... make it David Boulton's interview with Zig Engelmann over at Children of the Code.
It's a rare treat when the interviewer is actually knowledgeable about the subject being discussed.
If you didn't understand my point about the President's speech exhorting students to work hard being largely a waste of time, then this interview should clear things up. Hopefully.
I'm posting this now without comment, but I will follow up.
1 comment:
Ken -
I agree that the interview provides keen insights into why an achievement gap is inevitable as long as we continue to ignore the need for explicit instruction. What happened or did not occur in the home affects where the learning sequence needs to start for learning to be accessible.
Also I especially thought the interviewer's comment that "time is working against every child that falls out of the flow" was important to an understanding of the intractability of the gap.
Each month or year of inquiry learning in math or pushing reading strategies instead of an understanding of the phonetic nature of the English language and systematic, sequential practice in decoding text may be time that can never be made up. The effect of time lost to poor instruction increases over time even after you try to intervene.
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