2011 Virtual Circle of Learning Wrap-Up

• November 8, 2011 by Pam Combs

This year’s annual customer conference, Virtual Circle of Learning 2011, took place online last Friday with over 800 registrants.   The keynote speakers—Eric Jensen, Dr. Martha Burns, and Andrew Ostarello—addressed opportunities for customers to maximize the impact of their implementations of Scientific Learning products.

Much of the content from these keynotes can be seen in our Twitter stream with the hashtag #VCOL11, as we live-tweeted the keynote sessions and linked to articles relevant to each speaker’s presentation.

The articles provide further reading on increasing student motivation and engagement, maximizing the results of using Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products, and more:

• AMPing up our teaching to increase intrinsic student motivation
• Dr. Martha Burns on Brain Plasticity
• Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant Investment
• Nevada Department of Education: Fast ForWord is a “High-Gain Program”
• Dr. Donald Aguillard: Improving Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Scores in St. Mary Parish Schools
• How to improve student motivation
• What are some ways elementary teachers might use Twitter in their classrooms?
• Finding a voice through Twitter
• Retweeting History Brings Those Stories to Life

Customers who missed a keynote or breakout session can watch it on Customer Connect (customer login required).  Feel free to share the link with others at your school who were not able to attend. 

Also, be sure to complete your survey to let us know what you enjoyed and what we can improve for next year.  And, if you have an iPad, be sure to include your iTunes email address so we can give you our new iPad app, Eddy’s Number Party!

And now, off to start planning for Virtual Circle of Learning 2012!

Related Reading:

Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

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Categories: Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, digital natives, education conference, elementary school learning, high school learning, increased test scores, literacy, memory, middle school learning, reading intervention, Scientific Learning events, student growth, success stories, technology in education, webinar

Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension

• October 25, 2011 by Cory Armes

In my former work as a teacher, one of the best moments of the day in my classroom took place when I read aloud to my students.  It was a magical time for all of us as the words on the page and the characters in the story seemed to come alive right before us as I used different voices and accents. Sometimes I read very fast and other times I created long pauses that kept my students hanging, wondering what would happen next.  I wanted them to love reading as much as I did – to enjoy that excitement you feel when you solve a mystery, are saved from catastrophe, or discover a wild and wonderful new world.  Sharing this gift with my students was possible only because I am a fluent reader.

In his book The Fluent Reader, Dr. Timothy Rasinski says that fluency is a critical but sometimes ignored link between the basic reading of words and achieving comprehension.  With fluency, the foundational skills of phonics and word recognition have progressed to the point that only a minimal amount of cognitive energy is needed for decoding so that the reader can focus on understanding what is being read.   When you are a fluent reader, you are able to read easily and efficiently with prosody, or meaningful expression, and that enhances your comprehension. 

Students must have some degree of fluency in order to comprehend text, so if you have students who easily understand what is read to them but have difficulty when reading independently, fluency may be the source of that problem.  A study of fourth graders sponsored by the US Department of Education demonstrated that the most fluent readers had the strongest comprehension scores.  In addition, every decline in oral reading fluency in the study had a corresponding decline in reading comprehension.^[i]  The study was replicated ten years later with about 1,500 students and had similar results.^[ii]  In both studies, close to half of the students who were not adequately fluent in reading also demonstrated significant problems with comprehension.

Practice is essential to learning and mastering any skill – sports, music, cooking, etc. - so it makes sense that this also would apply to the skill of reading.   By including consistent oral reading practice during the school day, the reading process becomes transparent so it can be observed, examined and supported until students become independent readers.   Readers must transition from being tied to the individual words so they can achieve higher levels of comprehension as they read.  A great way to encourage this is through repeated oral practice of the same reading selection, which helps students with word recognition, fluency and prosody as well as general reading and comprehension. 

There is something special about reading aloud regardless of who does the reading.  Oral reading is a powerful tool that can help students not only learn to read fluently but also to experience the joy of reading. 

The transition from rote to rapture - that’s what fluency can do for you.

Want to learn more?  Check out Dr. Rasinski’s free on-demand webinar on scilearn.com, Teaching Fluency:  The Neglected Goal of the Reading Program.

