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Showing posts with tag reading intervention Show all posts >
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
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant
Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord® Gains Endure Over Time
- October 6, 2011 by Melissa Agocs
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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
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
Fast ForWord® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI
- September 22, 2011 by Norene Wiesen
Educators and families who are looking for appropriate learning interventions for students often turn to The Instructional Intervention Tools Chart from the National Center on Response to Intervention (NCRTI). Now, the Fast ForWord® Language series has been added to the chart, with the NCRTI evaluations of research on the series supporting the claim that the products have high-quality studies, demonstrating their effectiveness when used for Response to Intervention (RtI).
The effectiveness of the Fast ForWord Language series is evident from the “effect size” found by the NCRTI. Effect size is a statistical way to measure the magnitude of the effect of an intervention. Of the three studies on the Fast ForWord Language series that have been evaluated by the NCRTI, one showed a medium effect size and the other two showed a large effect size. In fact, two of the three Scientific Learning studies were ranked as having the highest scores in effect size, showing that the Fast ForWord Language Series had the greatest impact and the largest positive effect of any intervention listed by the NCRTI. These evaluations of research on the Fast ForWord Language series validate the quality of the studies behind the products, demonstrating their effectiveness when used for RtI.
The impact identified in the NCRTI evaluations holds up in real-world implementations, as well. For example, one district used the Fast ForWord program as its only intervention for kindergarteners during the 2009-2010 school year, to see what kind of difference the program could make when used as the sole intervention for participating students. Westerly Public Schools in southern Rhode Island identified kindergarten students who scored at the deficient or very deficient levels in letter sound fluency and letter naming fluency on the AIMSweb benchmark, and placed these students into the Fast ForWord program, with no other interventions.
After using the Fast ForWord program, test scores for the participating students rose substantially, and many were able to move off of the personal literacy plans they had been placed on as struggling elementary students. Because only the Fast ForWord program was used, the district was able to determine that these effects were due to the students’ participation in the program. And because the students didn’t need as many interventions, the district also saved money.
The NCRTI is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The center partners with researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Kansas to build the capacity of states to assist districts in implementing proven models for RTI.
Visit http://rti4success.org/instructionTools to see Scientific Learning’s listings on the NCRTI’s “Instructional Intervention Tools Chart.”
Watch the video on “effect size” and the NCRTI evaluation of the Fast ForWord Language series products.
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Related Reading:
Results from a “Gold Standard Study” Show Significant Student Gains in Language and Literacy Skills
Intensive Intervention Tier 3: What Leads to the Need?
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, Scientific Learning Research
Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord® or Reading Assistant™ Investment
- August 11, 2011 by Andrew Ostarello
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What is Implementation Fidelity? It is Scientific Learning’s measure of how well Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant users are following product usage protocols.
In order to maximize a student’s benefit from Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant, users need to have an intensive and persistent experience. This means using the products regularly and according to protocol. The available Fast ForWord protocols are five days a week for 30, 40, 50, or 90 minutes per day. For Reading Assistant, the protocols are 20, 30, or 40 minutes per day (depending on the grade band) for three days per week. Adherence to these protocols helps students build on their daily successes.
This leads naturally to the following question: How do you know if a student is having an intensive and persistent Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant experience?
Our answer is a concept called Implementation Fidelity. Implementation Fidelity measures how closely users of Scientific Learning products are adhering to the recommended usage protocols.
There are three components to Implementation Fidelity:
- Completion Rate
- Attendance
- Participation
Each of these components can be measured at the individual student, classroom, or district level.
Implementation Fidelity components are measured on a scale from 0 to 100%. Scores in the top 20% are considered “Good,” scores in the middle 60% are considered “Fair,” and the remaining scores in the bottom 20% are considered “Poor.”
Scientific Learning Progress Tracker is an online tool to monitor and manage Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant success.
Progress Tracker has reports to help customers track the Implementation Fidelity of their students. For example, one Implementation Fidelity report shows the overall Completion Rate, Attendance, and Participation categories for a district as a whole and for each school in that district.
