This is where each student is unique. Quite often, the improvements in phonological awareness and other skills start to feed into more confident and fluent reading in just a few weeks – before the reading-specific training starts. This is most often the case, where the delays are narrow and limited to processing.
However, other students come to us with a broader range of delays and so it takes more work, sometimes a lot more work, to build a foundation from which reading can start to progress. This can take a few months.
Signs of Progress
Generally, during that period, parents should look for evidence of change away from reading first. For instance, in attitude to learning, vocabulary or listening attentiveness. However, it can take a while for newly capable brain to apply these improved skills to reading, just like to takes a cognitively healthy child a while to learn to read.
More on the power of the cognitive programs here
Gemm Learning does a reading assessment every 8-12 weeks between programs. While the overall reading level will hopefully change, we are more interested in progress in the sub categories. For younger children in particular, we are most interested in improvements in phonological awareness and decoding (sounding out) – as this signals progress towards automatic decoding, a foundation for future reading success.
Once we these skills are boosted, your child is ready and more likely to benefit from the more specific reading training in our reading programs – the Fast ForWord reading programs, ClearFluency and Reading Plus.
