Frequently Asked Questions
How does Intelligent Intervention differ from other programs that use animations?
In Intelligent Intervention, students learn to associate the animations with specific questions and responses. Students also learn to sequence several animations to compose increasingly complex sentences replete with adjectives, verbs and prepositional phrases. This novel use of animations enables them to master basic literacy skills within a relatively short period of instruction. Try it with your students and see for yourself!
How does Intelligent Intervention help students to catch up with their peers?
Despite much talk about the need for accelerated learning, there are few programs that actually provide accelerated instruction. How can teachers expect to achieve the former without the latter? Intelligent Intervention meets this challenge by maintaining a constant pace of instruction while providing ample time for students to respond to each prompt. The subtle use of controlled anxiety and intelligent anticipation throughout every interactive lesson actually helps students to remain focused and engaged which allows the pace of instruction to accelerate.
There are many other aspects of literacy that are not included in the program. Why is Intelligent Intervention limited in its scope?
Intelligent Intervention is designed to help underachieving students to overcome the myriad of obstacles that have prevented them from becoming literate. Once they have acquired the foundation skills and knowledge from Intelligent Intervention, students will be empowered to successfully continue up the literacy learning curve with self-confidence.
What is the rationale for the sequence of verb tenses in Intelligent Intervention?
Which verb tense do you hear students using most often? Of course, it’s the present participle in the present progressive tense! For example, when asked, “What is the boy doing now?” most students will respond, “He’s kicking a ball.” This is the most logical choice for introducing grammar in a meaningful way.
Next, students are introduced to the past participle with action that has already been started and may be ongoing. They are asked, “What has the boy done?” Sometimes referred to as the past-perfect tense, the auxiliary verb has or have is coupled with a past participle which always ends with –ed. For example, “The boy has kicked a ball.”
In the third step of the progression, students are prompted to consider what the person will be doing in the future. They are introduced to the future progressive tense that is coupled with the verb phrase will be. When asked, “What will the boy be doing later?” students learn to respond, “Later the boy will be kicking a ball.”
After students have a clear understanding of perfect and progressive verb tenses, they are introduced to the much easier simple present, past and future tenses. This special feature of Intelligent Intervention is yet another key for accelerating instruction. Continuous review exercises provide ample reinforcement and prevent confusion.
Intelligent Intervention seems to disregard the importance of the teacher in the learning process. Does it not minimize the role of the classroom teacher?
We are just beginning to realize the advantages of technology-enhanced education, especially in underprivileged regions of the world where substandard educational opportunities exist. By providing direct instruction to students via self-narrated lessons, Intelligent Intervention enables teachers to devote their talents and specialized training more productively. Rather than minimizing the role of the teacher, this unique program serves to broaden an often-overlooked, but vital area of his/her responsibility – the supervision of instruction. The teacher benefits by having to spend significantly less time in lesson planning, thereby gaining more time in which to observe and analyze the way that students effectively self-organize their learning. Accelerated learning is facilitated as the teacher adjusts the instructional pace and adds remedial activities as needed.
Some of the vocabulary words and their definitions seem to be somewhat advanced for young students. Have you considered using easier words?
Young students who enjoy school are excited to learn new words, especially when they are taught in context. For example, the spelling of Tyranosaurus and Tricerotops are readily learned by young dinosaur fanatics who can also vividly recite interesting facts about these extinct creatures. Intelligent Intervention exploits this natural curiosity that lies dormant among underachieving students.
It is an unrealistic and impractical practice to use only simple words (such as those from the Dolch word list) to define new vocabulary words. The most successful students (and teachers) have learned to accept the fact that definitions often contain other unfamiliar words that must also be looked up in the dictionary.
Can I expect my students to transfer what they have learned from Intelligent Intervention to other areas of the curriculum?
Teachers ask me this question all the time. This is a fair question, but it also reflects a limited understanding of pedagogy, so bear with me as I respond by way of analogy. If I were to teach you to tie a variety of knots and climb a rope, would you be able to transfer that knowledge to safely rappel off a cliff? That would probably depend on whether I presented the instruction in context by demonstrating how each knot or climbing maneuver is related to the actual act of rappeling. Learning knot tying and climbing in isolation, without any reference to rappelling would most certainly cause you to display considerable reluctance at the cliff’s edge!
Many of my students have a solid understanding of phonics, but are still unable to decode simple one-syllable words. Why aren't these students able to demonstrate “transfer of knowledge”? Could it be that the instruction they received lacked sufficient contextual examples and practice? Students must be able to make associations (i.e. connections) to real-life situations for transfer of knowledge to occur.
Now back to the question at hand. Students who complete all forty-eight lessons of Intelligent Intervention will have learned to use forty verbs correctly in six different tenses. They will also be able to use the resulting 240 verb combinations to compose sentences interchangeably with 81 nouns, 48 adjectives and 14 prepositions. If you do the math, this results in 384,000 permutations (i.e. number of different possible sentences). Keep in mind that all of these sentences are learned in context! Anyone who has learned this amount of meaningful language will undoubtedly be able to transfer this knowledge to other areas of the curriculum and beyond. Now here’s a question for you: Would you expect literacy test scores to improve, too?
How can Intelligent Intervention help students to become independent learners?
The versatility of Intelligent Intervention enables students to self-organize and further accelerate their learning. If given the opportunity to explore the program options with their peers, they will soon discover the ability to move along the instructional grid either horizontally or vertically, depending on their collective rate of progress.
After they have mastered a few lessons, give a pair of evenly-matched students some general guidelines and let them use the program without your help. They may need some reminders at first, but will soon learn to progress through the lessons independently.
Why are some program components not provided for every unit and at each level?
As you have probably noticed, some aspects of Intelligent Intervention tend to change as students progress through the program. Remedial activities (e.g. Extra Reading Practice) are offered only at the beginning stages of instruction when additional support may be needed. Conversely, at advanced Level 3, somewhat more challenging inter-activities become available. Lessons become increasingly streamlined and fast-paced to achieve accelerated instruction. Although students tend to respond better when they are familiar with established routines, they also enjoy occasional variety and change.
What are some common pitfalls to avoid?
Some students will have a tendency to state a minimum number of words, rather than complete sentences, in response to a question. When this occurs, the teacher should remind students to begin their sentences with the word(s) they were taught. For example, if a student attempts to respond minimally with a word or two, immediately model the initial part of the desired response. Say, “Now the man . . . “ and have the student echo the words and complete the sentence.
Many students have also learned to look to the teacher for reassurance or confirmation after every response. Encourage students to maintain continuous eye contact with the screen so that they can keep up with pace of instruction. This practice will also result in the student’s ability to self-assess the accuracy of their responses.
Keep in mind that mastery learning often takes time. Avoid the mistake of racing through the lessons without providing students with adequate practice. Additional practice can be provided by using Extra Reading Practice in the the Remedial Exercises folder. Within each lesson, there are also several opportunities for extra practice whenever a repeat button appears.