We have found that a good implementation, on average, leads to 50% more reading gain per year.
Related Reading:
Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products
Making Computerized Learning Work Takes WORK
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Fast ForWord, Progress Tracker, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research
Students who Struggle in the Mainstream: What their Homework Patterns May Tell You
- August 2, 2011 by Jacqueline Egli
Ms. Egli is Executive Director at Bridges Academy in Winter Spring, FL.
Students who maintain average grades, but appear to be expending an excessive amount of time and effort to maintain those grades may have underlying learning deficits. As educators, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that students who require more time for completing assignments seem to show a disparity between what they have learned in class and how they perform on high stakes assessments. They may in fact be struggling with various learning challenges such as weakness in memory function, inability to process large volumes of information, vocabulary deficits and poor abilities in written expression.
Working with University of Central Florida Communications Disorders doctoral candidate Janet Proly, I had the opportunity to collaborate on a single-subject designed study of three promising high school students who appeared to be successful in their classes but also had significant hidden learning deficits.
The three students, twin 10th-grade boys in a general education program and a 12th-grade student who attended a magnet health and science academy, expressed concern over their struggle to keep up with their respective workloads of studying, reading and comprehending assignments, and their performance on tests like the FCAT. All reported that it took them three times the amount of actual time to complete their homework, citing that they had to re-read assignments multiple times in order to master the information. This inefficient learning caused all three boys to receive lower than expected scores on the state assessment, possibly compromising their ability to obtain a standard high school diploma. All three students approached me to inquire about participating in a summer reading program hosted by Bridges Academy, and thus became candidates for our collaborative study on the impact of improving reading fluency using computer technology for intervention.
Proly and I structured a single subject design study to determine the impact of using computer technology formulated to improve processing and working memory, as well as oral reading fluency. We modeled our study after the 2010 study published by Wexler, Vaughn, Roberts, and Denton.[i] The school offered a summer program to the three students. Using the Fast ForWord Literacy and Reading Assistant products for the six-week planned intervention would address recommendations for an alternative fluency intervention with a higher degree of intensity, and the inclusion of interventions that focus on processing.
After an initial assessment, the students participated in the intervention. We conducted a post-intervention assessment, and then assessed the students once again six months after the intervention. All three students demonstrated significant improvement in their reading fluency, and gains of more than two years on average in word attack and comprehension skills. The three students sustained these gains even though all three were no longer receiving any support or intervention.
This study, along with the focus on adolescent literacy, has increased interest in addressing the needs of middle and high school students who report these kinds of challenges in three specific programs: the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic; the UCF Communications Disorders Doctoral Program; and the Bridges Academy private school. As our results indicate, these short term computer interventions, through focusing on working memory, reading fluency and processing speed, have significant potential to help capable students succeed both in classes and on annual assessments.
In 2008 alone, over 20,000 high school students in the state of Florida dropped out of the public high school program. Did they leave because it was simply too hard to keep up? Could we have kept them in school if we had been able to provide a short term intervention that could not only have engaged them, but improved their learning and achievement? My collaborators and I all believe the answer to both of these questions is, absolutely, yes.
So what comes next? Our plan is to work together on an expanded study for the 2011-12 academic year that will take place at the private school and the UCF Communications Disorders Clinic. In reaching more participants, our plan – and our hope – is to continue to demonstrate program effectiveness and change the lives of more students for the better.
[i] Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., Roberts, G. & Denton, C.A. (2010), The efficacy of repeated reading and wide reading practice for high school students with severe reading disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25(1), 2-10.
