…commercially available instructional materials are often dressed up to improve their market value but contain irrelevant stimuli that can distract the student from the critical stimuli upon which appropriate discriminations are formed. Too few opportunities to practice the skills are presented... Other times the instructional examples contain too much information and do not require the student to go through the appropriate steps to get the right answer (Vargas, 1984). Too many strategies are frequently suggested by basal reading series to guide the teacher in exactly how to instruct a diverse body of students (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Daly, E., Marten, B., Barnett, D., Witt, J., Olson, S. (2007). Varying Intervention Delivery in Response to Intervention: Confronting and Resolving Challenges with Measurement, Instruction and Intensity. School Psychology Review, 36 (4), p. 562-581
A colleague met a teacher at a conference in England. She was surprised at the high (and high-cost) production values of American reading basals. "To me," she said, "it looks like a clown exploded on every page."
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