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Computer exercises help kids with reading problems By TOM HOWARD Of The Gazette Staff Wearing headphones and eyes glued to the computer screen, 10-year-old David Lewallen deftly clicks a computer mouse while images of six-legged creatures flash in front of him.
The characters in the Bug Out! exercise he’s playing resemble something right out of Super Mario Brothers. Responding to both sight and sound cues, David helps rescue bugs from the evil Dr. Insectus. After the exercise, David and school psychologist Rosanna Buehl view a series of charts that measure his progress in Bug Out! and related exercises, such as Trog Walkers, Treasures of the Tomb, Startup Stories and Polar Cop. “It’s usually easy at first, but it will get harder and harder as you move along,” David says, showing how the charts track his progress. Although Bug Out! is as engaging as anything David would find in a video arcade, this is no ordinary computer game. Bug Out! is part of a computer program called Step 4Word, which is revolutionizing the way people like David are overcoming reading difficulties. Step 4Word and a related program, Fast ForWord, also represent one way in which computers and the Internet have fulfilled their promise for helping people overcome learning disabilities. The programs work by reprogramming the brains of people who use them, experts say. According to Scientific Learning, the developer of Fast ForWord and Step 4Word, both programs are the result of years of brain research. The computer exercises help reprogram the brain so that students can distinguish between sounds such as “gee” and “key,” or “zip” and “sip.” More than 25,000 children nationwide have completed Fast ForWord and Step 4Word. The company reports that 90 percent of the children who complete the exercises make 1-1/2 to two years’ progress in reading skills. Buehl and Mark Taylor, owners of the Learning Clinic in Billings, say they haven’t kept detailed statistics on their clients. But they have noticed progress. “All of the kids we have worked with have made gains,” not only in the target skills that the programs address, but in other ways, Buehl said. For example, several students had experienced anxiety over their school work because of their learning problems. But their anxiety levels dropped after they began achieving success with the programs. At one time, scientists believed dyslexia resulted from sight problems. Dyslexics often received visual training because they were thought to reverse letters and words. More recently, researchers began to realize that dyslexia and other reading problems result when the brain has difficulty processing sounds. Fast ForWord and Step 4Word were developed to help otherwise normal children who are poor readers because they have trouble distinguishing phonemes, short sounds such as “da” and “ka,” which are the basic building blocks of language. Speech experts say that every word in the English language is created from 44 phonemes. Some people have difficulty linking written words with sounds because their brains have trouble distinguishing the differences between similar-sounding phonemes. To help overcome sound processing problems, Fast ForWord and Step 4Word alter and lengthen the duration of phonemes. For example, in normal speech, the difference between the sound of “day” and “bay” is about three-thousandths of a second. But Fast ForWord and Step 4Word lengthen the sounds so that people with auditory-processing problems can distinguish the difference. Buehl notes that people with language-processing problems usually have normal hearing, but their brains have trouble distinguishing the sounds that they’re hearing. David’s mother, Patti Lewallen, says, “He would always say, ‘I can hear you. I just can’t understand you.’ ” Skeptics might worry that playing “computer games” to improve reading skills is like prescribing candy to cure tooth decay. But students who take up the programs soon learn that they’re in for plenty of hard work. “They’re disguised to look like games. That’s done deliberately so that kids can have fun and still be successful,” Taylor said. “The game is teaching them awareness of the sounds in the words so that they can link the sounds with the letters.” Fast ForWord and Step4Word both require a major time commitment and concentration. Students like David spend 100 minutes per day, five days a week for six weeks working at Fast ForWord and Step 4Word. Patti Lewallen said David has shown significant progress in the classroom since he completed the exercises. David, who just completed fourth grade at Boulder Elementary, agrees that his grades have improved. “I’m getting a lot more A’s and A-pluses than I used to,” he said. “My spelling is getting better, and so is my math. I’m also writing better sentences now.” “The progress has been unbelievable” Patti Lewallen said. “He’s reading at his grade level, and he’s spontaneously reading. Before, he always used to ask me to read something out of the newspaper.” Jeanna Seymour said her daughter, Danelle, who just completed her freshman year at Joliet High, has also struggled with reading. Even when she was a third-grader, Danelle would spend hours on her homework. Danelle said the training programs seem to have helped improve her reading and note-taking skills. “Danelle is a smart girl, but she’s showing some of the classic symptoms of dyslexia,” Taylor said. Taylor said he became interested in Fast ForWord and Step 4Word a few years ago after learning about innovative research being conducted at Rutgers University. “I had read snippets about their research in scientific journals, and I just tagged it in my memory and I started closely tracking it,” he said. Katharin Kelker, a Billings School District 2 trustee, says Fast ForWord and Step4Word show promise in helping address certain learning disabilities. Kelker recently stepped down as executive director for Parents Lets Unite for Kids, a nonprofit, statewide organization that offers information and support to parents of children with special learning needs. She resigned from PLUK after being elected to the school board. “Fast ForWord doesn’t eliminate the need for teaching. It’s a different way of supplementing what resource teachers are already doing,” Kelker said. “I wish I had that 20 years ago,” Kelker said, speaking as a former resource-room teacher. “You know pretty quickly if it’s going to be effective. You start to start to see progress in a few days.” Kelker said Taylor and Buehl are careful to point out to their clients what the programs can and can’t do. Lucy Hart Paulson, an assistant professor in the Department of Education Research at the University of Montana, said Fast ForWord and Step 4Word are receiving a lot of attention among language and reading specialists. Scientific Learning’s own research on the success of Fast Forword and Step 4Word is often described as “exciting and “valuable,” Paulson said. But some have suggested that further independent research is needed, comparing the results of Scientific Learning’s programs versus other types of training, she said. Taylor and Buehl run the Learning Clinic out of their home in the Blue Creek area. They have also provided training in school settings, and some clients have used the programs in their own homes. At this time, the Learning Clinic is the only Billings-area establishment to offer Fast ForWord and Step4Word. Students are often referred to the Learning Clinic by school professionals. Often Taylor and Buehl meet parents who are seeking ways to help their children overcome their reading problems. Judy Evans, a retired School District 2 principal and a reading specialist, has received training in Fast ForWord and plans to use the programs in the new juvenile intake and assessment center soon to open in the former Maverick Fire Station. “Often times, kids who get into trouble have difficult learning to read and write. My focus will be on the at-risk population and kids in trouble with the law,” Evans said. “This is one of those things that can make a tremendous difference with kids.” Taylor, Buehl and Evans caution that Scientific Learning’s products don’t cure all learning disabilities. Taylor is optimistic that the computer programs will help school districts reduce the amount of money spent on special education. “If we can fix a student’s reading problems, we don’t have to provide a lot of ongoing services for the rest of the time that student is in school,” Taylor said. Tom Howard can be reached at 657-1261 or by e-mail at: thoward@billingsgazette.com.
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