[i] Gay S. Pinnell et al. Listening to Children Read Aloud: Data From NAEP’s Integrated Reading Performance Record (IRPR) at Grade 4, 1995.  http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/permalinkPopup.jsp?accno=ED378550

[ii]Mary C. Daane, Jay R. Campbell, Wendy S. Grigg, Madeline J. Goodman, and Andreas Oranje. Fourth-Grade Students Reading Aloud: NAEP 2002 Special Study of Oral Reading, October 2005. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006469.asp

Related Reading:

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant

Tags: child reading development, cognitive skills, elementary learning, fluency, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, reading comprehension, student growth, teacher impact

Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord^® Gains Endure Over Time

• October 6, 2011 by Melissa Agocs

Every spring, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, abbreviated CRCT, are administered to students in Georgia.  The CRCT is designed to measure how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in the Georgia Performance Standards.

Students are tested in reading, English/language arts and mathematics. This summary will concentrate on the reading results from the Clarke County School District in Georgia.  The CRCT is given every spring to all students in grades 1-8, and the students included in this study were first through eighth graders during the time of the study.

A longitudinal study is a type of study that follows the same subjects over time. Clarke County students who used the Fast ForWord products generally started with the Fast ForWord^® Language or Fast ForWord^® Literacy series, with students then progressing through the Fast ForWord^® Reading series. Students started on the products during different years, with some starting as early as the 2006-2007 school year, and others starting aslate as the 2010-2011 school year.

The first wave of Fast ForWord participants at Clarke County started using the products in the fall of 2006 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2007 CRCT with continued improvements in 2008 and the following years.  Students in the second wave started using the products in the fall of 2007 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2008 CRCT.

After a third group started in 2008 school year, the group’s CRCT scores significantly increased and then continued to go up.  Similarly, students who began using the products in 2009 and 2010 also started to show increases in their reading scores after Fast ForWord participation.

Each cohort exhibits a similar pattern in that after Fast ForWord participation started, on average, the group showed a steady increase in their CRCT reading scores with each passing year.

Looking at the students who started using Fast ForWord products in 2010, there was an increase in the percentage of students reaching reading proficiency, with 55% of students who were not proficient in 2010 crossing the proficiency threshold in 2011.

In addition to longitudinal results, data were also analyzed for certain demographic groups, including students who were receiving Special Education services and students with Limited English Proficiency. Both groups achieved statistically significant improvements on the CRCT Reading Test after Fast ForWord participation.

If you have questions on this study or any other Fast ForWord study, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Team.

Related Reading:

Fast ForWord^® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI

My Nephew Was a Struggling Learner (Not Anymore!): Carrie’s Story

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, child reading development, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, literacy, middle school learning, reading comprehension, reading intervention, technology in education, video

Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord

• August 25, 2011 by Andrew Ostarello

This study is a randomized controlled trial that investigated the impact of Fast ForWord Language software in 9 elementary schools.  The analyses that follow include data from 452 students in grades K through 5. 

Students were randomly assigned to be in either the Fast ForWord group or the control group.  The randomization was stratified within age and gender.

Students using Fast ForWord trained for 100 minutes per day for an average of 30 school days.  Both groups were evaluated using three assessments:

• Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language
• Phonological Awareness Test
• Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Education Battery

The average gains from pre-test to post-test were larger for Fast ForWord participants than for the control group for both Language Comprehension and Phonological Isolation.  Both of these results were statistically significant.

In addition, a large subset of students in this study were English Language Learners.  A total of 85 students did not speak English as their primary language – 53 of whom used Fast ForWord, while 32 served as controls.  The results for English Language Learners were consistent with those for native English speakers.  Both of these results were statistically significant.

In conclusion, Fast ForWord participation led to significantly larger improvements than the control group in a variety of early language skills. 

The vast majority of students made learning gains; these students averaged 1.8 years of language improvement in only 30 school days.

These results are consistent for both ELL students and for native English speakers.

Finally, note that this study was conducted on the original version of Fast ForWord Language.  Since publication of this study in 2004, a new and enhanced version of Fast ForWord Language has been released (Fast ForWord Language version 2).

Related Reading:

Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products

Reading in the Real World

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, elementary school learning, increased test scores, language learning, literacy, phonological awareness, technology in education, video

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

• August 16, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

As educators with experience in child development, we understand the essential nature of being responsive to a child. Children who do not receive enough attention do not develop in the same way as those who receive consistent nurturing and feedback. Research has demonstrated how, at a physiological level – their brains simply wire themselves differently as they develop. This deficit in early childhood experiences often manifests itself as developmental delays across a wide spectrum of behaviors. These behavioral delays appear in parallel with delays in brain development.

