Practicing Effective Instruction: The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction Approach

Abstract

The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) teaches teachers how to use instructional strategies and a management system that have been proven to prevent reading failure and enhance the learning of ail language skills. Through a series of early research studies, ECRI found that student learning increased when (a) pupils are provided with greater amounts of quality instructional time; (b) teachers positively reinforce their students for increasing oral reading speed and accuracy; (c) students are taught to display overt, rapid, and accurate responses to specific teacher directives; (d) teachers provide a supervised practice time for students and require high levels of student mastery; (e) teachers increase their, rates of particular teaching behaviors; (f) instruction is introduced in a three-step process: demonstration, prompt, and practice; and (g) the teaching of language skills is correlated.