High School Reading Programs

Reading comprehension with metacognition

Is your high school child a slow reader? Does your child resist reading, or does the absolute minimum? Are reading comprehension skills eroding as the texts get harder? Is homework taking too long?

Our reading programs for high school students address these difficulties, using brain-based exercises to automate decoding (fluency) and train high school level reading comprehension skills.

High School comprehension is a challenging standard

High school reading requires metacognitive reading comprehension, where a student can extract the main idea and think critically while reading. This is a difficult skill to master and many high school readers are falling short.
What it takes to read with metacognition

Over 6 million U.S. students in grades 8–12 are struggling readers. One in four adolescents cannot read well enough to identify the main idea in a passage or to understand informational text. ACT, a leading producer of college admission tests, reports that approximately 50% of high school graduates do not have the reading skills they needed to succeed in college. Many colleges report the need to provide remedial reading services to incoming students.

Our Comprehensive Reading Programs

We develop high school level reading skills from the fundamentals up. In a methodical and comprehensive sequence, we build automaticity in decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, and finally, abstract thinking and reasoning skills. Our goal is to help high school students prepare for the high stakes tests in 11th grade and for college. Upcoming SAT dates here.
More about our sequential reading software

Reading Fundamentals — Speed and Fluency
As with our middle school reading programs, our high school reading programs first target the underlying cause of any reading difficulty, by exercising cognitive skills — processing, memory, attention and sequencing — improving reading fluency by making decoding more automatic.

Language and Vocabulary
At the same time, the high school student will also see exercises aimed at language familiarity — syntax, language structure, vocabulary — and language dexterity — meta-linguistics.

Reading Stamina
A big part of the high school reading requirement is being able to read for long periods. Our programs help reading stamina by making reading easier, less exhausting, as well as by improving comprehension which makes the text more interesting and engaging.

Reading Comprehension with Metacognition
Good readers read with metacognition. That is, they think critically about their own understanding as they go. This level of reading comprehension can only develop once all other aspects of reading are mastered. Our software has a range of exercises that promote thinking while reading, with an emphasis on the metacognitive strategies needed for ACT and SAT.
Reading comprehension programs

Your Next Steps

It’s Not Too Late
If high school reading is a challenge for your child, it is not too late to do something about it. It is still possible to build a sound cognitive foundation, and develop the reading comprehension skills required to tackle challenging texts with greater independence, in 4-5 months, in time for the SAT or ACT.

Motivating High School Students
Fast ForWord is interactive — it requires student engagement. While many teenagers lack motivation, we have seen these attitudes change when the ACT and SAT roll around.  Child and parent goals align again, giving parents a second chance to get their child involved in a remedial program like this.

Our program works on reading comprehension, vocabulary, critical thinking and logic, the very skills tested in the SAT. Most of our students find they can read faster, with more accuracy and understanding, skills that can have a dramatic impact on their performance in the ACT and other high school reading tests.

If you think your child needs help, and is motivated to do better, call to find out if your child is a candidate for our program or ask a question here. Free consults are available 9AM to 6PM EST Monday to Friday, or complete this request for a consult outside these times.