Dyslexia Treatment

Comprehensive Program for Dyslexic Children

Our dyslexia treatment uses research based Fast ForWord cognitive and reading software, at home with remote personal coaching. Research shows that 88% of dyslexic students have cognitive or language delays, difficulties that can be treated using certain types of mental exercises. Fast ForWord was designed with this discovery in mind.

Clients report positive and often stunning results -- improved fluency, comprehension, a willingness to read, and oftentimes, an eradication of dyslexia symptoms. Treatment protocols vary by age and need.
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Our Treatment Pyramid

Using the 50+ cognitive and reading exercises available in Fast ForWord software, Gemm Learning will design a sequence of programs to meet your dyslexic child's needs, starting with building a solid cognitive skills foundation, and then moving up the pyramid, finally arriving at critical reading -- the ability to think critically and self correct while reading.

Improved Cognitive Skills
Many young children are able to read naturally. This is because they were born with good listening skills. They learn the language just by listening, and can then transition to reading with ease. If your child needs to devote attention to decoding, breaking words apart, then reading is far more challenging and exhausting. The brain can learn to decode automatically, but this requires sound processing and phonological awareness. Our dyslexia software builds these essential cognitive skills, often lacking in children with dyslexia.

Reading Fluency
Reading fluency is all about decoding automaticity: the ability to push decoding down into the subconscious, to make it effortless. If a child needs to concentrate to decode, then reading comprehension is compromised. In addition, it forces the brain to multitask -- decode and derive meaning -- which is exhausting and not likely to be enjoyable. Your dyslexic child cannot improve reading comprehension without improving fluency.

Our dyslexia treatment sequence continues developing the cognitive aspects of decoding -- primarily processing and phonological awareness -- as well as adding in exercises to develop eye tracking skills, sight work knowledge, and language structure knowledge and dexterity.

Vocabulary, Spelling & Language Structure For Reading
Most dyslexic children do not have language mastery, in general because they need to concentrate while listening and reading has detracted from their ability over time to absorb and observe how language is structured and used.

Weak auditory processing skills can also hamper vocabulary -- longer words, or words with difficult to hear blends, tend not to be heard clearly enough to be used confidently. Our dyslexia treatment assumes there will be vocabulary, grammar and sentence syntax gaps that need to be exercised, and closed.

Spelling is more critical in improving reading skills than most parents recognize. Eventually every word becomes a sight word, mapped by the brain through recognition of spelling patterns. If spelling skills are inadequate, high level reading comprehension will be a challenge. Our software helps spelling, first by building a phonetic foundation, then spelling rules, and finally by tackling spelling exceptions.

Reading Comprehension
Making sense of the text, understanding the main ideas, connecting the text to prior knowledge, are all part of reading comprehension. In addition to requiring knowledge of language structure and available mind space -- not taken up with inefficient decoding -- reading comprehension also requires thinking while reading. Our dyslexia treatment includes a number of adaptive analytical and sentence completion exercises that build thinking while reading skills.

Critical Reading With Metacognition
Good readers use sophisticated, metacognitive strategies. That is, they think critically about their own understanding as they go. All students need to improve reading to this high level where a reader is aware of his own cognitive experience is the difference between a good and excellent reader, an average or great ACT or SAT score.

Our dyslexia treatment on average takes 4-6 months, working at least 30 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week.
Fast ForWord dyslexia program steps in more detail

Dyslexia Treatment For Elementary Age

Ultimately, the path to overcoming dyslexia is to do a lot of reading. And so, for elementary age children our programs focus on making reading easier. By improving fluency and reducing the exhaustion factor in reading, our dyslexia treatment aim to make your child a reader who will then be willing and able to put in the reading miles to develop sound reading comprehension skills.

Younger children spend more time in our cognitive programs, starting with Fast ForWord Language, to bring their phonological awareness and cognitive skills -- processing, memory, attention and sequencing -- up to the level required for effortless, automatic reading. After Fast ForWord Language, most dyslexic children move on to Fast ForWord Language to Reading, the follow-up cognitive program, before moving to Fast ForWord Reading Level 1 or 2, which work on other reading fundamentals -- spelling, language structure, vocabulary -- as well as analytical reading exercises that help train your child to think while reading, the defining reading comprehension skill.

Dyslexia Treatment For Middle and High School Students

For middle and high school students, the dyslexia software effort focuses more on developing reading speed, stamina and comprehension. Every student will complete Fast ForWord Literacy, the cognitive program that targets the most common causes of dyslexia, before moving to the Fast ForWord Reading, a series of age-appropriate reading exercises. Most children complete two or more programs.

Outcome Scenarios

Dyslexia is a stubborn diagnosis with many causes that brings with it deep seated frustration and/or fear of reading. There is no question that our treatment for dyslexia physically changes how the brain processes language for reading, helping children with dyslexia by making reading easier. The question is how long it takes a child to recognize that reading actually is easier and for them to fully engage.

For Younger Children
For younger children, parents report improved confidence early on, in the first 4-6 weeks. This confidence comes from your child seeing that many of the words on the page are recognizable -- what seemed like Mission Impossible now looks achievable. This confidence should also translate into more willingness to sound out unfamiliar words while reading.

Once your child has completed Fast ForWord Language or around the three month mark, most parents notice more fluency in reading and the indications that reading comprehension is starting to improve. Over the next 1-2 years, depending on how long you stay with us, changes should then come at a steady rate; better reading, improved focus, stronger performance at school and more confidence.

For Middle and High School Age Children
For older children our programs are more about making known decoding skills automatic and so the timetable for measurable changes is generally shorter. One complicating factor for older students is that there is a learned behavior aspect to their learning habits. And so, when Gemm Learning has improved underlying cognitive skills, it is up to the student, with parental guidance, to recognize reading is easier and to adjust habits accordingly.

Our advice to parents is to be patient and observant. Children with more severe dyslexia may take longer to see gains. On the other hand, in high functioning students we hear about changes within a couple of weeks.

The brain is incredibly integrated, with learning ability generally as strong as its weakest link. By making even small improvements in reading skills, Fast ForWord is a dyslexia treatment that is able to make a profound difference in a short period, a difference that is then part of your child, to help reading and learning over a lifetime.

However long it takes, Gemm Learning will be there every step of the way, providing the most affordable and comprehensive cognitive software dyslexia treatment in North America.
Dyslexia software service description