Zig's 2011 book, Could John Stuart Mill Have Saved Our Schools, is now available as an e-book for your iPad, Kindle or other reading device. In a matter of minutes, you can be learning how sound, scientific approaches can lead to successful teaching! Order now on Amazon.com!

Although it's not an article on DI, a recent feature in the Wall Street Journal titled "Practice Makes Perfect -- And Not Just for Jocks and Musicians" provides some good support of DI program practices, such as:

• You can be creative when you've mastered material: "Rote learning and conceptual thinking often feed synergistically on each other, freeing our brain capacity for those tasks that require the maximum amount of attention and creativity."
  
  
• The importance of the correction procedure: "...fast, simple feedback is almost always more effective at shaping behavior than is a more comprehensive response well after the fact."
  
  
• The value of practicing skills over time and introducing them systematically: "What drives mastery is encoding success - performing an action the right way over and over."
  
  
• Why the small-step design of DI programs is effective: "The brain likes to learn - but it prefers to in manageable leaps."

You can find the article here.

The new 2013 catalog from McGraw-Hill is now available! You can find the PDF at here.

You'll also find an easy-find table of contents that will help you quickly find Direct Instruction programs in the new catalog by clicking here.

On Friday, Tony Abbott visited the Aurukun campus of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy in western Cape York to see the impressive results the school is achieving through Direct Instruction (DI) with support from the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI). Mr. Abbott was at the school, along with a group of senior business leaders, volunteering for a “working bee” – a sweat equity project that targeted improving the school library. But, this wasn’t the only appeal to visiting Aurukun. Abbott had the chance to see what he describes as a “transformed school” from his visit just three years earlier where DI has delivered “staggering results”.

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