Related Reading:
Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills
One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant
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, Reading Assistant, Special Education
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
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
“I Thought We Were Losing Him”: Why We Become Teachers
- April 12, 2011 by Carrie Gajowski
A few months ago, we heard from Cory Armes, an Education Consultant at Scientific Learning, and she told her story about her experience with the Scientific Learning products and how that led her to become part of the Scientific Learning team. Today we hear from Karen Forester, a Senior Implementation Manager in the South, about the impact of the Fast ForWord products on the life on one 13-year-old from Florida:
“Several years ago, while visiting a Fast ForWord lab at a middle school in Florida, I was working with the reading coach and teacher on data interpretation methods and real time results from the work their students had been doing in the exercises. We were looking specifically at reading level gains and national percentile scores when I noticed one student had a four year, two month gain in only 60 days. I pointed this out and the reading coach audibly gasped, then whispered, 'Can we look closer at his scores?'
As we reviewed the detail report, we saw the remarkable progress this particular 13-year-old had made. The reading coach started to say something, but her voice broke and she looked quickly away. After a few moments, she told me how worried she had been about this student and that nothing she or his teachers had tried ever seemed to make a difference. 'Last year, he started acting out and his bad behavior landed him in the principal’s office many times; I thought we were losing him.' Abruptly, she called the student’s name and asked him to come up to her desk. He approached with great dread and a downcast look, but as soon as he reached her, she said, 'I am so proud of you, just look at what you’ve accomplished!'
He looked startled and didn’t seem to understand what she just said. When she saw his quizzical gaze, she pointed to the computer and asked him to see for himself what she meant. He leaned in to peer at the screen and she began explaining his graphs, charts and scores. She showed him how much his reading level had improved since he began working on Fast ForWord and praised his determination for sticking with the work and not giving up. I asked him if he had noticed any difference. Shyly, he said, 'Well, I like to read now and I didn’t before plus I haven’t got in trouble this year.'
With tears in her eyes, his teacher couldn’t resist placing her arm around his shoulders and announcing his success to the whole class. I could tell the student was unaccustomed to such academic praise, but it didn’t take him long to flash a brilliant smile and I could see his whole body relax into the joy of the moment. Both teacher and student were thrilled.
At the time, I remember thinking how that brief recognition could very well change the trajectory of this student’s life – from one with little possibility to one with infinite possibilities. Where once there was misunderstanding, frustration and anger with learning, now there was comprehension, clarity and pride.
And isn’t that why we become teachers?"
Related Reading:
Our Lives Change, Too: From Fast ForWord® Skeptic to Believer
Indispensible Automaticity: How Reading Frees the Mind to Learn
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
Truth in Numbers: School Achieves Statistically Significant Improvements on TAKS
- March 3, 2011 by Logan De Ley
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In the 2008-2009 school year, selected students at Sam Houston Elementary School in the Grand Prairie Independent School District, TX, worked with the Reading Assistant software. To evaluate the impact of this intervention, the school conducted an observational study using scores from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or “TAKS,” the annual state assessment. Administered in the spring of each year, students throughout Texas take the TAKS, which measures progress against the state’s curricular standards.
On average, the study students worked with the Reading Assistant software for a total of two and a half hours over a 27-day period. The outcomes measure used for the study was the reading portion of the TAKS. Assessment results were reported in Lexile scores, which provide a continuous scale for tracking students’ reading achievement over time.
Before and after scores were available for 18 fifth graders who had worked with the software:
- Prior to using Reading Assistant, many of these students were struggling readers. Only 56% of study participants met the state standard for reading proficiency in 2008. The group’s average reading level was more than a year below what it should have been for their grade.
- After using Reading Assistant, the percentage of students who met the Texas state standard for reading proficiency increased from 56% to 78%. The group’s average Lexile score went up from 541 before using the software to 753 after using the software.
The study group showed statistically significant gains in both reading score and passing rate, suggesting that guided oral reading practice with Reading Assistant had a dramatic impact on reading achievement. Reading Assistant software combines advanced speech recognition technology with research-based interventions to function as a personal tutor for guided oral reading practice.
For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on results schools and districts have achieved with Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant software. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.
