March 2020 I embedded myself into improving my teaching practice, using twitter, reading blogs and books, watching webinars, listening to podcasts etc. I quickly discovered Direct Instruction by Siegfried Engelmann, reading everything I could from blogs by Kris Boulton, Sam Hall and Naveen Rizvi to finding out about Project Follow Through and eventually reading the Theory of Instruction by Siegfried Engelmann himself.
It was a tough read but fortunately there are some very clever teachers who were able to write blogs or make infographics to clear a few concepts up for me but Direct Instruction made perfect sense to me. I began to introduce choral response into my lessons, tried to be really clear and efficient with my explanations. I even changed the independent practice that students were doing so that out of 10 questions, only 2/3 of them were from the new content learned in the lesson with the rest being from previous learning.
I have found it a really effective way of teaching and have seen all of my students succeed using this method of instruction. I haven't yet delved into full teaching scripts but I am using consistent language for parts of my lessons and for explanations so not to confuse students. I really like Engelmann's ideas of using examples and non examples to explain a concept. This has again made concepts much clearer for my students. The clear concise explanations meant that students were focussed on the key messages to learn for that lesson reducing cognitive load.
After reading Engelmanns Theory of Instruction I widened my scope to learn about other ways of improving my practice. I can say that after all of this it has amazed me that all of the ideas about Cognitive Load, using examples and non examples, interleaving, spacing practice, Rosenshines principles were all being used by Engelmann way before any of these ideas were formally written about. The more I learn the more I can see that Direct Instruction is a super effective way of teaching. I know my students have greatly benefitted from it in my classes.
Kris Boulton summarises this really well in the ResearchEd guide to explicit and direct instruction. "Direct instruction is entirely consistent with the recommendations of cognitive science. For example DI programmes carefully manage cognitive load at all times. they avoid split attention and redundant information. Minimally different concepts are separated out by weeks or months in the learning sequence. Heavy use is made of the retrieval spacing and interleaving effects. there is also frequent application of dual coding throughout the programs. In addition other successful instructional approaches are found at work in DI programs. for example they are expressly created according to principles of mastery curriculum design and the principles of variation theory. Direct instruction is perhaps the only comprehensive theory of instruction that tacitly weaves together everything we know about effective instructional design from cognitive load theory the new theory of disuse mastery design and variation theory."
A limitation is that true Direct Instruction is using the scripts and workbooks that Engelmann has produced and refined over years of study. I do believe that we can take away lots of principles and rules to use within our teaching. Personally I have tried to ensure I use consistent, clear and concise language when explaining a concept. I make sure to include examples, non examples and boundary examples when explaining concepts. I fade my the work from completing being done by me, to doing it with the class to finally giving students independent practice, Doug Lemov calls this I, We, You teaching.
Another negative I hear is that it creates robotic teaching. This really frustrates me. Have you ever watched a good film and thought 'these actors are like robots'? I didnt think so. Scripts are used to inform what is being said to ensure that nothing is missed in the explanation and also to formally assess students understanding. A great teacher can use the script and make it their own so that students are fully engaged in the lesson.
My sell to students is that the best way for you to learn is if I taught you 1 to 1. This can't happen in a class of 30 so using techniques such as choral response and mini whiteboards means I can hear and see answers from everyone. This creates an illusion of teaching you 1 to 1 which is the most effective way to learn.
If you haven't already I would strongly urge you to look into Engelmanns Direct Instruction. A good starting point would be to look on NIFDI.com where there are sample lessons and regular webinars. Also purchase the ResearchEd guide to explicit and direct instruction.