The Learning Success Blog

Sasha Scott, reading recovery teacher at Welbourn Primary School in New Zealand, was troubled.

She and the school’s associate principal, Jenny, were puzzled why, year after year, there was always a group of students that never seemed to make the progress they should.

Sasha told The Learning Capacity Podcast, “The teachers have all done the very best that they can with what they know. But year on year, those same children pop up again. What could we do differently for these kids, because obviously what we were doing wasn't meeting their needs?”

Searching for a solution for students who were struggling

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“The results have been quite phenomenal. It's just been amazing to watch”

That's how Dr Con Kafataris described the changes he saw in his nine-year-old son George after the Fast ForWord program.

Dr Kafataris was speaking with The Learning Capacity Podcast about George’s language and learning difficulties, the improvements following George’s participation in the program, and why he decided that his six year old daughter, Eleni, should also do the neuroscience based exercises.

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George’s parents had known since he was about three years old that his language was delayed.

A recent article in the Melbourne Age newspaper titled “Children with learning difficulties need programs based on science, not anecdote and neurobabble”, makes some valid points but misses key information about how the neuroscience-based program Fast ForWord helps with Dyslexia.

The author focused on children with reading difficulties, including dyslexia.

Teachers do much more than just teach - they build student brains. 

This is the message from Dr Martha Burns, professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern University, in a podcast episode on The Learning Capacity Podcast.

Dr Burns discusses the new science of learning, and how it involves educational neuroscience and understanding individual differences in children. 

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Elliot’s mum, Elaine had been concerned about his learning ever since he started school. Elliott is now aged 10 and in Year 5 at school.

He did not seem to be making progress with learning to read in Year 1, and by Year 3 he was having trouble with literacy concepts, particularly with comprehension. He also struggled to understand maths concepts. He found it difficult to make sense of the relationships between mathematical symbols and what he was meant to do with them.

As a primary school teacher, Elaine saw a discrepancy between her very energetic, able, motivated, and clever-in-many-different-areas little boy, and his lack of learning progress at school. He needed a lot of help to grasp simple concepts in reading and maths.

Many of the children I work with in my speech pathology clinic who have dyslexia also have additional difficulties with processing information and sustaining their attention.

They often have some or many of these challenges: 

• Difficulty following verbal instructions
• Need instructions to be repeated
• Slow to process information
• Easily overloaded with auditory information
• Difficulty sustaining attention for learning tasks
• A tendency to daydream
• Easily distracted
• Academic difficulties

These symptoms could indicate that they have one or more of the conditions known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), auditory processing disorder (APD), or specific language impairment (SLI).

A team of academics from Auckland University’s Centre for Brain Research and School of Psychology has produced an objective overview of 15 computer-based and group or whole class behavioural intervention programs that are designed to remediate learning disorders.

They point out that advances in the scientific understanding of disorders such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have paved the way for the development of programs aimed at helping the  estimated one in five students with these disorders.

Can comic books help people with autism make sense of their world, and interact better with the people around them?

Dave Kot believes they can, if they are written specifically for children on the autism spectrum. Kot, who has autism himself, has written the first comic book in the world with a hero who has autism.

Face Value Comics volumes 1 & 2 (more to come) were written by him, his wife, Angela, and a team of illustrators who live in a small town in Pennsylvania, USA. They aim to explain to a young person with autism, what autism is.

Dave Kot says, “At worst, the comics are just family fun and entertainment. At best, autistic kids have a hero like themselves. They can understand what autism is or what it isn't, relate to situations and be open to positive communications about autism”.

Has your child ever been told by his or her teacher to "just try harder"? Have you thought that their difficulites with reading, maths or inability to keep up in class would be fixed if they would just put in a bit more effort?

While this may be a common reaction by adults to a child they think could do better, it is not the answer for children with learning difficulties. No matter how hard they try, a child with learning challenges just can't achieve the desired result because their brains won't let them. 

Learning difficulties are complex.  They are caused by a difference in their brain's "wiring" which can result in an auditory processing disorder, attention difficuties, vision, or movement challenges and other conditions that interfere with learning.

Therese is the mother of three boys who go to Narooma Public School, on the NSW South Coast.

She recently spoke with LearnFast about how Fast ForWord helped her youngest son learn better and made his attitude to school much more positive. The results were so good she now has her middle son on the program.

Her youngest (Matt, Year 3) did Fast Fast ForWord in Terms 1 & 2 (2014), and his brother (Joe, Year 4) is doing the program in Terms 3 & 4 (2014).

Why was Matt selected to do Fast ForWord?