Young students Fast ForWord

Sean O'Brien said he was skeptical when educators recommended sitting his kindergartner son at a computer to address concerns that the boy had difficulty following directions.

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The boy barely knew his alphabet six months ago. Now the first-grader is reading beyond his grade level as well as having an easier time following directions, his father said.

O'Brien doesn't doubt that those "computer games" at Riverbend Elementary School were the answer, he said.

Teacher Phil Loseby, who supervised Riverbend's Fast ForWord lab, said he hesitates to call them "games" when talking to parents. Even if Fast ForWord seems like games to the kids, it has helped many who came in with reading problems.

And it goes beyond helping them with their reading, Loseby said.

The lab has a big window framing what is probably the school's best view of the Mendenhall Glacier. The students focus their attention on the 25 computers. Some are controlling animated characters in races, based upon what they hear through headphones. Others may be looking for hidden treasure.

According to Scientific Learning Corp. of Oakland, Calif., which developed Fast ForWord, the games are "rewiring" children's brains - actually improving the way they work.

Loseby said what he had read before recommending Fast ForWord to the Juneau School District was impressive enough. Now in his second year in supervising the lab, he said it has more than fulfilled his expectations.

Rochelle Sabadin said her sixth-grader son was getting Ds when he went into Fast ForWord and has since gone on to make the B honor roll.

"I was a little skeptical," she said. "I did some reading on it and thought, let's give it a shot."

Juneau School District Superintendent Peggy Cowen said she likes what she's seen enough for plans to bring the program back next fall, after Loseby's grant-funded two-year study is complete.

"I think it's great," she said.

The program doesn't teach reading, Loseby explained. Instead it addresses communication skills that some children lack.

It brings them up to a level, and the next year they progress with their peers. At the same time, it helps them understand things they didn't understand before.

"For a lot of these kids, school's a place that doesn't make a lot of sense," he said.

Loseby said there are essentially 44 sounds - phonemes - used to communicate the English language. When people are talking, the sounds can be bunched tightly together. Most children learn to pick them up in their first 10 to 12 months of life.

Some children don't develop the skill. They can face communication problems similar to what people face in learning a second language with a different set of phonemes.

Loseby said the Scientific Learning Corp.'s computer program has slowed down the sounds of the language so that children can distinguish them. Next it speeds them up, teaching them to distinguish the sounds at full speed.

A beginning Fast ForWord learning exercise puts the students into a circus setting and requires them to distinguish pitch in the sounds they hear. They press the up-arrow key for a high pitch and the down-arrow key for a low pitch.

Successful responses move a character to the top of a pole. As the exercise progresses, the sequences of sounds become longer and quicker.

Subsequent exercises help students learn to distinguish similar sounds, such as B's from D's and P's from T's, while increasing the speed at which they can tell them apart.

Later exercises work on improving short-term memory skills and bridging spoken and written language.

"The program will adjust (to the student)." Loseby said. It is designed to operate so that a student maintains a success rate between 80 and 90 percent. "If I'm having a bad day, it will have a bad day."

Scientific Learning says that four to eight weeks of work will result in growth that can be measured as one to two academic years.

Loseby said he sees the academic growth in almost all of students. He has standardized test scores to document the success. Most children showed significant gains in their language abilities, despite missing regular classroom instruction to participate in Fast ForWord.

Independent research on Fast ForWord looks more scientifically at the company's claims that the program can "rewire" people's brains.

According to a Stanford Report article published in February, researchers at Stanford University found physical changes in the brains of dyslexic subjects - children who confuse the order of letters.

"Brain imaging scans of the children who participated in the training showed that critical areas of the brain used for reading were activated for the first time, and that they began to function more normally," the article stated.

Sabadin didn't need a scientist to tell her the program was successful in working with her dyslexic son. The big change she saw when he was in Fast ForWord was his feeling of confidence. Feeling better about himself, she said, "everything else falls into place."

O'Brien said his son flourished in the program. He recalled that before Fast ForWord, he would have to tell the boy to do things three or four times. The preschool asked if the boy had hearing problems.

"We found out his hearing is normal," he said.

Now, he said, his son understands as well as hears.

"He is paying attention better," O'Brien said.