Imagine a child growing up in a home where sensitive, responsive caregiving is rare. Maybe mom and/or dad work more hours and are simply not available. Maybe they come home too tired to read or play or simply snuggle with the child. Or, this is an environment where sensitive, responsive nurturing is not valued very highly. While it is not the case in every situation like this, at its extreme, the parent or parents may be truly neglecting the child’s needs at this early stage. Even moderate differences in these important parent-child interactions have important longer-term consequences for development.

Research has shown that in these situations a child’s brain development quickly gets derailed. Children who do not receive enough of what is known as “sensitive-response caregiving” and cognitive stimulation do not develop executive function skills as readily as their counterparts in more caring, stimulating environments. (Lengua et al., 2007; Li-Grining, 2007) In other words, children may not be encouraged to be aware of and interact with the world around them (cognitive stimulation). They also may not be encouraged to engage or develop planning, decision-making or troubleshooting skills (executive function).

Executive functions, also known as “domain-general” functions, are those called upon in various types of learning opportunities; these include such functions as working memory, regulation of emotions and attentional control. On the other hand, a “domain-specific” cognitive process is one that represents a specific skill or skill area, such as reading or counting.

But what are the implications as children grow and enter school? Recently, a team of researchers led by Janet Welsh at Penn State studied readiness for school in a group of Head Start children and how certain cognitive processes were associated with the development of certain skills. Specifically, they studied the relationship between domain-general and domain-specific cognitive processes in these low-income pre-kindergartners, and tracked them through kindergarten.

Welsh‘s study showed that skills scaffolded consistently from one level to the next, and these skill levels represented good indicators of how well the child would develop the next set of skills. In other words, good working memory and attention control predicted the development of early literacy and numeracy skills, and these skills were predictors of later math and reading achievement.

Whether through experience in the home, great work in the pre-kindergarten classroom and/or support from computer-based learning exercises, it is clearly essential that we support the early development of domain-general cognitive skills as early and as strongly as possible.

While this may seem obvious, Welsh’s research underscores the essential nature of laying a foundation in those executive functions, those domain-general cognitive abilities, for each and every student – but especially for those at an economic disadvantage if we are to close the gaps and truly offer the same opportunities to every student.

Read the full study: The Development of Cognitive Skills and Gains in Academic School Readiness for Children From Low-Income Families, Janet A. Welsh, Robert L. Nix, Clancy Blair, Karen L. Bierman, and Keith E. Nelson. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2010, Volume 102, Number 1, p. 43-53.

For further reading:    

Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy Performance, Eric Dearing, Holly Kreider, Sandra Simpkins, and Heather Weiss. Harvard Family Research Project. January 2007.

Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families Patterns of Use, Quality, and Potential Policy Implications, Gina Adams, Kathryn Tout, and Martha Zaslow. Prepared for the Urban Institute and Child Trends. January 2006, revised May 2007.

The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children, HB Ferguson, S Bovaird, and MP Mueller. Paediatr Child Health. October 2007. 12(8): 701–706.

Related Reading:

Building Unstructured Play Into the Structure of Each Day

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: achievement gap, attention, brain development, cognitive skills, early learning, emotions in learning, executive function, how children learn, learning environment, literacy, math, memory, play, processing, technology in education, toddler

LearnFast Australia: “If only there were a way to get into their brains…”

• August 9, 2011 by Peter Carabi

Note: This post is the 3^rd in a series on Scientific Learning Value Added Representatives (VARs)who provide our products around the world.

LearnFast Australia was founded by Devon Barnes, a speech language pathologist and audiologist. Devon has worked with children struggling with language, learning and reading difficulties for over 40 years. Many times during those decades when working with a learning disabled child she would remark to her colleagues, “If only there were some way to get into their brains and reorganize them, perhaps we could fix the problems.”

Devon had read about the work of Dr. Paula Tallal, a renowned neuroscientist. In 1997 she decided to travel to the University of York in England to hear Dr. Tallal present the results of the early trials of a set of exercises which were to become the foundation for the development of Fast ForWord^®.

The results were so impressive, Devon realized she had found something that could potentially ‘re-wire’ the brains of learning disabled clients.

The following year Devon completed the Fast ForWord Professional Provider Training in New York and commenced offering the programs at her clinic, Lindfield Speech Pathology Learning Centre, in Sydney.

Today, LearnFast provides Fast ForWord to thousands of students and adults via schools, professional learning practitioners, and in homes.

