The story of students at the Autism Model Community School making literacy gains with DI is featured in a published research article!
Direct Instruction Basics
Direct Instruction (DI) classes serve as the backbone of our academic programming.
Over 50 years of research on how students learn and the best ways to teach them have resulted in the development of these programs. (Our school is now a part of the evidence-base for DI!)
Studies involving DI curriculum have been conducted with a variety of populations, including disadvantaged students and those with autism.
The National Institute for Direct Instruction describes the DI philosophy in the following five points:
- All children can be taught
- All children can improve academically and in their self image
- All teachers can succeed if provided adequate training and materials
- Low performers and disadvantaged learners must be taught at a faster than normal rate if they are to catch up to their higher-performing peers
- All details of instruction must be controlled to minimize the chance of students’ misinterpreting the information being taught and to maximize the reinforcing effect of instruction
DI Curriculum at AMS
Our students are administered placement tests to determine their precise instructional needs. Based on these results, students are grouped into classes for each subject with peers who tested at similar levels.
The school provides highly structured DI curriculum in the areas of:
- Language and Communication
- Reading Decoding
- Reading Comprehension
- Logic, Reasoning and Writing
- Math