Dyslexia Treatment at Home

Fast ForWord software

Most children with dyslexia can eventually learn to read.  Pre-reading language and cognitive skills can improve with exercise. It’s just that while good readers exercise and build these foundational skills naturally, simply through conversation and daily language interactions, dyslexic children need more practice, more stimulation than occurs naturally.

Our dyslexia treatment for children and adults provides that supplemental stimulation to accelerate the development of pre-reading and reading skills.

Each exercise presents your child with sound trials in quick succession, adding speed and complexity at your child’s pace, building towards processing proficiency at natural language speed. We then add reading-specific exercises.

Our program goal is reading automaticity, effortless decoding and reading comprehension – leading to an accelerated and more confident future learning trajectory.

Students work on our Fast ForWord software at home with remote coaching from Gemm Learning.

Note. like Orton-Gillingham, our goal is help your dyslexic child hear the sounds of English.  However, we work on improving language processing so that hearing these sounds is a natural process, not requiring your child them one by one.

Reading Software for Dyslexia

Our Fast ForWord software interacts with the language centers of the brain, making changes that are visible on fMRI imaging – increased activity in language regions while reading.

The Window To New Learning Is Always Open

For many years it was thought the brain was hardwired, meaning it was thought there was no way to resolve a learning disability like dyslexia.

However, in the late 1970s several scientists (Hubel, Weisel, Merzenich) discovered neuroplasticity. This is the capacity of the brain to change its structure and function through experience and training. The invention of the fMRI in the 1990s confirmed neuroplasticity by showing changes in brain imaging. Therefore, we now know that the brain can change and self-improve (Merzenich, 2004).

This window for improvement remains open throughout life. Our online dyslexia treatment at home taps into this opportunity.

Neuroplasticity and Dyslexia

In the case of dyslexia, limited phonemic awareness impacts reading growth. This shows up on an fMRI as scattered activity, indicating a variety of makeup strategies when reading.

Our treatment for dyslexia activates language regions of the brain. This helps language processing, phonemic awareness and then reading. Post-treatment fMRI scans after Fast ForWord look directionally like proficient readers (Stamford and Harvard studies).

Once a reader relies on the brain’s language centers, reading is more automatic, freeing up the mind for comprehension. This can start a virtuous cycle – less resistance to reading, more reading practice, and so reading growth.

Dyslexia Treatment Steps

Karen Foli compares language processing delays to listening to sound through water. If word memory is muddy, reading is a challenge. The teacher can say |bad| starts with |ba| sound, but if your child cannot hear the |ba|, this teaching is torture and soul destroying.

And yet, that’s what most dyslexia programs do. They use word lists and phonics training to help students learn the letter sounds, one by one.

Other dyslexia responses such as tutoring, tinted dyslexia glasses, IEP’s or accommodations at school, etc., are also coping mechanisms.

This is where our dyslexia treatment for children is different. We improve the clarity of word memory so that students can actually make out the sounds in words.  Our approach has three steps:

1. Build Language Processing
   We strengthen cognitive skill gaps – processing, working memory, attention, sequencing.
2. Build Automaticity
   We add exercises to build command of the language – grammar, vocabulary, word analysis and spelling.
3. Reading Comprehension
   Our dyslexia treatment programs then focus on reading comprehension with critical and inferential thinking.

Disclaimer & Cautionary Note

Gemm Learning is an educational program that works on cognitive skills. it is not a medical intervention. Because every dyslexic child is unique, we are not able to help in every case. However, in most cases, we improve reading as measured by our testing and get reports from parents that indicate an accelerated learning trajectory. We start with a consult to properly set expectations.

To find out if your child is a candidate for our online dyslexia treatment at home, request a free consult here or get our dyslexia report.

Note: There are many forms or labels for dyslexia. Phonological dyslexia is the most common. In addition, there is surface dyslexia, semantic dyslexia (focused on word retrieval) and deep dyslexia (or alexia, caused by traumatic brain injury).  While these are all a little different, the common theme is language processing difficulty, the main thrust of our dyslexia intervention.