Gemm's Reading Program

Decoding Is The Key To Reading

Fluent decoding is the most important skill in reading, because if decoding is not automatic, reading comprehension is compromised. Unfortunately, it is also an exceedingly skill to master as it to read a word on a page requires the ablity to pull it apart in your head, i.e., to hear "cat" as |c| |a| |t| and to hear those individual sounds requires the ability to process at natural language speed, which can be up to 40 sounds a seconds.

Not surprisingly, many students never do learn to decode comfortably, or at least not well enough to enable them to be able to focus entirely on reading comprehension. Consequently, they toil with reading throughout their school careers.

Decoding Requires Accurate Processing

The underlying impediment to easy decoding is weak auditory processing. Sometimes it shows up in a child's language, but often it only comes into play in reading where the processing speed required to hear the sounds inside words is much higher.

Gemm Improves Processing To Make Reading Easier

Scientists now know that the brain is plastic, that it can adapt and change if exercised appropriately. Auditory processing is one such learning skill that will respond dramatically to exercise. Gemm Learning relies on this brain plasticity, using Fast ForWord software to strengthen underlying processing skills and help children and adults become good readers.

Gemm's Approach

We train the brain to process faster and more accurately so that the student can hear the sounds inside words, phonemes, more clearly and comfortably. Our program, Fast ForWord, uses repetition with gradual increases in speed and complexity to achieve automaticity in reading -- effortless, natural decoding.  This approach helps individuals at all academic levels.
Learn more about Fast ForWord

Here are the steps in our process:

1. Build a secure cognitive foundation.  We start by strengthening processing and other related cognitive skills required to make fluent decoding possible, called reading MAPS -- Memory, Attention, Processing and Sequencing.
   Learn more
   
   
2. Develop reading fluency.  With the cognitive foundation set, we then teach the spelling, vocabulary and language structure so that students will find all text familiar and expected, further improving decoding speed and fluency.
   Learn more
   
   
3. Reading comprehension (literal). We start with sentence comprehension and small paragraphs. Our program aims to help students learn reading accuracy -- often undoing prior bad habits such as word skipping -- vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills, all required for reading comprehension.
   Learn more
   
   
4. Critical reading (middle school and up). The final step is reading with meta-cognition, the ability to think about what you are reading -- to self-adjust, make inferences and think critically.
   Learn more