The learning success blog

For many students, maths is no fun. And it may not have been a pleasant experience at school for their parents either.

Do you have students or a child who doesn’t like maths?

According to Dr Judy Willis, author of “Learning to Love Maths”, there are ways you can help make maths fun for your child. And you don’t need to be a maths “wiz” to help your son or daughter.

Dr Willis has written a great article for Psychology Today about our attitudes towards maths - maths negativity and maths positivity. In it she listed some common myths about maths:

Veteran educator, Jacqueline Egli, Executive Director of Bridges Academy, a well known not for profit, private school in USA was interviewed recently on the Fox News channel.

She spoke about how Bridges Academy is using neuroscience-based technology to improve reading for students in the school.

“For many of my students in my early days as an educator it might take me three, four, five years to make 6 months of solid improvement, ”she said.

Now her students with reading or learning difficulties use the Fast ForWord program. 

Egli says Fast ForWord can improve a child’s reading level by multiple grades in 6 - 8 weeks of training, and MRI scans before & after training show an increase in brain activity in kids with dyslexia.

Mike McKay is a retired superintendent of the Surrey County schools district in British Columbia, Canada.

He was a public educator for 35 years. The area he supervised has over 160 languages spoken. 

You can imagine it would be difficult to measure the potential problems with language and reading development in such a large and diverse region. 

But back in 2008 he attended a conference hosted by Scientific Learning Corporation, where he saw the research behind the Fast ForWord programs. 

When he came back, he asked his board to trust him, and give him $300,000 to get started. It was bold pitch. Mike tells the story of how things have panned out in this Learning Capacity podcast episode:

Sally Wilcox noticed that her son Mac was becoming increasingly frustrated with writing and spelling when he was in grade 5. 

In Mac’s words, it was very simple - he hated writing.

Thinking back, Sally recalled that the early markers were already appearing in grade 1 when Mac had difficulty following instructions.

On deeper investigation, Mac was diagnosed with auditory processing disorder. At first Sally was told that this was developmental and that Mac would grow out of it, and to some extent this was true. Yet the problems persisted and Sally knew that something else needed to happen.

Eventually she found the Fast ForWord programs, and that’s when things started to change for the better. Fortunately Mac was very receptive to resolving his issue, and his teacher was also familiar with auditory processing disorder.

This combination helped Mac make significant gains at school with his academic results. He also increased his self confidence and became more willing to try.

In this episode of Learning Capacity Podcast Sally shares Mac’s story.

This is the story of Amelie, who as a young primary aged girl was often described as a ‘busy child’.

When Amelie’s parents, Jane and Craig were given the diagnosis for Amelie of ADHD, there were mixed feelings of relief, but also devastation as they knew there was a problem that needed to be addressed.

Amelie was assessed at well below the relevant standards, being two years behind in writing and maths when she started grade 3.

After researching extensively, Jane and Craig eventually turned to Fast ForWord. They faced some big challenges along the way, but in the end they and Amelie persevered with some amazing results.

In this episode of The Learning Capacity Podcast, I spoke to Jane where she shared Amelie’s story.

It's 20 years since four visionary neuroscientists combined their brain research with emerging computer technologies to develop some exercises to help children with reading difficulties.

The work of the scientists, Dr Michael Merzenich, Dr Paula Tallal, Dr Bill Jenkins and Dr Steve Miller proved that the underlying cognitive processes that influence speech and language problems could be identified—and permanently improved.

Their research and the exercises they built led to the development of the Fast ForWord program.

20 year commemorative conference

To commemorate this 20-year milestone, the four founding neuroscientists are participating in Clear Fluency Corporation’s Visionary Conference in San Diego on March 3-5, 2016.

They will be reviewing how far we've come in our understanding of the brain and learning, and where the science, now known as educational neuroscience, is headed. 

Dr Con Kafataris, father of six, describes the changes he saw in his son George, aged nine, as phenomenal” after George completed the Fast ForWord program.

It was a little bit of a journey to find Fast ForWord for George but after trying a few avenues, including speech pathology, Dr Kafataris came across the program through a book titled, “The Brain That Changes Itself” by Dr Norman Doidge.

“The science seemed plausible”, said Dr Kafataris, so he decided to give it a go.

What were these “phenomenal” improvements? Listen to the podcast to find out.

Or read more below for the complete podcast transcript.

Dorothy Dore, principal of Urana Public School spoke with The Learning Capacity Podcast about how the school is building student learning capacity with the Fast ForWord neuroscience program.

Urana Public is a small primary school of 26 students (K- 6) located in the Riverina region of New South Wales, 600 kms south west of Sydney.

The school has implemented Fast ForWord for the past five years with excellent results, according to Dorothy.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

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

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

“It's here now. If you haven't looked, you may not have noticed it.”

That's neuroscientist, Dr Steve Miller, speaking on The Learning Capacity Podcast about the emerging field of educational neuroscience.

He pointed out that neuroscience, the knowledge of how our brains work, is being applied in a range of diverse fields and has recently come to education.

Research from neuroscience is being applied in: