Lakhasly

JOURNAL OF PRECISION TEACHING 1995, XII, 9 - 17 NUMBER 2 (SPRING 1995) Precision Teaching: By Teachers for Children Ogden R. Lindsley People often state that I developed Precision Teaching.When a student charts these "counts" on the Standard Celeration Chart, performance changes, or learning can be seen readily. Using the Chart, the student has a visual display of past performance and can see how performance must be changed to meet current aims or standards. Many teachers have found that behavior changes are much greater when students take such an active role. Policy 3: Use Standard Charts to Display Major Changes Skinner often urged his graduate students to look for important variables that produced major changes in behavior. He cautioned against wasting time measuring unimportant, small changes in behavior. At the time, I was aware that our cumulative response recorders forced us to look at major changes in response frequency in our laboratories. However, it was not until 1969, after 4 years of charting on standard multiply scales, that I understood why. I note? that in all cases the cumulative response recorders were built to display doublings in frequency on their charts. This doubling forced laboratory researchers to search for powerful interventions that produced at least a doubling in response frequency. In the Harvard Medical School Behavior Research Laboratory at Metropolitan State Hospital, the patients' response rates were automatically recorded on cumulative response recorders throughout each daily session. These cumulative response records displayed changes in their behavior frequencies within experimental sessions. Changes in behavior frequencies between and across sessions from week to week and month to month were charted by hand on 8 112- by 1 l-inch, 10- squares-to-the-inch chart paper. This paper was limited in the number of changes it could record, and as behavior frequencies increased, we had to rechart two or three times. However, it was not until I was training teachers at the University of Kansas Children's Rehabilitation Unit that I was compelled to have a custom chart printed. The teachers met once a week for a 3-hour class. I required that they improve a behavior of one of their pupils and also one of their own behaviors. The teachers shared their progress on these behavior change projects by showing charts in class each week. It took 20 to 30 minutes to share one behavior project because most of this time was spent describing each teacher's unique charting and recording system. In desperation, I had a Standard Chart printed with the full range of behavior frequencies, from 1 per day to 1,000 per minute, on a multiply (or logarithmic) scale up from the left, or short side of the paper. The long side had 140 calendar days, or 20 weeks, which is about 1 school semester. This chart had several advantages. First, by accommodating the full range of behavior frequencies on one Chart, a teacher could record any behavior of interest. Behaviors with low frequencies (e.g., a student getting into one or two fights per day) and those with high frequencies (e.g., a student reading several hundred words per minute) could be recorded on the same type of chart, eliminating the need for interpretation. Second, student performance data from an entire semester could be recorded on one Chart. Third, the logarithmic scale also made it possible to measure the rate of learning or celeration. Fourth, later we learned that the Chart could be used to accurately predict future performance, which helped in making decisions. For example, if learning was slow and the prediction was that several weeks would be required to master an objective, a teacher could try something else and accelerate learning. In order to standardize the interpretation of rate of learning and accurate prediction and to promote major changes in student performance, I designed the Chart so that a line from the lower left corner to the upper right comer of the grid represented a doubling in frequency every week (celeration period). This an& of about 33 degrees was the most sensitive part of the slope of the Chart. If the central slope of the Chart was a doubling, it should prompt our teachers to produce doublings of their pupils' frequencies each week. In the same way that the doubling cumulative response recorder grids prompted the early laboratory free- operant conditioners to search for major variables, I hoped that the Standard Chart doubling would prompt our precision teachers to discover major classroom variables that would accelerate learning. Because the Standard Celeration Chart forces us to look for at least doublings in pupil performance frequency, it blinds us to very small changes. For this reason many researchers avoid the Standard Celeration Chart because it makes the small changes they may ' have produced (e.g., changes from 11 to 13 responses per minute) look trivial. In fact, when changes from 11 to 100 responses per minute can be produced easily, a change from 1 1 to 13 is trivial and should be seen as such. Policy 4: The Child Knows Best When I was a graduate student, I trained a rat whose behavior did not extinguish exactly as the charts in Skinner's (1938) book had shown. My rat had at first responded much more rapidly when his responding was no longer reinforced. This rapid responding went on for about 30 minutes, at which time the rat stopped abruptly. I took the cumulative record of the rat's unusual extinction to Dr. Skinner and asked him how this happened. How could the rat do this when the book showed a very different gradual extinction curve? Skinner answered, "In this case, the book is wrong!And I answer, "Then please go back and ask him, because, after all, the child knows best." . '. Contributions of Precision Teachers Applying these founding policies of Precision Teaching has enabled many teachers to discover effective teaching techniques. Some of these discoveries are mentioned here. Academic pegormance can be accelerated by Chart display. In 1965, Lois Cox, supervised by Thomas Caldwell, found that pupil academic performance frequencies increased when pupils displayed their Charts. Lois also found that fourth-grade children enjoyed computing and charting their own daily performance frequencies. Self-recording is simplified with wrist tally cards. In 1966, Jean Stables cut 3- by 5-inch blank cards in half and held the 2 112- by 3- inch card to her wrist with a watch strap. She used this wrist tally card to record six or seven different behaviors. At the end of the day, the tallies were counted and charted and the dated cards were filed in a card box. Pupils can count academic and nonacademic behaviors and display their performance on the Standard Celeration Chart. In 1967, Carl Koenig, under my supervision, taught a special class of six 9- to 1 1-year-old boys classified as emotionally disturbed. The pupils timed and counted their own arithmetic and both silent and oral reading frequencies. Each pupil also counted one nonacademic behavior (Koenig, 1967). Koenig's master's thesis at the U. of Kansas was the first to use the term Precision Teaching and the first to include Standard Celeration Charts. The chart was called six- cycle semilog graph paper at the time, and was later called the standard behavior chart (Pennypacker, Koenig, & Lindsley, 1972). Still later, the chart was correctly named Standard Celeration Chart, because what is standard on the chart is the angle of the celeration lines. A line from the lower left comer to the upper right comer represents a learning in which performance doubles every celeration period (i.e., times 2.0 per week, per month, per 6 months, or every 5 years, depending on the version of the chart that is employed). A line from the upper left corner to the lower right comer represents unlearning, or deceleration, in which performance halves each celeration period (i.e., divide by 2.0 per week, per month, per 6 months, or every 5 years). Self-selected competencies are more eflective than teacher-selected. In, 1969, Karen A. Curtis, supervised by Tom Lovitt, found that higher academic response frequencies occurred when the pupils selected their own reward contingenciea'than when the teacher selected them (Lovitt & Curtis, 1969). Pupils with orthopedic handicaps can chart their own behaviors. In 1969, Sally Slezak, under my supervision, taught two different classes of 'children with orthopedic handicaps. The first year she taught 8 primary pupils: 4 paraplegic qerehral palsied, 3 spina bifida, and 1 brain damaged. Of these, 4 were severe and 4 were mobile. ,The second year she taught 7 intermediate pupils: 3 paraplegic cerebral palsied, 2 spina bifida, 1 muscular dystrophy, and 1 chronic health disorder. Of these, 1 was severe and 6 were ambulatory. All the children used wrist counters, which they purchased with points they earned, to count their own nonacademic behaviors. Wrist tally boards were used to count up to six or seven behaviors on the same tally card. The daily tally cards were dated and kept by the children. . ' Sally discovered that they could use masking tape strips (better known as "stickies") to record behaviors.(Channels refer to the pathways by which the student receives information and produces a response: for example, see and write, see and say, and hear and write.) David found not only that correct learning and error learning were independent, but also that the learning in one channel ("See the name"IwPoint to the picture") was independent from the learning in another channel ("Hear the namem/ "Place your hand in the position"). Just as Young and Johnson had found that three curricula can be tried at once because their learning is independent, Keller found that two or more channels can be tried at once each day because their learning is also independent. A leap-up in curriculum improves learning and motivation. In 1979, Marilyn Chappel, supervised by her principal, Gene Stromberg, taught her second-grade class at Garfield School, Ottawa, Kansas, basic mathematics facts. Figure 2 is a copy of Hollie's mqthematics chart for the fall semester. She looked at basic mathematics problems and wrote the answers on Precision Teaching practice sheets during 1-minute timings (seelwrite). The dots on the Chart represent her frequency of correct additions during her best timing each day. The small x's are her error frequencies per minute each day. Learning (celeration) lines are drawn through the dots and x's to show