by PAIGE TAYLOR
The Australian
March 21, 2015 12:00AM
 

FIVE hundred Martu children at five schools in the Pilbara desert have become the biggest cluster of Australian students to begin learning under the Direct Instruction teaching method cham­pioned by Cape York leader Noel Pearson, and there are early signs of big change.

In northeast Western Australia this week to see the highly scripted method in classrooms outside Cape York for the first time, Mr. Pearson declared there was a moral imperative in the program’s continued rollout to remot­e schools, where so many students have failed to achieve.

“We have got a great moral purpose here, a moral purpose for the survival of these communities and these people,” he said.

As remote communities across Western Australia brace for selec­t­ive closures threatened by Premier Colin Barnett, Mr. Pearson linked the communities’ future to education. “The Martu have the same vision as I have for my ­people, which is for them to live long on their land,” he says.

“The whole question of the via­bility of these remote communit­ies rests on making schools work."

Read more.

Has your district received training and on-site coaching support for implementing Direct Instruction (DI), and is now looking for ways of maintaining the implementation with a high level of fidelity?  

The Institute on Becoming an Effective DI Trainer at the National Direct Instruction Conference (July 27-31, 2015) can help your school or district expand its capacity for providing training and support to the DI implementation by developing on-site trainers.

Read more about the training or download the application here.

It's Official! NIFDI launched the Members Only area on our website! 

Members of NIFDI have exclusive access to several print and video resources such as a 5-part video sequence where Zig Engelmann gives us his take on topics such as individual learning styles, the role of rote teaching, individualizing instruction and more. There is also an excellent interview with Jean Osborn and Elaine "Cookie" Bruner on the early days of Direct Instruction development and the Berieter-Engelmann Preschool.

In the Members Only document section, there are several useful forms as well as suggestions for independent work, details on how to implement duet reading, assessment guidelines for students placing in Corrective Readingand other interesting, useful material.

If you are not currently a member of NIFDI, you can fill out and return the Membership Registration form or sign up online.

In February, NIFDI continued its on-going work in Australia, training 206 teachers and administrators in Direct Instruction programs. Twelve trainers from across the United States traveled Down Under to provide sessions over the course of a week. On some days, trainers and participants put in 12 long hours in order to get eight cohorts trained in NIFDI's Routines and Expectations module. 

Dignitaries such as Australia's Executive Director for the Northern Territory, Ken Davis, and Indigenous leader Noel Pearson joined educators in launching the latest projects in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, speaking at a banquet hosted on Tuesday, February 3rd, in honor of the education initiative to serve students in remote schools.

Following the week-long training, four of the 12 staff members stayed and two more arrived from the States to begin providing support on-site, such as NIFDI's Implementation Manager, Paula Bleakley (shown right). Join us on Facebook to see more pictures in our Australia photo album.

Curious about the day-to-day experiences of life Down Under? One of NIFDI's Implementation Managers, Dr. Sheri Wilkins, has been blogging about her time in Australia. Dr. Wilkins says her purpose in writing the blog is to share with educators in other regions some of the similarities and differences she's noticing while she's there. She also thought it would be fun to share a little bit about her activities and wonderings. Check out Sheri's Blog.