Reading and Comprehension

Studies show that fully 88% of reading difficulties stem from an underlying cognitive weakness such as slow auditory processing, weak memory or sequencing skills. 

Over time the symptoms change -- early fluency difficulties morph into reading comprehension difficulties and then into an unwillingness to read for pleasure.  

Meanwhile, educators, tutors and parents focus on coping strategies, instruction to help children work around these issues, leaving the underlying cognitive issues causing these difficulties untouched.

How Gemm Helps Reading Fluency

Rather than tutor the problem -- which most often just more of the same kind of instruction that is not working at school -- Gemm uses science-based software that identifies and treats the underlying cognitive issues.

By removing the cognitive impediments to reading, we enable a more natural and comfortable reading style.  We call this automaticity, reading fluency.

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How Gemm Helps Reading Comprehension

Most reading comprehension problems stem from an inability of the brain to do concentrate on two things at once -- in this case, decoding (reading) and extracting meaning (comprehension).

Gemm's two-step program is:

Step 1:  Make decoding automatic.  If a student is able to decode effortlessly, subconsciously, like riding a bike, his or her brain is able to fully focus on comprehension.  Our program removes the cognitive impediments to reading automaticity.

Step 2: Re-teach reading fundamentals.  Once our program has helped enable read fluency we turn our attention to reading accuracy -- undoing prior bad reading habits developed to cope, language structure and reading comprehension, literal and inferential.

For more on our reading program by age, click here.

How Gemm Helps Advanced Reading Skills

High school and adult reading requires more than just basic reading comprehension.  It requires reading with metacognition, the ability to think about what you are reading and self-correct while you are reading.   Mastering this high level but critical skill has a dramatic impact on student productivity and test scores.

The key to reading comprehension with metacognition is decoding automaticity.  Until your child is able to read fluently and effortlessly, there is not enough brain capacity available for higher level thinking.
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