the slopes of the correct and error learning in 'each curriculum phase. . . b '. Note that the +5 and +6 addition problem phases produced correct learning, but little error learning. When +5 and i 6 addition problems were mixed on the same practice sheet (the next two phases), error learning did not occur either. However, when all basic addition facts and all basic subtraction facts were mixed with basic multiplication facts and practiced without prior instruction (+, -,x) Hollie had both high correct (x1.6) and higher error (110.0) learning! Essentially the same beneficial effect of the curriculum leap-up on Hollie's correct learning (advancing well ahead in the curriculum to a new instructional objective) was seen on all the other children's learning. Their median correct frequency jumped down from 120 to 4 per minute from the last day of "mixed +5 and +6" to the first day of "mixed add, subtract, and multiply facts." Naming their "learning pictures" can help students monitor progress. In 1977, Pat All, under my supervision, taught her regular seventh-grade shdents to count and chart the words they spelled correctly. She had them sort their charts according to the patterns of data, called learning pictures, 'She asked them to name the pictures by their p.atterns. Figure 1 illustrates the learning pictures hamkd. The code in Figure 1 shows the correct celeration or learning line as solid line with an arrow at its left end. It would have been drawn through the daily correct frequencies that had been charted. It is moving as on the Chart from left to right. It should be considered as a vector in motion, the arrow pointing .to where the performance is going. The error learning line is short dashes with an arrow pointing in its direction. The record floor (the lowest frequency that can occur) is shown as two horizontal long dashes at the bottom of each picture. These floor lines indicate that each picture is about two weeks long. The floor lines also show how far the frequencies are above the Floor. Note that in the Aim picture the errors are below the floor, showing zero errors are being made. The students named Jaws after the wide-open jaws of the shark famous in a thriller movie the prior summer. Snowplow, Uphill, and Downhill came from the positions of snow skis while skiing. In Climb, Takeoff and Landing the correct celeration line is the flight of an airplane and its related error line is the surface of the ground. In Surface and Dive the correct line is the surface of the sea, and the error line is the path of a submarine. Note that all the names describe motion, showing that the students knew their learning is dynamic and has direction and that their performance is almost always changing for better or for worse. These relationships are useful as memory aids in sharing these learning picture names with other students. / Figure 1 1 THIRTEEN LEARNING PICTURES -------- IMPROVING PICTURES ------------ Line Code: -----)
Cross- Jaws Take- Cllmb Uphlll Dlve Record over off floor --- MAINTAINING --- -------WORSEN1 NG ------- The students saw pictures with corrects maintaining and errors maintaining not as one picture, but as three very different pictures. One picture on which both frequencies were very low was known as the "Rock-Bottom."Acceleration of inter-city elementary school pupils' reading pe~ormance.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Lindsley, 0...17

JOURNAL OF PRECISION TEACHING 1995, XII, 9 - 17 NUMBER 2 (SPRING 1995)
Precision Teaching: By Teachers for Children
Ogden R. Lindsley
People often state that I developed Precision
Teaching. This is incorrect. I did not develop
it. It would be more accurate to say that I
founded and coached it. Teachers developed it
at my urging by following its founding
policies. I still urge teachers to use the
powerful methods of free-operant conditioning
(often referred to as behavioral psychology) in
their classrooms. This refers to a process of
learning in which students are free to respond
at their own pace without having restraints
placed on them by the limits of the materials or
the instructional procedures of the teachers. In
following these procedures, teachers went
beyond the use of teaching trials to develop the
methods of Precision Teaching.
Founding Policies of Precision
Teaching
I learned, adopted, and committed to the
methods of free-operant conditioning as a
student of B. F. Skinner at Harvard University
during the 1950s. I successfully applied these
methods to the study of psychotic behavior in
adults and children at the Behavior Research
Laboratory at Metropolitan State Hospital,
Waltham, Massachusetts, under the
supervision of Skinner and Harry C. Solomon,
Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental
Health. Visitors to the laboratory went back to
their universities, agencies, and schools to
apply our methods in their settings. But when
they applied these methods to children in their
classrooms, they typically neglected to use rate
of response, self-recording, and standard
recording-the hallmarks of free-operant
conditioning. Instead, they adopted reward
and token economy systems and continued to
record the percentage correct of the children's
academic work, the time-honored educational
measure.