LearnFast has offices in Sydney, Australia and in Auckland, New Zealand. The company has developed a staff of passionate learning experts who genuinely care about helping as many children and adults as possible overcome their learning and reading struggles, and to help every person achieve his or her potential. This passion is reflected in everything LearnFast does, from the people who work for the business, to the way the Fast ForWord programs are implemented and supported.

As well as providing Fast ForWord, LearnFast is active in supporting the development of innovative ways to improve education for all, and in bringing the latest research and knowledge to parents, educators and learning professionals.

LearnFast’s Facebook page was launched recently and has developed an active community of people who are interested in the science of learning and how the findings from the research can be applied to help all those who want to improve their ability to learn and to read.

There is also a valuable source of video content made available to the public (mostly free of charge) via LearnFast Education’s Video Store which provides information about Fast ForWord and learning and reading difficulties, including auditory processing disorders, attention deficit disorders and dyslexia, as well as adult literacy development, autism and other topics. For more about LearnFast and Fast ForWord, visit www.fastforword.com.au.

Related Reading:

Scientific Learning Around the World

Unlocking the Potential of English Language Learners

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, ADHD, attention, auditory processing, autism, child reading development, dyslexia, improving reading skills, intervention, learning disabilities, learning to read, literacy, Scientific Learning VARs, struggling readers, student growth, technology in education

Reading in the Real World

• July 26, 2011 by Corey Fitzgerald

Reading is an active and complex task that requires the brain to use a multitude of cognitive skills and mental processes to develop meaning and comprehension from written text.  Being able to read high-level text independently and fluently is essential for high achievement, not only in academia but also in the workplace and through numerous life tasks.  However there is a serious gap between many high school seniors’ reading ability and the reading requirements they face after graduation.  

Consider the chart below. The Lexile Measure for reading level of high school literature and textbooks falls short of the level typical of college, military and workplace material.  And when you take into consideration the reading level of most standardized assessments for high school students, a Lexile range of 1000-1100, the gap becomes even more evident.  Simply put, students are leaving high school with limited exposure to higher-level text and contact with reading standards and assessments that don’t adequately align to meet the real world conditions they’ll be confronted with.

 

^{©International Center for Leadership in Education, Inc.}

 

Research conducted by ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark for Reading indicates that just over half of our nation’s students who are on a college preparatory track are able to meet the demands and rigor of postsecondary and workplace requirements.  And if that isn’t daunting enough, data from the most recent reading assessment conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveals that only 38% of high school seniors tested at or above proficiency for 12^th grade standards.  This bodes ill for the ability of Americans to meet the demands and challenges of a highly competitive global marketplace and begs the question, “Why aren’t our schools’ reading standards higher?”

Studies show that aligning high school standards to college and workplace expectations is a critical step toward giving students a solid foundation in the academic, social and workplace skills needed for success in a postsecondary education or career.  The American Diploma Project has found that there is a common core of knowledge and skills, particularly in English and math, that students must master to be pre­pared for both postsecondary education and well-paying jobs.  The research shows that there is a strong correlation between scores in high school math and English and wages earned once in the workplace.  Students who are taking below-average or functional/basic classes increase their likelihood of being employed in a low-paid or low-skill job, compared to students in the top quartile who earn significantly more in the decade following high school than their ‘average’ or low performing peers. 

As we seek to curtail the disparity between what’s taught in K-12 classrooms and what’s expected in the real world, it’s important that we coordinate with our local and national education and business leaders, help them to provide a cohesive approach to improve the rigors of academic coursework, promote relevant and innovative learning opportunities for all students, and share information and resources that advance the coordination across the K-12 and postsecondary sectors of our society.  And by all means if you can read this, thank a teacher!

References:

Malbert Smith III, Ph.D. Bridging the Readiness Gap: Demystifying Required Reading Levels for Postsecondary Pursuits. Lexile.com.

Related Reading:

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

Adolescence: What’s the Brain Got to Do with It?

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic proficiency, academic success, assessments, below grade level, child reading development, high school learning, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, reading comprehension, school leader effectiveness, struggling readers, struggling students,

Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills

• July 21, 2011 by Jacqueline Egli

A focus on core reading skills has recently been promoted in college coursework for beginning teachers, statewide initiatives for student achievement, and professional development for teachers across the curriculum in all levels of education. One of the five core skills, fluency, is still being heavily debated among the researchers, but is gaining traction as an instructional skill that is necessary to the efficiency of reading. Differences in word reading or naming speed, two aspects of fluency, have been identified as early as kindergarten levels in struggling readers (Wolf, Bally, & Morris, 1986), and can continue to be tracked into middle and high school (Meyer, Wood, Hart, and Felton, 1999). Many students who struggle and are identified as having reading deficits have difficulty with reading speed and accuracy. 

