Fast Forword Program

Fast ForWord®

Fast ForWord® is an evidence-based reading intervention program that uses a unique 3-part approach to deliver fast gains to the most struggling students.

Prepare:

Fast ForWord prepares the foundation for reading by finding and targeting hidden culprits for slow reading progress (Memory, Attention, Processing, and Sequencing – MAPS).

Practice:

Fast ForWord engages students in intensive, personalized, and progressively complex practice sessions that work on language and reading skills.

Reinforce:

As students read aloud, the program listens and provides corrective reading feedback. This real-world reading reinforces newly learned skills and rapidly builds fluency.

Who is it for?

Elementary school children, starting at age 5, through middle
school, all the way up to high school with:

Reading difficulties
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
Mild to moderate autism
Dyslexia
ADD/ADHD
A learning disability, or
Children who are struggling at school yet may not qualify for extra help

Fast ForWord is easy to implement in a variety of settings, including at home, the classroom, computer lab, before and after school programs, and summer schools.

Fast ForWord is Efficient. Effective. Enduring

Why Fast ForWord Works?

Fast ForWord was developed in a University lab 20 years ago and we stay true to those roots. In fact, we continue to be independently researched, with new studies published in peer- reviewed journals confirming our science and results.

No other reading and language intervention programs have been as thoroughly researched and reviewed as Fast ForWord. The program has more than 55 patents in neuroscience and education and more than 250 research studies verifying its effectiveness.

Some of the most impressive research comes from Stanford and Harvard and shows actual physiological changes in the brain after struggling readers used Fast ForWord. In the years since they started using the Fast ForWord program, schools in the St. Mary Parish School District in Louisiana showed dramatic improvements in their reading achievement as measured by the LEAP English Language Arts assessment.

How Does It Work?

The ability to read starts with how the brain perceives and processes sound. Developed by world-renowned neuroscientists, Fast ForWord directly targets the underlying causes of language and reading difficulty. Think of it like this: you get where you want more quickly if you’re using a well-paved highway instead of pothole surfaced streets, right?

It’s as if the brains of the struggling readers (when doing reading and language activities) are functioning with bumpy surface streets– the pathways and connections are there, but the route is less efficient and slower, as evidenced by the lighter, more diffuse activity. Proficient readers, on the other hand, have nicely paved neural networks (highways) when doing reading activities and their activation is concentrated, more intense, and more efficient.

Fast ForWord works on the following skills:

Fast ForWord® starts from the very basic of English Reading Skill, Phonemic Awareness, and gradually takes students through higher reading skills:

Phonics and decoding
Reading Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Critical thinking
Syntax
Grammatical structures.

Recommended Use:

Three days per week for 30 or 50 minutes.
Five days per week for 30, 40, 50, or 90 minutes.
It automatically adapts the intensity, difficulty, and rewards within each exercise to suit each learner.