Case Study: Rose is Taken Off the “Danger of Retention” List

The only thing that we did that was different was work with Gemm. It changed our lives.

Rose’s Love of School Turns Sour in 2nd Grade

Rose loved school in kindergarten, first grade and at the beginning of second grade. However, towards the end of second grade, all of that changed. She started to hate going to school and was so resistant to the small amounts of homework assigned.

Rose’s reading had hit a wall, and she knew it.

It was not improving and in fact, by the end of second grade, was not much different than the end of kindergarten. Her spelling was nearly impossible to decipher. Homework was not only a battle, but it took her forever to complete what seemed like simple assignments. Her cousins in the same grade did not take nearly as long to finish their homework.

This started impacting Rose’s confidence. Things were unraveling.

Nothing was working

“We tried all the “normal” stuff, getting extra help, tutoring, practicing sight words, over and over. I thought if she spent more time each day practicing, it would make a difference and it didn’t.” – Rose’s mother

She was not diagnosed by a clinician. Her mother recognized there was a problem and didn’t need a clinician to tell her that.

A close friend familiar with the Fast ForWord insisted we try it for Rose. Her mother was feeling very frustrated and figured we’d try it out because nothing else seemed to be working.

Working with Gemm Learning – Rose Liked the Program

Rose wanted to do better – for her family and for her teachers— so she was willing to try it. She was happy doing the program and not having to do all the other extra stuff each night.

There were some games in the Fast ForWord series that she liked and others that were harder for her.

Her parents could see the potential of this program right away, especially the exercises she found hard. She was unable to sequence sounds after hearing them, and she struggled to distinguish between sounds like “mee” and “nee.”

“I could see this program was going to help her. It started slowly, so she could hear the difference, and then got faster and faster – at her pace.”

Results: Taken off the “Danger of Retention” list!

Within two months, she wasn’t struggling as much with reading sentences, and I started to see huge improvements on her weekly spelling tests. She went from failing her spelling tests to getting 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10, or all of them correct.

After four or five months of working on the program, Rose’s status changed and she was no longer listed as “in danger of retention.” When I asked her teachers why there was a change, they told me she was almost reading at grade level!

Rose is now reading with ease in all subjects and reads independently and sometimes for pleasure. She’s continuously earning high grades.

The only thing that we did that was different was working with Gemm Learning. It changed our lives.