One Minute Fluency Builders

right up my severely time-constrained alley

Ridiculously expensive, though.

Here's the whole series.

Expensive or not, the Algebra 1 book is tempting. I'm also wondering whether I ought finally to spring for the Mad Minute book Susan told us about a year or so ago.

From the Sopris West marketing paper:

Precision Teaching: The first and perhaps the most influential concept that helped shape One-minute Fluency Builders was originated by Ogden Lindsley, who invented the term Precision Teaching and later helped provide the framework used in our current work. Lindsley, a student of B.F. Skinner at Harvard, borrowed about five tenets from methods of experimental analysis of behavior developed by Skinner in his laboratories (Lindsley, 1971a, 1971b). These include: (a) the learner knows best, (b) direct and daily observations, (c) the use of frequency as a universal measure of behavior, (d) a standard chart for the evaluation of learning patterns, and (e) the systematic description and analysis of environmental conditions that influence behavior. White (1986) described Precision Teaching as a set of procedures for deciding if, when, and how an instructional program might be improved to facilitate pupil learning. Precision Teaching (Lindsley, 1972; White, 1986), as used in classrooms, is not so much a method of instruction as a precise and systematic method of evaluating instructional tactics and curricula.

Frequency/Rate: In the 1930s, B.F. Skinner (1968) claimed the use of frequency as a “universal measure of behavior.” This became one of his major contributions to science. In its simplest form, frequency is the count of a specific behavior (e.g., number of correct answers in math facts) in a given period of time (e.g., one-minute). This is opposed to percent correct, which does not require the dimension of time, frequency or rate and incorporates both an element of count, as well as time (e.g., 145 words per minute).

One-Minute: Short (one-minute) units of time have been highly correlated with reliable, valid and high stakes measurements (Davidson & Towner, 2001), as well as a functional and workable metric for practitioners to us in classroom environments. In the One-Minute Fluency Builders model, timings using 60 seconds fit not only into a unit of time common to reading and math, but lend themselves to a convenient recording format, as well. Proponents of Curriculum Measurement (Howell et al. (2000); Marston et al. (1984), along with precision teachers (Haughton 1972; Kunzelmann et. al. (1970); Starlin, 1972) have embedded one-minute timings as a standard measure of academic performance in most of their studies. Finally, a research-based publication called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) (Good, R., et al., 2004), has emerged which uses one-minute timings for assessment, progress monitoring and decision-making in reading.

Fluency Sheets: As Binder (1996) points out, precision teachers have been slicing curricula into sequence and finer components as a curriculum design practice for decades (Starlin, 1972; White & Haring 1976). The idea of curriculum sequencing led early designers to generate thousands of one-minute skill sheets, so that each sheet built a prerequisite skill for the next (Howell & Kaplan, 1979; Starlin and Starlin, 1973). Over 10,000 of these skill sheets were developed during a project in the state of Washington in the late 1960s. The Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma Project (SST), developed sequenced practice sheets in reading, math, handwriting, spelling and grammar, provided the impetus for the Great Falls Precision Teaching Project (Beck & Clement, 1991). This led to the further development of an additional 2000 sequenced skill sheets in the areas of science, map skills, social studies, vocational skills, etc. Sopris West Educational Services offers these as part of the One-Minute Fluency Builders Series in a bank of over 1500 skill sheets (Beck et al, 2004).

10,000 separate skill sheets?

plus another 2000?

jeez

I'm thinking I should slap an Educators Beware warning across the face of this post. I don't want graduates of Columbia Teachers College reading things like "10,000 skill sheets" in a state of low blood sugar.

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So..... I'm wondering if there's some way to repackage this product as 10,000 embedded critical thinking skills for the 21st century?

Aims: For several decades, the Effective Schools Research has cited setting high aims or goals for students as a necessary step in creating expectations in reading, math, language-arts, and other basic skills. Kubina (2000) demonstrates that setting fluency and performance standards is the major component in helping students move to a true level of mastery. Eric Haughton (1972) is perhaps the one person who has had the most influence on establishing high aims. Haughton, along with Binder (1991), Starlin, (1971), Johnson & Layng (1992) and Beck (1979), has provided fluency data that has helped set aims benchmarks for the field. A strong argument has been made, and research again supports, that when students reach these standards, they are able to remember and apply the skill across different environmental settings.

This last is the money line, the claim that learning a component concept or skill to fluency, not just "mastery" defined as 80 - 90% correct, makes it easier to remember the concept or skill and to generalize it to novel material.

For constructivists, generalization is the Holy Grail, even though they don't use the term all that often. Nevertheless, that's what they're talking about. Generalize means "make connections"; generalize means "creativity"; generalize means "21st century skills."

The ability to generalize (also called "transfer" or "learning transfer") seems to mean two things in particular:

a) the ability to recognize novel material, settings, or problems as instances of prior knowledge
b) the ability then to apply one's prior knowledge to the novel material, setting or problem

I'm feeling a need for 12,000 one-minute worksheets.

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p.s. those of us with SPED kids probably ought to be looking into precision teaching. Lots of good material on SPED children and accelerated learning through precision teaching.