Although there seems to be a significant and growing body of research on reading skills, including fluency, there is still much to be learned about the impact of fluency on overall learning. The typical definition of fluency is “the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading, such as decoding” (Meyers and Felton, 1999). Reading fluency problems of children with reading difficulties, according to Torgeson (2006), are a result of students’ difficulties forming large vocabularies of words that they can recognize “by sight” or at a single glance. If students receive “powerful and appropriately focused interventions many of them can become accurate readers and their reading comprehension improves as a result of being able to correctly identify more of the words in text” (Torgeson, 2006).

Bridges Academy, located in Winter Springs Florida, serves students with specific learning disabilities. The overall purpose of the program is to remediate the learning gaps for the students and to “bridge” them back into mainstream schools with mainstream curriculum. Ninety-nine percent of the students who attend the school have an identified deficit in reading and many are considered to be dysfluent readers. Several years ago, Bridges Academy incorporated a computer-based instructional tool, Reading Assistant software, that provided a highly focused intervention for fluency to address the skill development of reading fluency, as a trial implementation.

For the pilot program, 10 middle school aged students were selected to try the Reading Assistant program. Each middle school student was invited to participate, if they desired to do so, during their homeroom time at the end of the day. Homeroom time, of course, is a very social time and many of the middle school students looked forward to spending some time connecting with their peers before leaving campus for the day. Each of the students was asked to commit to no more than 10 days, so they did not feel that they were giving up their social time for the rest of the school year. 

To get familiar with the program and the process, each student was assigned a level of the computer program that was instructionally suited to their present independent reading level. The requirements were straightforward. Students were to listen to a selected story read aloud on the computer a total of three times. Then each student was required to review any words that were unfamiliar to them by selecting the word and seeing or hearing an example of that word in a picture or sentence. After this initial step the students were required to orally read the story selection. Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) was tracked by the software and students were directed to complete a series of comprehension questions when done. One key component unique to this product was the requirement that the student listen to their own voice recording of the selection after each of the three required oral reading samples. 

The interest and enthusiasm amongst these 10 middle school students as the project began was very exciting to the faculty and administration. All 10 students shared information with their parents and their classmates about the project and the way the program worked. During their lunch break, they discussed the various stories that they were reading amongst themselves   and shared their present WCPM scores with their peers with tremendous pride!  These students would celebrate their promotion to a new story with a “high five” and pored over their data reports at the end of the week to see what types of gains in fluency they were making. What was most encouraging? All 10 of the students chose to work on the program for the duration of the school year, a period of eight weeks. One student even elected to come back to the campus during summer vacation to complete the stories he was reading, so he could reach his own set goal of 200 WCPM! 

The impact of this implementation of the Reading Assistant program is now being realized across the campus at Bridges Academy. All students who are reading above a second grade level are provided access to the Reading Assistant program two to three times a week, throughout the school year. Students who are preparing to “bridge” to a new school program are provided the opportunity to work four afternoons a week as an after school option, so that they may increase their proficiency rate with above grade level material in preparation for their move to the mainstream schools. Every January through April, 80% of the students eligible for bridging can be observed working in the afterschool program. What is most impressive is that these students have chosen to participate in this afterschool program! 

The assessments, data analysis, and individual summary reports built into Reading Assistant track the overall impact of the program in improving reading skills for student participants.  Bridges Academy staff and administration are pleased with the overall improvements in the students’ reading skills and confidence. The students perceive themselves as readers, and parents report that the students are now becoming more confident readers who enjoy reading--many for the first time!

References:

Meyer, M.A., & Felton, R.H. (1999). Repeated reading to enhance fluency: Old approaches and new directions.  Annals of Dyslexia, 49, 283–306.

Meyer, M.S., Wood, F.B., Hart, L.A. & Fenton, R. H. (1999) Longitudinal course of rapid naming in disabled and non disabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 48, 89-114.

Torgeson, J.K. & Hudson, R. (2006) Reading fluency: critical issues for struggling readers. In S.J. Samuels and A. Farstrup (Eds.). Reading Fluency: The forgotten dimension of reading success. Newark, DE: International Reading Association

Wolf, M., Bally, H., & Morris, R. (1986) Automaticity, retrieval process and reading: A longitudinal study in average and impaired readers. Child Development, 57, 988-1000.

