Reading Problems and Solutions

Elementary Age Reading Issues

Reading Problem: Difficulty Blending Sounds (e.g., Confusing “bad” and “dad”)

What’s Going On:   The most common reason your child is failing reading or unable to blend sounds in 1st or 2nd grade is that they have a delay in phonemic awareness, the ability to break words into individual sounds in your head. For example, turning /cat/ into /c/ /a/ /t/. Blends such as /br/ or /bl/ are even more challenging, as are similar-sounding consonants like /mu|/ and /nu/. This skill requires strong language processing.

What Gemm Can Do: Our research-based phonics programs for kids strengthen language processing skills, the gateway to reading. Our software effectively adds “pixels” to the sound, making it much easier to break words down into sounds, phonemes.

Reading Problem: Slow Reader Who Guesses and Skips Words Instead of Sounding Them Out

What’s Going On:  Words are skipped or guessed because they are not recognized by a reader who is getting around a decoding problem by trying to memorize all words. This inefficient strategy runs into trouble in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades as the word list expands dramatically.

What Gemm Can Do: Your child needs to learn to read the way they listen, i.e., decoding every sound or letter as it comes. Our programs can improve reading fluency, making decoding as automatic as listening at natural-language speed.

Reading Problem: Forgetting Words Just Learned on the Previous Page

Many children frustrate their parents and teachers by failing to recognize the same word on the same or the next page, even after receiving help with it just a minute or two earlier.

What’s Going On: For the struggling early reader, text can look like it’s written in Russian. There are so many unrecognizable words that it is overwhelming. Also, retention requires context. If you tell your child a word and he hears it the way you say it, and he sees it written on the page, he will retain it. But more often than not, the text and spoken word are not a match, and so it is not retained.

What Gemm Can Do: By improving processing, we add “pixels” to the sound’s quality, making it easier to learn to read.  This makes it possible to hear accurately and read more and more words. This leaves only the need to learn irregularly spelled words, a much more manageable task.

Reading Problem: Child Can Read Words But Does Not Understand Meaning

What’s going on:  A lack of comprehension is caused by either inefficient decoding that distracts the brain from thinking and understanding or from a working memory deficit that is limiting what your child can take in and hold.

What Gemm Can Do:  The best way to fix a problem where a child can read words but doesn’t understand meaning is to address the two aspects of reading comprehension: improve decoding automaticity and build working memory capacity.

Middle School & Older – Reading Speed and Comprehension Problems

As children get older and learn how to sound out words, the reading difficulties change. Reading problems for 6th graders and older are not as obvious. Nevertheless, they hamper academic growth every bit as much.

Reading Problem: Slow Reading Speed & Constant Re-reading

Students learn to decode by middle school, but slow reading affects homework efficiency and test-taking performance. Slow reading also erodes interest in reading.

What’s Going On:  A deliberate decoding approach that requires concentration slows down reading speed. Similarly, difficulty comprehending and retaining text can lead to a constant need to re-read pages, another source of slow reading.

What Gemm Can Do:  We help a middle school student with slow reading speed by creating automaticity in decoding. It’s true of any skill. If you have to concentrate on it, it slows you down. The brain can learn to decode automatically at (very fast) natural language speed.

Reading Problem: Poor Reading Stamina (Giving Up After a Few Minutes)

What’s Going On: A lack of reading stamina indicates reading inefficiency and/or poor reading comprehension. Inefficient decoding takes effort and forces multitasking – decoding and deriving meaning – while reading is exhausting. Flawed reading comprehension can make text uninteresting or, worse, unintelligible. Both represent the groundwork for a shorter reading session.

Gemm Solution: By treating the underlying difficulty, our reading programs help make reading efficient and, with comprehension, more interesting and engaging.

Reading Problem: Comprehension skills not progressing

What’s Going On: Reading comprehension problems can be resolved when decoding is automatic, so that the mind is completely available for comprehension. In later grades, comprehension requires an interactive, metacognitive reading approach, where a student can define main ideas and think critically about the text. Students with reading problems do not develop these skills.

What Gemm Can Do: Our early reading programs work on removing the underlying impediments to reading, the cognitive skill gaps. Meanwhile, the later programs use natural learning science to train and accelerate reading comprehension with metacognition.

Reading Problem: Active Avoidance, Resistance, or Emotional Homework Tears

What’s Going On: Struggling readers often avoid reading—and resist reading aloud—because extracting meaning feels exhausting, and comparing themselves to peers causes humiliation, frustration, and shame. Furthermore, their inefficient reading style makes reading exhausting, and with minimal comprehension, the experience is not enjoyable.

What Gemm Can Do: The key is decoding automaticity, making reading easy and more natural. If we can achieve that, young readers will be more willing readers and put in the reading practice required to achieve reading proficiency and acquire high-level metacognitive reading skills.

Reading Problem: Cannot Spell

No doubt, spelling rules, conventions, and exceptions take time to learn. However, spelling in the early grades is only a concern if your child struggles with regular, phonetic words. There is more at stake here than just spelling accuracy. Recognition of spelling patterns is a big part of how the brain learns to read; i.e., spelling is a key decoding skill.

What’s Going On: Poor spelling is most often a sign of weak phonics due to weak phonological awareness. If phonetically regular words are a problem, then your child will have a hard time learning conventions and exceptions, since every word looks like a candidate for a rule.

What Gemm Can Do: Our program builds phonological awareness to help make regular spelling natural. The latter reading series of Fast ForWord has specialized spelling exercises that teach rules, conventions, and exceptions.

Reading Problem: Extra Reading Support or Tutoring is Not Helping

What’s Going On: Most reading instruction focuses on the underlying language-processing difficulty. Teachers and tutors create drills that work around these underlying delays, making the training long and painful.

What Gemm Can Do: Our elementary reading programs use neuroscience principles — frequency, intensity, and shaping — to address the underlying impediments to reading. Identifying syllables and blends makes all the difference.

Reading Problem: Smart in Other Subjects, But Unaccountably Behind in Reading

The classic definition of a learning disability — disparity of performance.

What’s Going On: Many bright children have a processing delay that slows reading skills and affects overall progress. This often causes frustration and behavioral issues.

What Gemm Can Do: In most cases, improved processing can open the floodgates. Progress to grade level and beyond often unfolds quickly. Natural smarts trapped in a flawed learning system are one of the best opportunities for our reading programs to make a dramatic difference.