Explain the Why to Your Child, and the Pledge!
Explain
Motivation and effort are essential for program success. It is helpful before you start, to explain to your child why the program is worthwhile and can make all the difference. Earning this buy-in really helps. We will give you scripts to use when talking to your child, such as:
This program exercises your brain. If you shoot baskets every day, you will get better at basketball. Gemm Learning programs are a workout for the brain that work the same way. They can:
- Make reading easier
- Help you finish homework quicker
- Make the teacher easier to hear
- Improve your grades
You want these things right? To change your brain though, you need to give us your best effort and try to beat the point scores from the day before. If you do that, you will do great!
Program Plan. We use an incoming reading assessment, a parent observations survey and a few days on the program to build a picture of your child and develop a plan to meet your goals, a plan that lays out which programs we suggest be completed. That then gives you a road map you can share with your child, either immediately or nearer the end point.
Pledges
There’s nothing like getting it down on paper! We have age-appropriate pledges that you can print out, get your child to sign and then put on the fridge or the wall. A pledge helps your child take some ownership and pride in her fast ForWord routine through to completion.
While prizes and rewards can help, nothing can compete with tapping into your child’s desire to do well AND to be better at his day job, school.
Computer Game Feel
Fast ForWord software is designed to be engaging, time after time. It uses score counters, dings, rewards animation after a few successful clicks, verbal encouragement when mistakes are made and lots of movement on the screen.
Fast ForWord is also adaptive, which keeps children working at a level that is neither too easy (boring) nor too hard (frustrating).
Furthermore, each program has 5-7 very different exercises that cycle in and out based on student progress, creating some variety to every session. – to engage children.
Because of the adaptivity, many children get their first ever taste of academic success and so become almost addicted to the work. Being “good at Gemm Learning” is a source of pride they feel internally because they know it’s getting harder but they are keeping up, and externally, because they can see their parents are authentically pleased as well, not just cheer-leading.
Of course, other children are tougher sells. But for most children, the first month or two at least goes fine – the novelty is enough.
Rewards and Incentives
We send certificates for program milestones, and provide score sheets where a child can track their scores – for particular games or overall. These kinds of tracking sheets and rewards do wonders for maintaining motivation and desire.
And then we help you manage incentives at home. It’s usually not necessary to use incentives to start. During the normal honeymoon period of the first 1-2 months, the exercises provide the motivation.
When needed though, we have all kinds of ideas for you on the MyGemm website – the kinds of targets to set, and ideas for incentive programs – many sent to us by or ever-innovative parents! Most of the time, a pretty modest amount of incentive will be enough, with the computer game aspect of Fast ForWord still doing the engagement heavy lifting.
Oversight and Reports to Avoid Road Blocks
Oversight
Gemm Learning staff have a backend into Fast ForWord where we see every click your child makes, every error, every success, time on the exercise, time between clicks – and more. We review this activity every day. Generally, we can tell exactly how things are going at home.
And if we see something, we will pick up the phone and call.
That means we are able to support you at home with a high degree of understanding. Fast ForWord is working on the part of life your child probably dislikes more than anything else, learning and reading. And so, it’s not unnatural for your child to hit an occasional roadblock, difficulty with an exercise that requires a yet-to-be-developed cognitive skill. While that actually is good news – it indicates a gap in your child’s learning that needs help – it can quickly become frustrating for your child.
Our philosophy is to react quickly to roadblocks and frustration in your child’s Fast ForWord routine. There is a lot we can do:
- Most exercises have help tools – added say aloud routines or sticky notes – to break the exercise down into more parts to make it easier. We start with that – or you can do that, by consulting intervention ideas on our MyGemm site.
- Live sessions – we can do a virtual session while your child does the program. We can then see how he is approaching any exercise that is causing difficulty. Most of the time, we can figure out a way forward.
Reports by Email
Every weekend, we send a comprehensive report of your child’s work. The show the all important line charts of progress and details on each exercise if you are interested.
Mainly, you are looking for flat lines or consecutive errors that might point to a falling off of interest or a road block. As we said earlier, we are looking at even more detailed versions of these reports and will likely be in touch before you see a problem yourself.
Fast ForWord Routine – Flexible Options
A 30 minute session of Fast ForWord will include 2 or 3 exercises that can be done at different times of the day. This means you could do 10 minutes before school and 20 minutes after school, or whatever.
This is a challenging program as it working on fundamental and deep-seated weaknesses in your child’s learning. And so it needs your child’s full attention. Our recommendation is to do it right after school, or in the morning, if your child is a morning person. Those times fit most schedules.
Tips to Make the Routine Work (for Gemm, and your child!)
Ask the school to pause homework. For elementary age children, the goals of this program align perfectly with the goals of the school. Really, nothing is more important than learning to read and learning to learn. Many of our parents tell the school about our program, and teachers will go along with pausing or reducing the homework for the first 2-3 months of our program.
Don’t sacrifice favorite activities. We know child schedules more challenging. However, we advise parents not to put Fast ForWord ahead of a favorite sport or hobby. Most of the time, the fact that the program can be broken into smaller bits means families are able to fit the 30 minutes per day in without taking something loved away. Sometimes it means choosing a weekend day, rather than all week day
Final Note
Our goal is to bring about a profound and transformative acceleration in your child’s learning trajectory in around 6 months. This is not only possible, it’s probable, if your child does the work. It probably won’t be pretty over the whole 6 months, but it’s easily doable AND it’s easier than you might think. The vast majority of our families find a way and they are glad they did.