BASIC SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

For many "high need" students, discovery activity and interdisciplinary learning improve attendance and attitude, but are not enough to significantly raise achievement levels; some students simply lack the basic skills that would enable them to seize learning opportunities, and require instruction not only in reading and writing well or performing fundamental mathematics operations, but also in developing proper study habits such as the ability to organize their thoughts and work, to listen attentively, take notes, and make careful and thoughtful observations.

All Discovery Institute projects include organized efforts to develop basic skills - but these efforts are based on the tenet that success depends primarily on engaging the students' interest. Traditionally, basic skills development is not interesting in and of itself; our focus, then, has become to reframe basic skills development within the contexts of other, more interesting activities.

Every lesson plan that teachers develop within the Discovery Institute reinforces some degree of literacy and numeracy skills within its discovery-based and interdisciplinary content. Every lesson includes a reading component, and, as often as possible, writing and mathematics components, and stresses the logical development and organization of ideas. Every lesson also includes listening and note-taking, and closely attends to the basic skills of observation, inference, and detail-recognition; yet, each of these skills rises through the overarching context of an engaging and active discovery lesson.

To a considerable degree, the Institute attributes its increased success in producing improved scores on standardized examinations, college assessment examinations, and in basic college coursework to our attention to and incorporation of these fundamentals.