Fast ForWord Program
This month’s Curriculum and Instruction post was submitted by Literacy Coach Debra Hoover.
We at Bucyrus Schools are happy to announce that, in an effort to help our struggling readers to boost their ability to decode new words, we have begun using a new reading intervention program called Fast ForWord by Scientific Learning. It is a program that has many of our students in grades K-7 spending 30 minutes per day on the computer for a period of 12 to 16 weeks.
Children struggling to decode unfamiliar words, usually do so because they do not really hear the sounds in language as well as they should hear them. With this program, the computer offers the students six different games to choose from during their session each day. Each game provides activities for the student to listen for sound changes, to distinguish high sounds from low sounds, to hear letter combination sounds in a particular order, etc.
The goal of the program is to retrain the brain to hear the individual sounds in language and to encourage children to develop better listening and attention skills. The last two are important to comprehension, adding to overall reading improvement.
If you have questions about this exciting new program, just email Debra Hoover at dhoover@bucyrusschools.org or call her at 419-562-4045 ext. 3250
