Words come at some kids
like a flash flood.
If you’re the parent of a child with reading or learning difficulties, you understand this — you see it every day. You see your child almost overwhelmed by the tasks of the school day and worn out by the time they get home. Even though you’ve helped them build a growth mind-set and provided fun and motivation and the school has provided tutoring, they still struggle. This isn’t how you want their life to be.
So what’s the core issue?.
After a lifetime of research, cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Paula Tallal has identified it. Here it is:
“It has now been conclusively shown that auditory processing speed measured at six months of age is the single strongest predictor of a child’s academic success.”
Dr. Paula Tallal, cognitive neuroscientist.
So how about accelerating it?
After all, you’ve tried everything else.
It may be the greatest gift you’ll ever give your child.
Kennedy Reading Therapy uses the ONLY intervention —Fast ForWord — designed and proven to accelerate and normalize auditory processing speed.
Consider the Ladder of Reading
Not defiant, not tuned-out, not disabled, 12-year-old Nate was just processing words too slowly.
Here’s how we fix it.
Watch as Nate identifies the order of high and low sounds. As he gains skill in perceiving sound sequences, the program engages Nate’s own brain plasticity and gradually accelerates the task over 810 baby steps. When Nate has normalized his processing speed and can accurately perceive sequences of sounds—after 20-40 hours of practice—he’ll be able to benefit fully from phonics instruction.
We can see how difficult this is for Nate. His auditory processing disorder (APD) may have been an outcome of his premature birth (a risk factor for both APD and dyslexia). Both at home and school, his auditory confusion was often mistaken for not listening or for defiance. Nate was able to master this exercise in three months and and then started normal reading instruction.
The Basics:
✓ Designed by Dr. Michael Merzenich, “The Father of Brain Plasticity.”
✓ Clarifies sounds in the brain – day/bay? sip/zip? Wash my hands/watch my hands? Right angle/right ankle?
✓ Engages the learner’s own brain plasticity.
✓ Free assessment—is this right for your child?
✓ Any age, 6 and up.
✓ Five days a week, no kidding.
✓ 30-50 minutes a day online.
✓ No reading for the first month.
✓ 3-4 months, though a few students need more.
✓ Silent environment.
✓ Parent presence. (Optional for older students.)
✓ Laptop with mouse and padded headphones.
✓ 1-2 weeks of initial training via Zoom.
✓ After training, therapist provides one guided session a week, more if necessary.
✓ Parents take over on the other four days.
✓ Daily progress reports with guidance.
✓ After several weeks, you may see your child improving in phonics and decoding without additional teaching.
✓ Once the auditory and cognitive skills are strong, your child will be able to benefit fully from any phonics or reading program you choose.
✓ Fast ForWord games teach letter-sound correspondence including consonant blends and digraphs CH and SH. The parent or school takes it from there to teach or review the rules of phonics – only if needed (breaking words into syllables, hard and soft sounds of G and C, silent letters, etc.)
✓ After “basic training,” Fast ForWord provides oral reading practice for fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Here is a peek at a few more of the exercises:
In daily online sessions of 30-50 minutes, students play these games to master processing speed, sound-sequencing, attention, working memory, and executive functioning. Their brains respond to the games’ gradually increasing demands by creating stronger, faster, and more accurate connections, almost as if the neurons were muscles growing in response to lifting a few more pounds every day.
Think of these exercises
as weight-lifting for the brain.
But this time, the gains are permanent. No kidding.
Skills developed by Fast ForWord:
• Auditory processing speed to detect 30-millisecond consonant shifts.
• Accurate sound perception (vase? face?)
• Auditory and visual attention (Huh?)
• Working memory for sounds, words, and sentences, including following directions.
• Sound sequencing (girl? grill?).
• Accurate letter-sound matches.
• Sentence comprehension, syntax, and grammar.
• Fluency built with the the only strategy endorsed by the National Reading Panel–“Guided Oral Reading.”
• Higher-order comprehension, paraphrasing, inferences, context, organization.
• Executive functions: impulse control, self-monitoring, task initiation, cognitive flexibility.
• Development of intrinsic motivation.
Set your
child’s learning
on solid granite.
A bit of research on Auditory Processing Speed
Processing speed deficits affect reading efficiency, even among individuals who recognize and decode words accurately. Children with ADHD who decode words accurately can still have inefficient reading fluency, leading to a bottleneck in other cognitive processes. — Child Neuropsychol. 2011; 17(3): 209–224.
Many individuals with dyslexia perform poorly on auditory tasks including frequency discrimination34,35 and temporal order judgment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597981
Preliminary analysis indicates that children with dyslexia and/or dyscalculia have significantly slower processing speed; slower processing speed is associated with lower reading and math abilities.
FF is provided through K-12 schools, speech and language therapists, and private providers throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Hmmmm . . . .
You can teach students soccer, or you can develop their strength and agility and speed and then teach them soccer.
Likewise, you can teach students to read, or you can develop their processing speed, attention, perception, memory, and executive functions, and then teach them to read.
