precision teachings articles from teach effectively blog

Professional Papers in Special Education

I'm going to start with the Binder, et al paper: "Fluency: Achieving True Mastery in the Learning Process." (pdf file)

Here are teach effectively's posts on precision teaching. (Teach effectively says sentient beings should give The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies money!)

And here, courtesy of teach effectively, is I Speak of Dreams who posts this passage:

Precision teaching is not so much a method of instruction as it is a precise and systematic method of evaluating instructional tactics and curricula.

Assuming the method is easily adaptible to one's home, this is something afterschoolers desperately need. The time I have to keep C. on task is extremely limited; every minute has to count.

And yet I have no real means of figuring out whether what I'm doing is worth the time or not.

For instance, after reading about contingency adduction yesterday, I started wondering whether I should have C. working on something simpler than what he's working on now.

Contingency adduction, as I understand it, is the sudden appearance of new learning without further instruction.

Here's the discussion of contingency adduction that gave me pause:

Contingency adduction occurs when multiple repertoires or components combine with little, if any, instruction.... Johnson & Layng (1994) described how fraction word problems were consistently a problem for their students, some scoring as low as 3 correct in a minute (with up to 11 errors). Probes of the component skills revealed that none of these students were fluent with simple addition math facts. An instruction sequence was put into place that taught addition math facts to rates that predicted fluency (component). Following this, and with no extra instruction, a probe of fraction word problems revealed that all learners had jumped to 13 to 14 corrects per minute (composite). This example is consistent with most reports of adductions, with the common feature being that they often occur without any formal instruction (Binder, 1996).

source:
Introduction
Behavioural fluency for young children with autism
David John Bonser

and here's Binder, 1996:

Solsten & McManus, 1979) demonstrated that frequency building of components not only allows more rapid acquisition of composites but sometimes seems to produce composites with virtually no formal instruction — an effect that Johnson and Layng (1992) have called response adduction (Andronis, 1983; Epstein, 1985).

source:
Behavioral Fluency: Evolution of a new paradigm
The Behavior Analyst 1996, 19, 163-197 No. 2 (Fall)

Saxon Math and contingency adduction

This is another synchronicity event. Just this morning I was emailing Barry G. saying that Saxon Algebra 2 had suddenly become much easier.

The reason it's suddenly much easier is that the lessons I'm doing now all involve combining components into composites. Since I've worked my way through 91 lessons, I'm fluent in the components. There are times when I turn to a new lesson and simply skim it, because I "already know" how to do whatever the lesson is teaching me to do.

Mind you, most of these lessons are on procedures and word problems I've never done before - procedures and word problems I've never even seen before.

I suspect there's no counterpart to contingency adduction for "top down teaching."



fluency and autism

Now that I've (finally) stumbled across precision teaching, I remember our ABA teachers starting to talk about it and work with it for autistic kids. The concept made perfect sense to me, because often an autistic child can do a particular skill - or come up with the proper word - if he works fast. (In fact, the three dissertations on fluency training I've tracked down thus far are on fluency teaching for autistic children.)

Fluency training struck me as a great idea then - and now, too.


fluency and KUMON

KUMON is all about fluency.

Speed and accuracy: the KUMON mantra.

KUMON is not about precision teaching, however. KUMON is almost the opposite of precision teaching. With KUMON everyone does all the worksheets, period.

There's no data.

There's no skipping ahead if you can already do the worksheets you've got super-fast.

There is patience and persistence. (you may need to refresh your browser a couple of times to access the page)


wholes, not parts: Martin Brooks and The Constructivist Classroom
whole math