the next.

Here we share many methods that are needed to evaluate a classroom, to assess the individual needs of students, and to advocate with schools for meeting those needs. I'd love to see somekind of Metadocument to walk new parents through those steps.

Smiles,
Grinity

Grinity that is a great idea, like a trouble-shooting flow chart. Wish I could help, but I'm one of the new parents myself. Are you experiencing difficulty with understanding your child's needs (click here). Finding a therapist (click here). Eliciting cooperation from local school (click here).
You have selected "difficulty with school.". If your child is 1) working at a very advanced level (click here). 2) noticably asynchronous (click here). 3) 2e (click here).
My boy's only two and 3/4 so all I've done so far is read and really get a better understanding of my own past and also tons of real life examples of what the future might bring. But if I had a school-aged kid and I was just looking into this and I needed answers now that flowchart would be a life-saver.

Exactly!

I especially like 'noticably asynchronous.' I feel like I still am that!
Grinity

Grinity I think you just said in another thread that you were going to be away for a few days, so just get back to me on this. This post is not DI related; it's related to the other topic of a resource for the newly aware gifted parents. I want everybody's help on this if anyone thinks it might be a useful resource. This is only a brainstorm session on a free web builder and a couple spare hours I had. So feel free to change everything here.
Here's a list I compiled from forums, google searches, and books of the hot topics and buzzwords in the gifted community:

Gifted Resources Page
This MEGA site contains links to all known online gifted resources:
Enrichment programs:
.. Talent Searches and Summer programs:
.. Early Acceptance Programs:
Teaching and Learning Resources:
.. Advocacy (ability grouping, skipping, proximal development):
.. Home schooling:
.. Publishers and suppliers of materials for the gifted:
.. Educational Resource Links:
.. Distance Learning and Educational materials:
.. Advice for Parents and Teachers
Gifted mailing listes:
.. Local Gifted associations:
.. Government Programs:
.. Support Groups for talented children:
Inventories:
.. Learning styles:
.. Disabilities:
.. Levels of Giftedness:
.. Types of Intelligences:
.. Over excitabilities:
.. Gifted Counselors (and when you need one):
.. Types of IQ tests (interpretation and when to get one):
Parenting:
.. Bullies:
.. Self-Esteem:
.. Anti-Intellictualism Discrimination:
.. Behavior at home:
.. Behavior at school:
.. Social Behavior:
Books on Gifted Parenting (summaries, reviews, ratings - comments like on Amazon)
Gifted Researchers Bios and Findings List (bios & summaries of the big names in gifted research)

Here's the rough sketch of what the site could start to look like: http://www.talentedonestop.webs.com/
(I'll add the rest of the pages, but that's going to cost me at least $5/month. So let's review and get a better idea of what a MEGA Gifted Super Site resource should include so I get my money's worth.)

I had in mind summaries and links to webpages, articles, and books on all these subjects, then a review feature like what amazon has for everyone to rate and comment on each piece of info.

PoppaRex, I hope you read this post too because it definately has tons of room for you education and carrer guidance visions.


Oh, I just read that the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" is affiliated with the DI program, and I've seen several online parents praise that book.

Hoagies' Gifted already has every gifted resource in the known universe. I'm not sure we need another website that does that.

Also, where did you read that the DI has anything to do with that book??? That seems pretty far from their purpose.

I had a little extra time this morning (plus I'm too huge to move with this giant baby in my belly) so I googled DI to learn more about it. I first noticed "100 easy lessons" here in the ADI homepage store.
http://www.adihome.org/
Apparently DI was created for students with developmental disabilities to get them up to par to be able to learn from regular curriculum
This cross-over from disabled program to the general public is not unusual. I've heard that
Montessori was first used here for disabled kids and then it was discovered that it works well for some gifted students. I heard a rumor that "your baby can read" was designed for down-syndrome people. They decided if "someone with half a brain can learn using this program, why couldn't a normal baby?". And it worked.
Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons is a compressed version of DISTAR's direct instruction for teaching and remediation. http://www.startreading.com/. �Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons� is a book published by Simon and Schuster, not by the SRA Division of McGraw-Hill, which publishes most of the DI materials. http://xypt.org/read.html
And here's a list of DI books which includes "100 lessons" and their new computer program "Funnix". http://www.specialconnections.ku.ed...p;section=main&subsection=di/reading

Wow, sometimes I even bore myself, but I can't stop collecting useless trivia. It fascinates me. I also just read somewhere in these links that the reason the public school systems prefer phonics to whole word reading is purely aesthetic not functional.
"The underlying premise of reading instruction by means of Direct Instruction is that written English is not a set of hieroglyphics, like the ancient Egyptian, nor ideograms, like written Chinese, but is a system of phonetic spelling, which in general follows definite rules. That English orthography follows rules means that reading and writing can be systematically taught...
The language has a great many more, somewhere estimated as over 500,000 words. It would be wholly impractical to have a written form of the language, which depends on ideograms, or even on �sight words.� Teachers, who stress �sight words� without teaching how the language is written and spelled, are limiting reading to a set of written-out ideograms."
So we learn phonics because it's the structure of our language. (even though your baby can read is sight words and works a lot faster). Maybe there's no good reason to teach children the hard way and phonics is just used because that's what we've been using since we found it.
But this system is in place to educate large masses of kids simultaneously. Homeschooling can be much more flexible in it's approach because the student receives more one on one attention than the school system can afford to offer. I think the point of this thread was to reconcile large-scale mass education with the flexibility of homeschooling, unless I missed the point.

Oh, ha, ha, ha. Serves me right for jumping into a thread without reading it all. I just assumed y'all were talking about DI=Davidson Institute. I've got no interest at all in DI=direct instruction. Sorry about that. Carry on.