Related Reading:
One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant
Nevada Department of Education: Fast ForWord is a “High-Gain Program”
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, Scientific Learning Research
Test Scores Exceed State Average in 4 Subject Areas After Fast ForWord
- February 15, 2011 by Andrew Ostarello
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St. Mary Parish began using Fast ForWord products in the 2006-2007 school year with eight elementary schools. Over the next few years they continually expanded until they had a full district implementation by 2009-2010. Overall, Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products were used by almost 6,000 St. Mary Parish students by 2010.
This study investigates the changes during that time to the district’s performance on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, or LEAP for short. This test is given to 4th and 8th grade students. The following analyses consider four main subtests: English/Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science.
After implementing Fast ForWord products, the St. Mary 4th grade passing rate for ELA converged upon, and then exceeded the state average. After Fast ForWord was introduced, the percentage of the district’s students passing the LEAP Math test increased dramatically. The 4th grade Science test exhibits the same trend as does the 4th grade Social Studies test.
The gap in passing rates between black and white students has also been reduced for both the elementary English and elementary Math LEAP tests. There has also been a longitudinal increase in the percentage of 4th graders meeting the overall promotion standard since Fast ForWord products were introduced - from 65% in 2006 to 85% in 2010.
Following Fast ForWord implementation, district LEAP performance approached and then exceeded the state average in all four subjects. The performance gap between black and white students closed significantly. And finally, the 4th grade promotion rates steadily increased.
For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on Fast ForWord software results. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.
Related Reading:
Can Scientific Learning Products Improve School Test Scores?
Over 45% Relative Improvement in Students Reaching Proficiency
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research
Intensive Intervention Tier 3: What leads to the need?
- January 20, 2011 by Terri Zezula
To start talking about intensive intervention tier 3 in the Response to Intervention Model, I want to start by asking you a simple question:
Are you having chicken for dinner tonight?
You probably can’t fathom how fast your brain arrived at the yes or no conclusion that popped into your head. And yet, to process that one sentence, your brain had to think through seven words, eleven syllables, 19 to 21 phonemes, 35 letters and three distinct “e” sounds. And your amazing brain did all that, sequencing the concepts, drawing on your memory and formulating an answer, in fractions of a second.
The reason your brain was able to perform such an incredible feat is because you have the foundational knowledge -- and the countless neurons in place and linked up in your brain -- to process that information. Those connections are the result of years of language acquisition and learning, the majority of which happened when you were less than four years old.
We are born with the natural ability to acquire language and speech; it is the first test of our brain’s capacity to learn. When we speak and read to infants and young children, we are helping to establish that linguistic foundation, teach speech, develop vocabulary and impart those essential skills. Reading is a different story. Written language must be taught and learned; that’s why we focus on reading skills so heavily in preschool and kindergarten.
But what happens when children don’t get that essential exposure to language early on? What if a child experiences chronic ear infections in his first four years? What if her parents work long hours and don’t read to her often? What if a child does not receive that essential early language stimulation?
Early language development is the precursor for reading; without that indispensable input, a child’s brain literally does not learn how to process input correctly. Consider that by the time she is four years old, on average, the child of a professional family has absorbed over three times the number of words as a child of a family of low socioeconomic status. Often, it is these children who end up without the prerequisite language skills and more often than not become struggling readers -- those requiring those tier 3 interventions -- all because of their language foundations.
The great news is that these students DO NOT have to end up out of the mainstream, using valuable tier 3 resources. In the average class, 1 to 5 percent of students do not progress adequately and need intensive interventions. Still, 40 percent of those students who are identified with learning disabilities are simply having trouble reading. If we can bring those students back into the mainstream with proven, scientifically-based brain fitness exercises, we can give them more promising futures as well as free up tier 3 interventions for those students who truly need them.
To learn more about the neurological science behind why these deficits occur in the brain, as well as how we can remedy them, I encourage you to gather your team together over a lunch and watch the webinar, RtI Tier 3 Intensive Interventions: A Neuroscience Perspective. Delivered by Dr. Sherry Francis, it offers fantastic insights to enlighten how we think about these students and their needs and abilities, as well as concrete solutions to help them achieve success.
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Reading & Learning, Special Education