Unfortunately, percentage ignores speed and
fluency. Sole attention to percentage correct
often produces highly accurate, painfully slow
learners who have very low tolerance for error-
filled, courageous learning. Whed the primary
type of feedback students receive is percentage
correct, with accuracy usually falling between
60% and 9096, students often become fearful
of making errors, which in turn can stifle
creativity and exploration.
Policy 1:Monitor Frequency' Daily
My laboratory research (Lindsley, 1960) has
shown frequency to be 10 to 100 times more
sensitive than percentage correct in recording
the effects of drugs and different reinforcers on
the behavior of psychotic and. normal children
and adults. However, no amount of urging
from me would get visiting experts to
standardize the use of frequency of response in
their classrooms. I knew that the real power of
learning enhanced by free-operant conditioning
lay in frequency of responding (by allowing the
student to be both accurate and fluent) and
standard self-recording. When educators
would not heed my caution and could not see
my vision for dramatic learning opportunities, I
decided the ethical thing to do was to close my
hospital laboratory and devote myself to
education.
As a professor in teacher training in a
midwestern university, I began teaching
teachers how to teach their pupils to efficiently
self-record their own academic frequencies on
standardized charts. When children's charts
were collected, we summarized their learning
and found that frequency and standard self-
recording were far superior to traditional
educational monitoring. This proved that the
superior sensitivity of frequency found in my
hospital laboratory experiences also held for
pupils in public school classrooms (Lindsley,
1971a).
Policy 2: Use Self-Recording
Students in Precision Teaching classrooms
keep records of their own academic and
nonacademic performance and use these
records to guide their performance. Students
might correct their own assignments and count
the number of problems they have answered
correctly or words they have read correctly, or
count the number of times they praised the
work of other students in the class. These
records can indicate changes in performance
over time as well as telling each student the
level of today's performance. When a student
charts these "counts" on the Standard
Celeration Chart, performance changes, or
learning can be seen readily. Using the Chart,
the student has a visual display of past
performance and can see how performance
must be changed to meet current aims or
standards. Many teachers have found that
behavior changes are much greater when
students take such an active role.
Policy 3: Use Standard Charts to
Display Major Changes
Skinner often urged his graduate students to
look for important variables that produced
major changes in behavior. He cautioned
against wasting time measuring unimportant,
small changes in behavior. At the time, I was
aware that our cumulative response recorders
forced us to look at major changes in response
frequency in our laboratories. However, it was
not until 1969, after 4 years of charting on
standard multiply scales, that I understood
why. I note? that in all cases the cumulative
response recorders were built to display
doublings in frequency on their charts. This
doubling forced laboratory researchers to
search for powerful interventions that produced
at least a doubling in response frequency.
In the Harvard Medical School Behavior
Research Laboratory at Metropolitan State
Hospital, the patients' response rates were
automatically recorded on cumulative response
recorders throughout each daily session. These
cumulative response records displayed changes
in their behavior frequencies within
experimental sessions. Changes in behavior
frequencies between and across sessions from
week to week and month to month were
charted by hand on 8 112- by 1 l-inch, 10-
squares-to-the-inch chart paper. This paper
was limited in the number of changes it could
record, and as behavior frequencies increased,
we had to rechart two or three times.
However, it was not until I was training
teachers at the University of Kansas Children's
Rehabilitation Unit that I was compelled to
have a custom chart printed. The teachers met
once a week for a 3-hour class. I required that
they improve a behavior of one of their pupils
and also one of their own behaviors. The
teachers shared their progress on these
behavior change projects by showing charts in
class each week. It took 20 to 30 minutes to
share one behavior project because most of this
time was spent describing each teacher's
unique charting and recording system.
In desperation, I had a Standard Chart printed
with the full range of behavior frequencies,
from 1 per day to 1,000 per minute, on a
multiply (or logarithmic) scale up from the left,
or short side of the paper. The long side had
140 calendar days, or 20 weeks, which is
about 1 school semester. This chart had
several advantages.
First, by accommodating the full range of
behavior frequencies on one Chart, a teacher
could record any behavior of interest.
Behaviors with low frequencies (e.g., a student
getting into one or two fights per day) and
those with high frequencies (e.g., a student
reading several hundred words per minute)
could be recorded on the same type of chart,
eliminating the need for interpretation.
Second, student performance data from an
entire semester could be recorded on one Chart.
Third, the logarithmic scale also made it
possible to measure the rate of learning or
celeration.
