Gemm's Reading Program

Decoding Is The Key To Reading

Fluent decoding is the most important skill in reading. If decoding is not automatic, reading comprehension is compromised. Unfortunately, decoding is an exceedingly difficult skill to master as it requires the ability to pull apart words in your head, i.e., to hear "cat" as |c| |a| |t|. Hearing those individual sounds requires the ability to process at natural language speed, up to 40 sounds a second.

Not surprisingly, many students never do learn to decode automatically, and so it diverts concentration from reading comprehension. This exhausting multi-tasking -- decoding and comprehending -- means 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 requirement is much higher.

Processing Skills Can Be Improved

Scientists now know that the brain is has much more in common with a muscle than a hard-wired computer. It is plastic, meaning that it can adapt and change if exercised appropriately. Auditory processing is one such skill that will respond dramatically to exercise. Fast ForWord software strengthens auditory processing skills to 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.
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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.
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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.
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3. Reading comprehension (literal). We start with sentence comprehension and small paragraphs. Our program helps students to routinely think while reading and to read accurately -- often undoing prior bad habits such as word skipping. We also build vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills, all required for reading comprehension.
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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.
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