Our Teaching Method – Direct Instruction – Reading
At Firefly Education, we teach the full range of Direct Instruction programs. Each program is built around the core Direct Instruction principles of consistent language, carefully sequenced material, highly individualized delivery, and continuous assessment and skillful correction. The following are selected samples of Direct Instruction reading programs that we teach, all of which are available for our online teaching service:
Reading Mastery
Reading Mastery helps students develop into fluent, independent, and highly skilled readers. The program features a highly explicit, systematic instructional design that breaks learning into manageable steps that all students can master, and helps students achieve a high rate of success. Five essential components of reading – phonemic awareness, phonics and word analysis, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension – are addressed, teaching important concepts and efficient strategies thoroughly and effectively. Spelling instruction is introduced to help students make the connection between decoding and spelling patterns. Fast-paced lessons keep instruction focused and students actively engaged. Students are given ample opportunities to practice and apply skills and concepts, and to extend learning. Teacher modeling, guided practice, and cumulative review are central to the program and ensure that all students make significant progress. As the program progresses, the focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, as students acquire skills needed to learn from a variety of texts. A strong foundation of decoding, word recognition, and comprehension skills are built that transfer to other subject areas.
Corrective Reading – Decoding
Corrective Reading – Decoding provides intensive reading intervention for students who are reading below grade level and who must be taught more in less time to catch up. It has been widely used to accelerate learning in students who were not successful when taught using other methods. Tightly sequenced, carefully planned lessons give struggling students the structure and practice necessary to become skilled, fluent readers and better learners. The program proceeds efficiently and thoroughly from the most basic to the most advanced reading skills, equipping students with an understanding of the relationships between sounds and letters, letter patterns, word types, and higher levels of word analysis. Fluency practice with immediate feedback is used to build oral reading rate and accuracy. Stories written for the program provide a gradual progression in skill development that discourages guessing and overcomes the error patterns typically observed with problem readers. The varied reading deficits found among older students are addressed, including frequent word identification errors, adding or omitting words, confusion of high-frequency words, laboriously slow reading rates, and choppy oral reading. Comprehension skills are developed through careful questioning that leads to both factual and inferential interpretation of text that is read.
