Maximizing Fast ForWord: How We Get Results

Getting the Most From Fast ForWord Software

Gemm Learning has used evidence-based Fast ForWord protocols to help over 9,000 students with a wide variety of ages, diagnoses, attitudes, time availability, and goals. Here’s what we consider when advising clients on protocol plans that fit their situation.

Our goal is to help your child become a confident and independent learner and reader, using Fast ForWord software to start. At its core, Fast ForWord has three phases:

1. Creating learning momentum in the first 4-6 weeks. This is the most intensive phase and the most important.
2. Cognitive skill development, the next 8-12 weeks.
3. Address reading skill gaps/bad habits to develop reading comprehension, 12-24 weeks.

Generating Change – Creating Momentum

Creating learning momentum where there is none/very little is no simple task. Here’s why.

The brain, by nature, is a self-improving organ. If learning is not progressing, that means the brain is not finding pathways to acquire the skills required for reading and learning. Think about how you teach a child to hit a baseball, and you start with slow pitches. The brain is more than willing, but it needs slow pitches to start.

A struggling brain is likely only seeing fast pitches – mainly language that is too fast to process, i.e., too fast to understand and too fast to break apart so as to recognize language conventions, etc. When it’s all coming at you too fast, there is no way forward, so learning growth stalls.

Our “Slow Pitch” Software Machine

Our software presents exercises that involve all of the foundational cognitive and language skills for reading and learning – probing for your child’s skill gaps and impediments to learning growth.

Then the software starts with slowed down versions of the processing, sequencing, attention and working memory. These are the skills that need to eventually be mastered at (much faster) natural language speed for learning and reading.

This is the heart of our program: finding those skill delays, then presenting slowed versions of exercises that will help, getting the brain to interact with those exercises and slowly start to respond correctly—i.e., learning movement! (albeit at slow speeds). Then, a little faster and a little more complex—the idea being to pull these skills up step by step to natural language speed at each student’s own pace.

This initial “find the gaps, then start momentum” process takes 4-6 weeks for most students, typically less for middle school and older children, and typically a bit longer for younger children and children with dyslexia or APD diagnosis.

Everybody Starts at the Start!

The first 2-3 weeks are the source of most of our success. It’s why we have pages and pages of positive testimonials. That is why Fast ForWord is such an effective reading and learning program.

If you can get your child to attend the program in those first few weeks, a success testimonial likely awaits. The good news is that the software has a computer game feel. So, while it probes areas of genuine difficulty for your child starting out, there is a honeymoon period during which most children rise to the challenge.

You might think your children have mastered these basic skills – there were no speech delays early on, and your child can rhyme and is attentive. That might well be true, but children are masters at disguising their delays. They want to please you, they want to please the teachers, and so they fake it. They cover their tracks.

Children With No Diagnosis

While we provide Fast ForWord for dyslexia and  APD together and separately, most students have no formal diagnosis.

If your child is struggling at a higher level—reading with comprehension, thinking critically while listening in class, or failing to plan or think ahead—chances are the problem lies in a delayed or inefficient fundamental skill, one we touch on these first few weeks.

As a reminder, the software is adaptive. If your child indeed has a sound cognitive skill foundation, she will sail through this first phase in just 2-3 weeks and then be presented with more sophisticated exercises, seeking to build higher-level reading and thinking skills.

Cognitive Skill Development – 20 Hours to Cement All Gains

Unfortunately, there are no real shortcuts here. The science says that even though we can almost always start marching cognitive and learning skills up to natural language proficiency in a few weeks, a student needs at least 20 hours of activity in these skills to integrate the gains permanently.

At least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, that’s 8 weeks.

Plus, the pinnacle of learning, critical thinking while reading with comprehension, is a sequential process – it takes time.

Fast ForWord Protocols

We will select 2 or 3 program sets (depending on age and diagnosis) with exercises that build in speed and intensity in hundreds of tiny but incremental steps. For instance, Sky Gym in Foundations I exercises processing using a high and low sound sequencing game. It starts with 2 sounds at about 5 sounds a second, quite slow. By the end, its successor exercise (Space Racer in Foundations II) is asking the student to sequence 5 sounds (not 2) at a speed of 40 sounds a second (not 5), lightning fast! There are hundreds of steps in the middle. Most brains are able to climb the ladder to natural language processing speed step by step.

For Fast ForWord to be a “one and done” program for you or your child, we need your child to complete those 20 hours for the skills to stick. At the end of this phase, our goals for your child:

• Pre-phonics skills mastered, phonics much easier
• Attention skills improved
• Able to follow instructions, remember assignments
• Reading starts to be easier
• Test-taking starts to improve

Note that the first set of exercises does not include text; it focuses on cognitive and language skills. However, because this program significantly improves phonemic awareness, most children see reading gains during this period.

Correcting Bad Reading Habits and Skill Gaps – Another 20 Hours

Once the brain has learning momentum and the impediments to learning have been removed, it’s like a dam bursting in most cases. Learning progress from then on is significant and continuing. At this point, our goal is for your child to be a healthy learner.

And it’s fair to say that you could stop our program at this point, as your child now has the skills to develop normally as a reader. However, because most children are still behind in reading at that point (although they are catching up fast!), most clients participate in reading skills programs. These exercises help accelerate reading progress and specifically address poor reading habits that can develop when a child struggles with reading.

Introducing New Skills

Left to right reading. For instance, one exercise helps a child migrate from skipping around a page looking for words they recognize to a left-to-right process of reading every word. After our first two phases, your child now has the tools to decode every word. So we help your child’s brain put that into practice with a left-to-right reading style, reading every word. To support this transition, we also teach those so-called “red words” like “right” that are not phonetic, so that red words don’t cause your child to start skipping words again!

Thinking while reading is another skill that needs to be demonstrated and practiced.

Struggling readers put every ounce of brain power into figuring out every word. After the first two phases of Fast ForWord. This process is automatic for your child. The brain now processes the sounds much more accurately. It can easily match them to the letter sounds.

And so the brain now has free capacity to think, it’s just that some brains take a nudge to recognize that. Several exercises connect added tasks to words, such as putting the word into a category. For example, when reading the word “Apple,” you would then select a category like “building,” “place,” or “fruit” while thinking about the word.

The Fast ForWord reading exercises are fantastic and, at the same time, challenging. Most of our students go as far as they can (generally to grade level), and then families take a break. They often come back a year or so later or over the summer and try to progress further and more deeply integrate good reading habits.

Postscript After Gemm – Practice Makes Perfect

Because we help a wide range of children, our client testimonials detail all kinds of benefits. However, if we had to boil it all down to one overarching goal, it would be to make reading easier. If reading is easier, it is likely more engaging for your child, hopefully leading to more reading and reading mastery and a lifelong reading habit—and that is a thing of beauty! It’s why we do this!

Ditto for learning. If test questions are easier to read and process and better working memory and attention skills make the selection of choices more efficient, then the attitude to learning, test taking, and school can improve. That starts a virtuous cycle – better attitude, effort, results, attitude.

Check out how Gemm Learning’s service works here. If you wonder if we can help your child, contact us for a free consultation.