Dyslexia
New research on dyslexia shows auditory processing skills are key to a child’s reading ability;
One in 10 people has dyslexia. On average, children with dyslexia aren’t diagnosed until the third grade, after falling behind their peers. The Donegan Burns Foundation is an organization that helps schools, afterschool programs and children’s organizations provide appropriate instruction to prevent and close these gaps. The foundation has selected the Fast ForWord program.
Understanding Dyslexia & How FFW Programs Help
- Dyslexia is most often caused by language processing difficulties.
- We help dyslexia by strengthening processing & related skills.
Dyslexic children do not hear language clearly -- they have "muddy" phonological word memories that are not accurate enough to hear the sounds, phonemes, inside words. And so they guess, skip words, read slowly and/or avoid reading.
Improved processing adds "pixels" to language, making it easier (and natural) to pick out individual sounds, thereby helping dyslexia. Our approach treats the source of difficulty, over 4-6 months, one time for all time.
It is now established science that the brain is plastic -- it can rewire. This is not new information. Dr. Norman Doidge calls brain plasticity the most meaningful scientific discovery of the last fifty years. Help for dyslexia by tapping into this neuroplasticity -- to strengthen processing and other cognitive skills needed for reading and learning -- is now a reality.
Since the advent of the functional MRI, a video MRI of brain activity, scientists have been able to identify under-developed processing and cognitive function common in almost all struggling readers. Even more compelling, scientists can now confirm (or not!) the efficacy of dyslexia programs for children by seeing changes (or not) in pre- and post-fMRIs.
Our dyslexia software, Fast ForWord, as shown in this pre- and post-fMRI image, takes advantage of brain plasticity to improve processing, focus, memory and sequencing, improvements that translate into easier, less exhausting reading, and better reading comprehension in just a few months. It has the intensity required to create new neural pathways, using adaptive exercises that build speed and complexity in tiny, incremental steps.
Master Readers Program
Tuition and extra reading instruction are ineffective strategies for overcoming dyslexia. They are like pumping air into a leaking tire, temporary fixes at best that do not address the causes of dyslexia in children and adults
The Fast ForWord program, is cognitive brain training that tackles the root causes. It is a program series that starts by strengthening cognitive skills at the bottom of the pyramid, and then works up:
- Build cognitive foundation. Most dyslexic children need help with phonological awareness, and other crucial cognitive skills. This is the begining point for all students.
- Develop reading fluency. Children then undertake exercises to help spelling, vocabulary and language structure, common difficulties for our dyslexic children.
- Reading comprehension. Our dyslexia software helps students to routinely think while reading and to read accurately -- often undoing prior bad habits such as word skipping. We also build vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills, required for reading comprehension.
- Critical reading (upper/secondary). The final step is reading with metacognition, the ability to think about what you are reading -- to self-adjust, make inferences and think critically.
The protocols and outcomes from our dyslexia help vary by age. Younger children tend to need more work on cognitive fundamentals, while older children need more help in the fluency and thinking skills required for reading comprehension.
Proven Fast & Effective
The fastest and most effective way to resolve an issue is to find the cause of the problem and then fix it. Most dyslexia interventions, however, come in the form of added instruction that does not address the problem, but rather provides added practice and strategies to work around it.
Our dyslexia program for children is different. Its success -- over 3 million helped in 40 countries -- comes from its effectiveness in tackling the causes of dyslexia, specifically the weak phonological awareness and working memory issues, aiming to resolve the dyslexia once and for all. It is based on the cognitive science of brain fitness, helping dyslexia at its source.
Finding a program to address your child's needs is not easy.
- In center is expensive & inconvenient
- Off-the-shelf software is ineffective
- Tutoring does not help long term
- Meanwhile, your child is falling behind
- More affordable than tutoring.
Our program may be your answer.
We provide clinical software, done at home, monitored by professionals, that is adaptive -- it zeroes in on your child's specific needs.