Fourth, later we learned that the Chart could be
used to accurately predict future performance,
which helped in making decisions. For
example, if learning was slow and the
prediction was that several weeks would be
required to master an objective, a teacher could
try something else and accelerate learning.
In order to standardize the interpretation of rate
of learning and accurate prediction and to
promote major changes in student performance,
I designed the Chart so that a line from the
lower left corner to the upper right comer of the
grid represented a doubling in frequency every
week (celeration period). This an& of about
33 degrees was the most sensitive part of the
slope of the Chart. If the central slope of the
Chart was a doubling, it should prompt our
teachers to produce doublings of their pupils'
frequencies each week. In the same way that
the doubling cumulative response recorder
grids prompted the early laboratory free-
operant conditioners to search for major
variables, I hoped that the Standard Chart
doubling would prompt our precision teachers
to discover major classroom variables that
would accelerate learning.
Because the Standard Celeration Chart forces
us to look for at least doublings in pupil
performance frequency, it blinds us to very
small changes. For this reason many
researchers avoid the Standard Celeration Chart
because it makes the small changes they may '
have produced (e.g., changes from 11 to 13
responses per minute) look trivial. In fact,
when changes from 11 to 100 responses per
minute can be produced easily, a change from
1 1 to 13 is trivial and should be seen as such.
Policy 4: The Child Knows Best
When I was a graduate student, I trained a rat
whose behavior did not extinguish exactly as
the charts in Skinner's (1938) book had
shown. My rat had at first responded much
more rapidly when his responding was no
longer reinforced. This rapid responding went
on for about 30 minutes, at which time the rat
stopped abruptly. I took the cumulative record
of the rat's unusual extinction to Dr. Skinner
and asked him how this happened. How could
the rat do this when the book showed a very
different gradual extinction curve? Skinner
answered, "In this case, the book is wrong!
The rat knows best! That's why we still have
him in the experiment!"
Skinner's easy acceptance of possible error in
his book's generalizations impressed me. Here
was an empiricist at work! His charming way
of admitting that the scientist did not know
everything yet, that the rat knew rat behavior
best, was the clearest way I had yet found to
describe the inductive approach to behavioral
research. For this reason I made "the child
knows best" a policy and slogan for precision
teachers to use in their discoveries (Lindsley,
1971b).
Often in workshops a teackr,.will ask, "Dr.
Lindsley, what is the best way to\help a child
improve his oral reading to a frequency above
40 words per minute?" I always reply, "What
is the child's name?" If the teacher replies,
"Brent," I answer, "What did Brent suggest?"
The teacher usually replies, "I didn't'ask him!"
And I answer, "Then please go back and ask
him, because, after all, the child knows best."
. '.
Contributions of Precision
Teachers
Applying these founding policies of Precision
Teaching has enabled many teachers to
discover effective teaching techniques. Some of
these discoveries are mentioned here.
Academic pegormance can be accelerated by
Chart display. In 1965, Lois Cox, supervised
by Thomas Caldwell, found that pupil
academic performance frequencies increased
when pupils displayed their Charts. Lois also
found that fourth-grade children enjoyed
computing and charting their own daily
performance frequencies.
Self-recording is simplified with wrist tally
cards. In 1966, Jean Stables cut 3- by 5-inch
blank cards in half and held the 2 112- by 3-
inch card to her wrist with a watch strap. She
used this wrist tally card to record six or seven
different behaviors. At the end of the day, the
tallies were counted and charted and the dated
cards were filed in a card box.
Pupils can count academic and nonacademic
behaviors and display their performance on the
Standard Celeration Chart. In 1967, Carl
Koenig, under my supervision, taught a special
class of six 9- to 1 1-year-old boys classified as
emotionally disturbed. The pupils timed and
counted their own arithmetic and both silent
and oral reading frequencies. Each pupil also
counted one nonacademic behavior (Koenig,
1967). Koenig's master's thesis at the U. of
Kansas was the first to use the term Precision
Teaching and the first to include Standard
Celeration Charts. The chart was called six-
cycle semilog graph paper at the time, and was
later called the standard behavior chart
(Pennypacker, Koenig, & Lindsley, 1972).
