Skills Development—Drill and Kill?

Recently I had the opportunity to watch the High School Fencing League during practice. It was quite interesting to watch the students learning the sport of fencing.

At the beginning of every practice students lined up, saluted, and were run through a series of drills designed to increase their skills and automatic responses. Sometimes they were instructed to follow verbal instructions. Sometimes they were asked to follow hand signals and ignore contrary verbal signals. They even had "opposites" day and had to perform the opposite action of the given verbal instruction. This practice made the young men and women learn to focus carefully and concentrate on rapidly directing their actions.

The last day of the two-week camp fell on International "Talk like a Pirate" Day. The instructor marched down the center of the two lines of students keeping the beat going as the students practiced while chanting, "Advance, Retreat—Retreat, Advance!" This was punctuated by an occasional "Lunge!" from the instructor. Every lunge with the foil was accompanied by a verbal, "Arrrrrgh!" from the students. Somehow the instructor managed not to get poked by anyone! The fencing students were doing repetitive drills and—they were having fun!

Now, why am I writing about high school fencing practice when this is a website about reading? Nearly everyone has heard the old slogan, "Drill and Kill." It was used to support the notion that if students were made to do drill and practice, that it might kill their desire to learn. But is that idea true?

Every sport requires drill and practice to achieve excellence. Playing a musical instrument requires drill and practice to become skilled. Reading also requires practice to become proficient. The students who practice more become more skilled while the ones who do not practice fall behind. Do we want excellence in readers? Absolutely!

The practice I observed during the fencing camp is called rote rehearsal. It is the continued repetition of a specific action, or a sequence of actions, until one no longer needs to think about the steps required to perform that action. It becomes automatic. The fencing students learn a specific action with the foil, or a specific type of footwork and then they practice it, slowly at first, then more rapidly as it becomes easier to perform. Next, they learn to combine the new skill with previously learned skills. Eventually, the fencers learn to combine many smaller skills into longer sequences of skills. The skills are synthesized. In subsequent practices, students are given opportunity for continued guided drill and practice.

Learning a new skill creates a new pathway through the neurons in the brain. The right kind of repeated practice strengthens that path until the desired action becomes so automatic that the learner no longer has to consciously think about it. In effect, the path through the brain becomes "greased", so the response to stimulus gets faster and faster over time. In reading, we call it automaticity.

Good beginning reading instruction works the same way. First students are taught a specific letter-sound followed by drill, or practice, using it in words; then use the new words to read text. Following this initial instruction, students need repeated practice in reading so that the skills they are learning become automatic.

Drill and practice: It's not drill and kill, it's drill and skill. Readers need just enough practice with a sound-pattern to become skilled in reading words and text; then quickly move to the next skill.

When phonics reading skills are taught in isolation—and the reading program fails to utilize the new skills in subsequent reading practice—much of the new learning is lost. The brain pathway has not been greased by practice and practical application.

We make the mistake of thinking that drill can't be fun. If you saw the amount of drill the fencers had to do you would think it wouldn't be any fun at all—and you would be wrong! They had creative instructors who made the drill so much fun that it was even fun to watch. Believe me, those students had a real workout every day and kept coming back for more.

Reading skills practice can be fun too. When students get good instruction and see themselves making daily progress in their reading skills, they get excited about it and keep coming back for more. That is what makes Sound Bytes Reading so effective. When students get just the right amount of drill and skills practice immediately followed with practical application, whether it's in fencing or in reading, the drill and practice necessary to achieve excellence is fun.

Drill and practice—with Sound Bytes Reading it's not drill and kill—it's drill and skill.