Related Reading:

Truth in Numbers: School Achieves Statistically Significant Improvements on TAKS

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education

Tags: academic success, child reading development, fluency, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, motivating students, reading comprehension, reading intervention, self-esteem, struggling readers, student growth, success stories, technology in education

Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”

• July 19, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

We regularly hear from our customers that Scientific Learning employees are tremendously passionate and committed.  For many employees, that passion comes from having family members who have experienced dramatic improvements after using our products.  We thought it might be nice to share some of those stories with you, and today’s post is the first in a series aimed at doing just that.

Jolene’s Story:

“Hi.  I’m Jolene.   I’ve been a Progress Monitor with the company about two years.  When I first heard about Fast ForWord it was actually when I looked at a job posting and I looked into the company a little bit. 

It was an interesting timeframe.  I kind of looked at it when I got the job as a Godsend, because I have two twin boys myself and a little girl and they were behind in their reading tremendously so that we had ended up having to hold them back for third grade and they had to repeat. 

I took the software home and I had them go through Fast ForWord Language v2 first.  And I did all the facilitating and the monitoring just as I was doing with the teachers so it worked out very well. I saw tremendous change. 

The boys are at reading level now; they were a year-and–a-half behind.  So, it brings tears to my eyes to think that I was very fortunate to get this job so that I can not only make a difference with everyone else, but see success in my own family.

And continued success because I’m going to be using it with my little girl, too.  Thank you for letting me share. “

Related Reading:

Fast ForWord Featured on ABC 7 News

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, academic proficiency, academic success, accelerate learning, below grade level, child reading development, employee stories, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, struggling readers, struggling students, student growth, success stories

How Learning and Literacy Enhance Our Brains

• June 30, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Reading is a recent cultural invention. It is not a skill we are naturally programmed to develop like walking or vocalizing. It is a relatively recent development in human history estimated to be only about 6000 years old. The development of oral language in humans is believed to be nearly 300,000 years old.  Oral language is thought to have co-developed with the use of tools as both require complex motor control.

To quote from the recent book Reading in the Brain (Dehaene, 2009): "At this very moment, your brain is accomplishing an amazing feat­—reading. Four or five times per second, your gaze stops just long enough to recognize one or two words.  You are, of course, unaware of this jerky intake of information.  Only the sounds and meanings of the words reach your conscious mind.  But how can a few black marks projected onto your retina evoke an entire universe?"^[i]  

In 2010, Stanislas Dehaene, et al. published a study which evaluated whether learning to read improves brain function, and also whether there are tradeoffs for such learning.^[ii] In other words, does learning to read “occupy” a space in the brain that could or would be used for something else in our evolutionary past?

Dehaene and his research team have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure how the brain responded to various stimuli, including spoken and written language, visual faces, houses, tools, and checkers in a group of literate and illiterate adults. Ten were illiterate, 22 learned to read as adults, and 31 learned to read as children.

In the end, their studies generated a number of fascinating conclusions. Literacy—no matter at what point in life the skill is acquired, in youth or as an adult—enhances brain response in three ways:

1. It boosts the organization of the visual cortex. Located toward the back of the brain, this is the area that processes visual information.
2. It allows the area of the brain responsible for spoken language—the planum temprale—to be activated by written sentences.
3. It refines how the brain processes spoken language.

Granted, there is much more detail to understand behind these conclusions, and I certainly invite you to read the entire article. Still, for us as educators, these conclusions hold useful insights.

In being aware of how literacy is related to these other skills, such as speaking and visual processing, we can use this information as yet another tool to help us better understand what we can expect from our students, no matter their ages. If they come into our classroom able to read, we know that we can expect them to have greater capacity for speech. If they come in with fewer or no reading skills, we might want to be aware that they might have challenges in processing visual input. 

Given these conclusions, the more we can continue to develop technology solutions that can teach while detecting deficiencies and adapt to student needs “on the fly,” the better we will be able to individualize instruction, fill in gaps in learning and strengthen essential skills.

As these scientists continue their investigations and the research sheds more light on how reading affects brain processing, we as educators will continue to increase our abilities to make better targeted instructional decisions that will help every individual student achieve optimal success.

[i] Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain. Penguin Viking Publishing. November, 2009.

[ii] Dehaene, Stanislas et. al.How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language. 2010.

Related Reading:

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: adaptivity, auditory processing, brain development, child reading development, cognitive skills, early learning, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, Innate abilities, learning to read, literacy, processing, reading comprehension, visual processing