Still later, the chart was correctly named
Standard Celeration Chart, because what is
standard on the chart is the angle of the
celeration lines. A line from the lower left
comer to the upper right comer represents a
learning in which performance doubles every
celeration period (i.e., times 2.0 per week, per
month, per 6 months, or every 5 years,
depending on the version of the chart that is
employed). A line from the upper left corner to
the lower right comer represents unlearning, or
deceleration, in which performance halves each
celeration period (i.e., divide by 2.0 per week,
per month, per 6 months, or every 5 years).
Self-selected competencies are more eflective
than teacher-selected. In, 1969, Karen A.
Curtis, supervised by Tom Lovitt, found that
higher academic response frequencies occurred
when the pupils selected their own reward
contingenciea'than when the teacher selected
them (Lovitt & Curtis, 1969).
Pupils with orthopedic handicaps can chart
their own behaviors. In 1969, Sally Slezak,
under my supervision, taught two different
classes of 'children with orthopedic handicaps.
The first year she taught 8 primary pupils: 4
paraplegic qerehral palsied, 3 spina bifida, and
1 brain damaged. Of these, 4 were severe and
4 were mobile. ,The second year she taught 7
intermediate pupils: 3 paraplegic cerebral
palsied, 2 spina bifida, 1 muscular dystrophy,
and 1 chronic health disorder. Of these, 1 was
severe and 6 were ambulatory. All the children
used wrist counters, which they purchased
with points they earned, to count their own
nonacademic behaviors. Wrist tally boards
were used to count up to six or seven behaviors
on the same tally card. The daily tally cards
were dated and kept by the children. . '
Sally discovered that they could use masking
tape strips (better known as "stickies") to
record behaviors. The best size was 1 inch
wide cut 3 to 4 inches long. Each morning the
children would tear off a piece of tape and write
the date and the behavior they were recording
on it. These stickies were placed on wheelchair
arms, crutch legs, comb cases, shorts, or
wrists. At the end of the day, the children
placed their stickies under their names on the
"stickie chart."
In 2 weeks or less, Sally taught her children to
use the standard chart paper. She used the
performance charts as report cards for parents.
Hers was the first thesis to use the term daily
behavior chart to report acceleration as
movements per minute per week and to use an
acceleration finder (Slezak, 1969).
Regular second graders can keep 19 academic
charts each. In 1970, Elizabeth Freeman,
supervised by Eric Haughton, taught an entire
class of second graders at Whitaker School,
Eugene, Oregon, to time, correct, count, and
chart their own academic behaviors. The
children posted their own charts on room
dividers that were set up along the wall. The
children and parents loved this demonstration
of self-recording.
Young children can learn standard charting. In
197 1, 5-year-old Stephanie Bates, supervised
by her father, Douglas Bates, not only taught
her kindergarten class to chart, but also taught
her teacher. Stephanie's chart-teaching method
was made into an 18-minute color slide
presentation that dispelled the common
educational fear that using semilogarithmic
charts was difficult to learn (Bates & Bates,
197 1).
Instructional procedures can be compared using
Precision Teaching methods. In 197 1, Nina
Young, supervised by Nancy Johnson, found
that inner city high school students successfully
tutored elementary school pupils who were one
to four grade levels behind in their reading.
The pupils were tutored by the same tutor 45
minutes a day, 5 days a week. The project,
called Operation Upgrade, lasted several years
during which several graded readers, several
vocabulary lists, the local newspaper, and pupil
written stories were used as curricula from
which the pupils read aloud each day. No one
curriculum produced the best learning for a
majority of the pupils, once again proving
"different strokes for different folks." If one
had to pick a best, it was the newspaper.
For any given two-week period each pupil was
reading from three different materials in three
separate one-minute timings each day. For
example, the SRA graded reader, The Kansas
City Star, and the pupil written "our stories."
If over that two-week period the pupil showed
the steepest learning (not the highest
performance) on The Kansas City Star, the Star
would be kept as one of the three curricula for
the next two-week practice period and the
graded reader and our stories discarded and
two other curricula tried in attempts to get even
better learning producers. In this way, three
different curricula can be tried at once. The
worst can be discarded, and three more tried
again.
More important for Precision Teaching
methods was the discovery that if three
different curricula are tried for 1 minute each
day, the performances and learnings
(frequencies and celerations) for each
curriculum stay independent and projectable.
This means that three different procedures can
be compared at once in the same pupil with the
same tutor in the same calendar time (Johnson,
1971).
