During our workshops on Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) we use a text entitled Explicit Direct Instruction: The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson. Written by John Hollingsworth and Silvia Ybarra, the text lays out the components of EDI and provides real life examples from the classroom to help practitioners understand the concept and procedures. Here’s one incredibly powerful concept: Well-crafted lessons consider what students already know. This is called “activating prior knowledge.”

I always look forward to the winter break. For the holidays and time spent with family and friends, yes, but also for the time for reading. It’s during breaks like these that I travel beyond my typical reading diet, venturing into new genres and stopping to take in those magazine columns I usually skip for the cover stories. And this got me thinking about the classroom and our students' reading diets...

What is one of the single most powerful instructional interventions for students with disabilities? Explicitly teaching students to set specific attainable goals and to monitor their own progress towards reaching them. The research support for teaching students with disabilities to monitor and regulate their own learning cuts across classifications, grade levels and content areas.