Reading Assistant Software

Frequently Asked Questions

Who should use Reading Assistant?

Reading Assistant is designed to be used by any student who has attained basic word recognition and decoding skills and is now building his/her vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This includes students as young as first grade, all the way up to adults.

Reading Assistant has solutions designed to implement with Response to Intervention programs for all student tiers.

When does Gemm use Reading Assistant?

We offer this program only to students have completed the cognitive skills training in Fast ForWord. It is offered in concert with the Fast ForWord Reading series.

How often should students use Reading Assistant?

Our recommended schedule is for K-3 – a minimum of 20 minutes 4-5 days per week, for 4-12 -- a minimum of 30 minutes 4-5 days a week.

How much does Reading Assistant cost?

While Reading Assistant can be added to an Intensive or Summer Friends program for returning clients for no extra charge, in most cases it will be done in a sequence that includes Fast ForWord and is priced identically to Fast ForWord services.
Gemm Learning fee schedules

Are there levels of progress like Fast ForWord?

Each passage is rated for reading skill level. And, Gemm Learning sees fluency, comprehension and other scores, including listening to recorded reading, after every session. Using this information, Gemm Learning can adjust this library based on your child's progress, hopefully, in most cases, providing more complex material as reading skills improve.

Is Reading Assistant research-based?

Yes. According to the report of the National Reading Panel, "classroom practices that encourage repeated oral reading with feedback and guidance leads to meaningful improvements in reading expertise for students—for good readers as well as those who are experiencing difficulty." With Reading Assistant, the computer becomes the supportive listener that ensures all students can regularly practice oral reading while receiving immediate, individual feedback from the advanced speech-recognition software.

Is Reading Assistant research validated?

Yes. The impact of Reading Assistant on fluency growth was evaluated with mainstream students in Grades 2-5.  Half of the classrooms in two schools used the software in thirty-minute sessions, once or twice a week over 17 weeks. Across all four grades, fluency gains were significantly greater for students who used the software than those who did not, averaging 43% (E.S.=0.91) greater than normative expectations over grades. Project sponsored by the Carlisle Foundation and NICHD.
Reading Assistant research results

What genres are covered in Reading Assistant?

Realistic fiction
Historical fiction
Science fiction
Poetry
Folktale, myth, legend
Expository nonfiction
Biography
Play
Speech
Jokes
Short Story
Point-counterpoint
Personal Narrative
Journal; eye-witness account

How long has Reading Assistant been in existence?

Soliloquy Learning, the original developers of Reading Assistant, was formed in 2000 to pioneer the use of proprietary speech recognition technology to monitor and assist students through Guided Oral Reading. Design was led by literacy expert, Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams, with research on the efficacy sponsored through research grants from NICHD and IES. Soliloquy was purchased by Scientific Learning, developers of Fast ForWord, in 2007, after which time large sums were invested to dramatically expand the leveled Reading Assistant library, and it was integrated into the Fast ForWord online reporting platform, Progress Tracker, and the online student access platform, MySciLearn.

What do the quiz questions assess?

The comprehension questions are designed to review main ideas, key concepts, core arguments, and vocabulary from the passage. The question types include inferential and literal comprehension, analysis, prediction, and summary.

How does Reading Assistant support vocabulary?

Reading Assistant helps students learn and retain vocabulary word meanings by providing:

• Audible syllabification

• Dictionary definition

• Contextual sentence

• Picture representation in most instances

How does Reading Assistant build fluency?

Reading fluency is the ability to read with sufficient ease and accuracy that one can focus attention on the meaning and message of the text.

Reading Assistant builds fluency by providing:

• Oral reading practice

• Supportive intervention

• Repeated reading

• Review words

• Feedback on fluency (words correct per minute)

How does Reading Assistant foster reading comprehension?

Reading Assistant ensures reading comprehension by providing:

1/ Question Answering. Comprehension questions are presented at the end of each passage. Students can not take the quiz unless they have read the entire selection.

2/ Comprehension Monitoring. In material for grades 5-11, embedded comprehension questions ensure attention to meaning and comprehension in the course of reading.  Students quickly learn to focus their attention on meaning so that they can answer these questions without resorting to time-consuming reviews of the text they have just read. They learn that it is far more efficient and valuable to think while they read than it is to read quickly, but, without thought.

Question Answering and Comprehension Monitoring as research proven methods for ensuring comprehension.

Where did the guided reading selections come from?

Many of the Reading Assistant texts were originally published in one of the Carus™ family of magazines or by Lerner Publishing™. These Carus magazines include: Appleseeds™, Ladybug™, Spider™, Click!™, Cricket™, Odyssey™, Cobblestone™, Calliope™, and Faces™. Many of the guided reading selections were drawn from famous authors including Guy De Maupassant and O’Henry. Many more selections were written by great children’s authors.

Does the software support ELL students?

Yes. In addition to the features of Read to Me, Show Vocabulary, Record My Reading, and Play My Reading, Version 4.0 allows the teacher to enable Spanish language support for a student. When this feature is activated, the glossary will contain an Español button which displays the glossary term in Spanish and plays a Spanish audio file. In addition, the student can click on any word to hear the correct pronunciation of a word