K12 leaders highlight products that enhance learning in another record-breaking year for nominations 

EUGENE (December 1, 2013) McGraw-Hill's Reading Mastery Signature Edition, Funnix Beginning Reading and Funnix Beginning Math have been recognized for making a positive difference in education by K12 leaders who named it to District Administration magazine’s “Readers’ Choice Top 100 Product for 2013.”

The winners, selected by District Administration’s editors from a record 1,800-plus nominations, were products that received the highest number of nominations and best descriptions from K-12 leaders. The Readers’ Choice Top 100 has been announced online and in the December issue of District Administration.

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As most of you know, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia of over 30 million community-submitted articles detailing everything from historical events to pop culture celebrities to scientific theories. Now, Direct Instruction's very own Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann has joined the world of Wikipedia as an article in the popular internet resource! The National Institute for Direct Instruction wrote and submitted Zig's entry that was recently accepted for publication into Wikipedia - or as we now call it, "Zigipedia"! Check out Zig's entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Engelmann.

Julie L. Thompson, M.Ed., BCBAJulie L. Thompson is a doctoral candidate in Special Education at UNC Charlotte who anticipates graduating in May 2014. She also earned her Master’s degree from UNC Charlotte. As a recipient of the NIFDI Research Fellowship Grant, Julie was able to conduct a study investigating the effects of proximity fading and task breaks on student responding during small group Direct Instruction in mathematics with students with ASD. Results demonstrated a functional relation between the intervention and students’ ability to actively respond during small group instruction. One student, an English Language Learner, required an instructional cue in her native language to increase her participation to mastery level. Following the promising results of this study, Julie is continuing this line of research for her dissertation and plans to extend the research by measuring generalization of active responding across DI curricula (Connecting Math Concepts and Language for Learning) as well as measuring accuracy of response and assessing mathematics skill acquisition using distal standardized measures.