Countoons are useful for self-recording. In
1972, Marilyn Cohen, supervised by Harold
Kunzelmann, designed "countoons." These
were cartoon-like drawings in sequenced
frames that described a behavior pinpoint to
accelerate and another to decelerate. Each time
a pupil emitted one of these target behaviors, he
or she made a tally under the picture on the
countoon. These countoons were very
effective in helping students record their own
behavior frequencies.
Charting can help predict student performance.
In 1974, Sally Macmillan, supervised by
Donna Boykin and Ray Beck and teaching a
regular first-grade classroom in Great Falls,
Montana, had all the children writing numbers
in sequence. She found that a trendline
through 2 weeks (10 daily scores) of student
data *plotted on Standard Celeration Charts
could be used to predict performance 2 weeks
into the future.
Naming their "learning pictures" can help
students monitor progress. In 1977, Pat All,
under my supervision, taught her regular
seventh-grade shdents to count and chart the
words they spelled correctly. She had them
sort their charts according to the patterns of
data, called learning pictures, 'She asked them
to name the pictures by their p.atterns. Figure 1
illustrates the learning pictures hamkd.
The code in Figure 1 shows the correct
celeration or learning line as solid line with an
arrow at its left end. It would have been drawn
through the daily correct frequencies that had
been charted. It is moving as on the Chart
from left to right. It should be considered as a
vector in motion, the arrow pointing .to where
the performance is going. The error learning
line is short dashes with an arrow pointing in
its direction. The record floor (the lowest
frequency that can occur) is shown as two
horizontal long dashes at the bottom of each
picture. These floor lines indicate that each
picture is about two weeks long. The floor
lines also show how far the frequencies are
above the Floor. Note that in the Aim picture
the errors are below the floor, showing zero
errors are being made.
The students named Jaws after the wide-open
jaws of the shark famous in a thriller movie the
prior summer. Snowplow, Uphill, and
Downhill came from the positions of snow skis
while skiing. In Climb, Takeoff and Landing
the correct celeration line is the flight of an
airplane and its related error line is the surface
of the ground. In Surface and Dive the correct
line is the surface of the sea, and the error line
is the path of a submarine. Note that all the
names describe motion, showing that the
students knew their learning is dynamic and
has direction and that their performance is
almost always changing for better or for worse.
These relationships are useful as memory aids
in sharing these learning picture names with
other students.
/ Figure 1 1
THIRTEEN LEARNING
PICTURES
-------- IMPROVING PICTURES ------------
Line Code:
-----)

Cross- Jaws Take- Cllmb Uphlll Dlve Record
over off floor
--- MAINTAINING ---
-------WORSEN1 NG -------
The students saw pictures with corrects
maintaining and errors maintaining not as one
picture, but as three very different pictures.
One picture on which both frequencies were
very low was known as the "Rock-Bottom."
Another picture, with both frequencies in the
middle of the Chart, was "Get-Truckin'." The
last picture, with the corrects above the aim and
the errors below the floor, became known as
the "Aim." This showed the advantages of
inductive over deductive development and also
demonstrated that the child knows best (All,
1977).
Daily practice produces more learning than
practicing every other day. In 1978, Suellen
Gabriel, supervised by Dick Clement and Ray
Beck, taught her 26 regular fourth-grade pupils
to locate and abbreviate the names of the states
on a blank United States map. She found that
the learning from 1-minute practice sessions
every day was greater than that from 2 minutes
practice every other day. She learned that daily
practice is more effective than alternate day
practice when the same time is spent.
Using two channels at once can help students
learn. In 1978, David Keller, supervised by
Linda Haines, Dave Freschi, and Ann Duncan,
taught boys who were diagnosed as
emotionally disturbed and autistic at Spaulding
Youth Center in Tilton, New Hampshire. He
taught spatial relationships in more than one
channel each day. (Channels refer to the
pathways by which the student receives
information and produces a response: for
example, see and write, see and say, and hear
and write.) David found not only that correct
learning and error learning were independent,
but also that the learning in one channel ("See
the name"IwPoint to the picture") was
independent from the learning in another
channel ("Hear the namem/ "Place your hand in
the position"). Just as Young and Johnson had
found that three curricula can be tried at once
because their learning is independent, Keller
found that two or more channels can be tried at
once each day because their learning is also
independent.
A leap-up in curriculum improves learning and
motivation. In 1979, Marilyn Chappel,
supervised by her principal, Gene Stromberg,
taught her second-grade class at Garfield
School, Ottawa, Kansas, basic mathematics
facts. Figure 2 is a copy of Hollie's
mqthematics chart for the fall semester. She
looked at basic mathematics problems and
wrote the answers on Precision Teaching
practice sheets during 1-minute timings
(seelwrite). The dots on the Chart represent
her frequency of correct additions during her
best timing each day. The small x's are her
error frequencies per minute each day.
Learning (celeration) lines are drawn through
the dots and x's to show the slopes of the
correct and error learning in 'each curriculum
phase. . .
b '.
Note that the +5 and +6 addition problem
phases produced correct learning, but little
error learning. When +5 and i 6 addition
problems were mixed on the same practice
sheet (the next two phases), error learning did
not occur either. However, when all basic
addition facts and all basic subtraction facts
were mixed with basic multiplication facts and
practiced without prior instruction (+, -,x)
Hollie had both high correct (x1.6) and higher
error (110.0) learning!
Essentially the same beneficial effect of the
curriculum leap-up on Hollie's correct learning
(advancing well ahead in the curriculum to a
new instructional objective) was seen on all the
other children's learning. Their median correct
frequency jumped down from 120 to 4 per
minute from the last day of "mixed +5 and +6"
to the first day of "mixed add, subtract, and
multiply facts." This showed that the leap-up
was 30 times harder to do (12014). Their
median correct learning turned up from x1.60
to xl.90, with a range of x1.40 to x3.0 per
week. This showed their correct learning had
improved by x1.19 or 19% (1.9011.60).
A similar beneficial effect similar to that of the
curriculum leap-up on Hollie's error learning
was seen on all the other children's error
learning. Their median error frequency jumped
up from 0 to 20 per minute. This showed that
the leap-up produced over 20 times more
errors. Their median error learning turned
down from 11.00 to 12.50, with a range of
11.50 to 110.0 per week. This showed that
their error learning was 2.5 times better.
In summary, the leap-up in the curriculum to
mixed addition, subtraction, and multiplication
facts without instruction made the pupils' basic
mathematics 30 times harder to do with 20
times more errors, but over all their learning
was doubled. After their leap-up, most of the
students were in cross-over learning, with the
error frequencies five times higher than their
corrects. All the students enjoyed the
challenging error-filled curriculum much more
than their prior accuracy-addictive curriculum.
With these challenges, the students made more
improvement in less time in both correct and
error performance than would have been
expected using traditional curricular sequence
steps.
The learning of most students is held back by
traditional lockstep, slow-paced public school
curricula. However, Marilyn's class results
suggest that all students are capable of doubling
their frequencies every week if given an
appropriate and proper curriculum challenge.
The results also show that the traditional
instruction before-practice educational sequence
may be unnecessary and therefore wastes
valuable educational time. Even more
important, Hollie and Marilyn's other pupils
have shown that accuracy addiction, or
perfectionism, and its desired opposite,
curricular courage, are not properties of
children. Rather, they are both clearly
properties of the curriculum.
Conclusion
The list of bench-mark contributions to
Precision Teaching presented here is not
complete. Many more teacher supervisor teams
have made significant contributions. However,
the list demonstrates the nature of the
contributions that practicing teachers have made
to Precision Teaching. It should be clear by
now that Precision Teaching was built by a
large number of Practicing Teachers in their
classrooms, not in an academic, grant, ,or
administrative office. It was not deductive, not
the classroom testing of academic hypotheses.
Rather, it was inductive, coming from
classroom discoveries, made by teachers in
their daily efforts to improve the amount,
quality, and precision of their pupils' learning.
References
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. . improve their learning picture. Unpublished
master's thesis, Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence.
Bates, S. & Bates, D. F. (1971).... and a child shall lead
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~ihnson, N. J. (1971). Acceleration of inter-city
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Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University
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Koenig, C. H. (1967). Precision teaching with
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Lindsley, 0. R. (1960). Characteristics of the behavior
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Ogden R. Lindsley is Professor of
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TEACHING Exceptional Children, 22(3), Spring 1990, p. 10-15. Copyright 1990. by The Council for Exceptional Children.
Reprinted with permission. 17