di: Lesson spacing within week

Tue Jul 21 15:26:42 PDT 2020

RMIT Classification: Trusted

Hi Chris,

It is important to note that Funnix is designed as a 5 sessions per week program. Presenting it at 2 sessions per week may be workable if your child has developed the early phonological preskills with ease and is motivated. If you find that he struggles during the parts of lessons that are reliant on the mastery of earlier lesson content, then you may need to increase the number of sessions/week. Either way, there is plenty of built-in continuous progress monitoring, so it should become apparent if he begins to struggle. In your favour is that the program proceeds gently, with only 10% of new material presented in each lesson. You will have several days between lessons regardless of how you schedule the sessions, so you may be wise to revise that new material presented during the previous week before commencing the first new lesson of the week.

I'm unsure which of your scheduling options is better. You could do, say, Mon-Tues, or Mon-Thur. Perhaps you could try the first option and see how it goes, and go to the second if he struggles. The downside of the consecutive days option is that it's a long time before the next lesson for him to retain what has been taught.

For those unfamiliar with the program, below is some information:

Funnix is a Direct Instruction beginning reading program designed for use within the home. It is based largely upon the work of Engelmann, who achieved significant success in reading instruction with earlier programs in a variety of education domains, including reading (Adams & Engelmann, 1996). Funnix is presented on CD-ROM, providing explicit training in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle (blending and decoding), and is paired with written exercises to emphasise the connection between reading, writing, and spelling (Funnix, 2003). All skills are delivered in a cumulative and carefully sequenced order, and the active presence of a parent or other tutor is required throughout the program. About 10% of each lesson involves new concepts – the remainder reviews and applies familiar content. One objective is for children to build oral reading fluency to about 60 words-per-minute by the end of the first level of the program (120 lessons), and 90 words per minute by the end of Funnix 2 (100 lessons) (Engelmann & Engelmann, 2003). The program is designed to be presented 5 days per week.

The parent’s role is to navigate through the 30 minute lessons, and to provide feedback and corrections when errors are made. The program is available for purchase from the Funnix webpage; thus, most parents can be expected to buy the program online, and employ it using the parent instruction disc with the included parent guide to assist them. Additionlly, there are various resources and demonstrations at https://www.funnix.com/funnix2012/download.htm#<https://www.funnix.com/funnix2012/download.htm>

“Provides specific guidance for corrective feedback. See the Funnix Teacher’s Guide Rules for Presenting the Lessons, Basic Correction Procedures on page 15 for information regarding appropriate feedback; and see Sounds and Letters, Word Reading and see Story Reading, Correcting Story Reading Errors on pages 25–27 for information regarding corrections. Also see the following sections and subsections in the Parent Disc: Sounds and Letters: Correcting Sound Identification Mistakes; Reading Words: Correcting Sounds When Reading Words, Blue-Letter Corrections, Correcting Whole Words; Story Reading: Correcting Story Reading Errors, Reading the Fast Way, sub-subsection Correcting Story Reading Errors.” (Engelmann & Engelmann, 2003, p. 45).

Few studies have been conducted to evaluate Funnix. However, the Oregon Reading First Center included it in a broad-scale evaluation of beginning reading programs. In a rating scale to evaluate a program’s theoretical adequacy, Funnix received a very high rating of 93% for its instruction of phonemic awareness, 81% for phonics, and 80% for fluency (Oregon Reading First Center, 2004). Jordan (2004), in a favourable review of the theoretical adequacy of the program for the Florida Center for Reading Research, also reported on a study in which Funnix was provided to 10 pre-school children. Their scores on basic reading, letter-word identification, and story recall tasks increased from their pretest scores, but the study’s methodological limitations allow only that the results were promising, and further rigorous evaluation of the program’s effectiveness is required. For links to existing studies, see https://www.funnix.com/funnix2012/research.htm

For further program information: https://www.nifdi.org/programs/reading/funnix-reading.html

Details of purchase at http://store.funnix.com/

<http://store.funnix.com/home/fnx/page_21_1/page_21/funnix_beginning_reading_funnix_2_dvd_package.html>

Funnix Beginning Reading & Funnix 2 DVD Package<http://store.funnix.com/home/fnx/page_21_1/page_21/funnix_beginning_reading_funnix_2_dvd_package.html>

A two-level comprehensive reading program that takes the non-reader to a beginning third grade reading level in 220 lessons. This package includes Funnix Beginning Reading and Funnix 2. We provide a printable version of the workbook for Funnix Beginning Reading and the reader for Funnix 2 in this package. Other components are also included. The program is delivered to you on a DVD. See details for more information.

Works on either a Mac or PC.

Computer requirements: DVD drive. 2 GB of free space. PC:Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10

Mac: 10.7 and above through 10.14. Not compatible with 10.15 (Catalina). Program must be installed on computer. Cannot be installed on external hard drive.

Price: $38.00

________________________________

Adams, G., & Engelmann, S. (1996). Research on Direct Instruction: 25 years beyond DISTAR. Seattle, WA: Educational Achievement Systems.

Engelmann, S., & Engelmann, O. (2003). Funnix reviewer’s guide: A consumer’s guide to evaluating supplemental and intervention reading programs. https://www.funnix.com/funnix2012/PDFs/Reviewers_Guide.pdf

Engelmann, S., & Engelmann, O. (2002). Funnix 2: Reading. Eugene, OR: Royal Limited Partnership.

Engelmann, S., Engelmann, O., & Seitz-Davis, K. (2001). Funnix: A tutor in your computer. Eugene, OR: Royal Limited Partnership.

Jordan, G. (2004). Funnix Reading Programs. https://www.funnix.com/funnix2012/PDFs/FCRR.pdf

Oregon Reading First Center. (2004). Oregon Reading First Supplemental and Intervention Programs Review. http://oregonreadingfirst.uoregon.edu/downloads/instruction/curriculum_review/si_reviews/funnix.pdf

Regards,

Kerry

Dr Kerry Hempenstall,

Senior Industry Fellow,

School of Education,

RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

________________________________
From: di-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu <di-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of Christopher Duss <duss.christopher at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 12:16 PM
To: DI List List <DI at lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: di: Lesson spacing within week

Dear List,

I started Funnix for my son's 5th birthday this week. He loved the first lesson, so it is a good start. I do a morning lesson on a variety of topics with him 6 days a week (Mondays off as I go to work early that day). Since he is in Japanese school and we speak English at home, he needs more help with Japanese to keep up with his classmates. So I currently do 3 days of Japanese, 2 days of Funnix and 1 day of piano.

Regarding lesson spacing, I had thought it was better to evenly space them during the week, so every 3-4 days for Funnix. Then I heard in the Funnix tutorial that it's best to do lessons on consecutive days if time is limited to reduce how much is forgotten (at least between the consecutive lessons).

What is the community's view on this? He has a formal piano lesson on Thursday, formal Japanese lessons on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and no other English lessons. In this case what is my ideal schedule if I keep 3 Japanese, 2 Funnix and 1 piano?

Consecutive days would say Tuesday Thursday Sunday Japanese, Friday Saturday English, Wednesday piano. Then he has Japanese Sunday through Friday, English Friday and Saturday, and piano Wednesday and Thursday. That sound like a good plan? I usually let him pick which lesson he wants on Saturday (weekend after all!) but don't need to do that.

Thanks for your input,
Chris
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