Auditory Processing Disorder – How to Recognise it in Your Child – Webinar.

APD – ITS CRITICAL LINK TO READING

I want to welcome everyone to our session today very exciting to have people from here in the
US, Canada from around the world and if you are an international attending and you want more
information after the webinar please contact the person who invited you to the webinar. So,
we’ll talk a little bit more about that later on in the webinar.
Welcome everyone I would like to introduce both of your presenters to you today and they will
officially get us started with our first presenter today is Corey Armes. She has a bachelor’s
degree in both General and special education and a master’s degree in special education with
certification in the areas of educational diagnostician and mid-management she’s been now
with scientific learning for 16 years and I’ve worked with her the entire time she’s been here so
it’s really exciting and we do have people joining us on the group chat everyone really excited
to have everybody here today. And then we have Lynn Gover, who is our Fast ForWord home
representative and she’s been with scientific learning now for 5 years and has worked with over
eight hundred families. Her background is in software sales focusing on relationship building
she’s a mom of 10 wonderful kids and three amazing grandchildren so please help me welcome
our Fast Presenter Cory Armes.
Thank you, Carrie.
First of all I’d like to give a warm welcome not only to our guests from the United States, but
also to our neighbors in Canada and those joining us from around the world, we’re really glad
that all of you are here with us today and I know that those from other countries are probably
most interested in information about auditory processing. So, let’s jump right in and get started
with a pool question.
So, we have four options. As to what brings you to the webinar today? First of all, do you want
to learn more information about auditory processing the second one is you looking for
information as to whether your child might have auditory processing disorder or do you need
tools and strategies to help address those processing delays in your child or if none of those
quite fit then go ahead and tell us in the QA box. What your thoughts are.
What brought you here to join us today? I’ll give you just a minute or so to do that, to get your
responses in. You can do that now for us. Once you click one of the buttons click that submit
button. So, it will all go in. Hopefully everybody’s gotten a chance to jump in there or put their
responses in the QA box. So, let’s see what we have all right. So, about a third of the people
want me more information about Auditory Processing so hopefully we’ll be able to give that to
you then we have. Almost another third wanting information to find out more about their child
and to see whether they may have those issues and then just a little bit over a third want tools
and strategies to address those processing delays. And then we have a few others may be
looking in at both bonding in the queue a box. Will get back to those in a little bit in our
discussion.

But I want to go ahead and jump in and tell you what we’re going to be talking about today.
First of all. Why do the students struggle with reading and learning? What’s going on that’s
causing these issues and what does research say about processing. And its role in literacy how
does that impact, what the kids are learning to read and to do? I also want to know, what can
we do about it? That’s always the bottom line. What can we do to help the students out, and
can make a difference for them? And then finally Lynn’s going to take over and tell you about
Fast ForWord home and give you some really great information on this specific program that
can help your students or children.
So, first of all, let’s look at the clues. What helps us know what kind of danger are we looking
for, to determine whether a child or a young person maybe in our classroom has an auditory
processing issue. Well, here’s a pretty common thing. Some of the obvious sign is that. The child
or student in school misunderstands a lot of what is said so maybe you’re Talking at home at
dinner if you’re a parent. And your child misunderstands a couple of things that are said and
totally missed what the family is talking about at dinner. Or maybe the classroom a teacher
might be presenting information about something and the students go to totally different
direction. Completely misunderstand what is said and so really isn’t queued into what is
happening.
So, this are the children who ask for things to be repeated frequently they might say huh or
what a lot they might give us a slow or delayed response. To the point that you might think
they’re not even going to respond at all. For example, I had a student years ago who would
raise his hand to answer questions which was great I was thrilled that he was participating.
There was a problem. He was answering a question that I had asked 5 to 10 minutes prior to
where we currently were in the discussion. It took him that long to process that question and
formulate a response. So not only was he delayed in responding to that first question. He
missed everything else what happened after that point because he was focused on that one

item. These children and young people also often are the ones who have difficulty with multi-
step directions as some of these kids can be passive, they give her a quiet and withdrawn when

others are talking and they don’t seem to engage. But if you think about it that makes a lot of
sense. Because if they can’t keep on track with the discussion. They’re not going to be the ones
that jump in to participate. It makes it much more difficult for those to really engage especially
in rapid fire discussions. So, in school teachers often report similar things to parents and the
student may have a blank stare and need questions repeated or statements repeated. They
respond with a lot of I don’t know kind of comments. And these are the students who tune out
a lot and that’s the key piece. Auditory information is difficult for them. It goes too quickly, it’s
too complex and they have trouble perceiving and holding on to information. So, when listening
is hard what do you naturally do? You tune out. So, if any of you and taking a college course or
maybe some kind of extended learning course that was a little bit over your head you might
know what I’m talking about. Teachers talking away and you are kind of thinking, what is this I

don’t understand I wish the professor would slow down. And in that situation, you might just
fade out and tune out and just think it’s too hard. I just I just can’t keep up with this. And that’s
what we see with auditory processing issue.
Some of you also may see that your student has trouble with phonics, reading, spelling types of
activities and you may even have some students who act out. School is frustrating, they are
good listeners, it’s hard to pay attention and they’ve discovered that if they caused just a little
disruption in class or a big disruption, then they don’t have to try to listen anymore. So
sometimes we see unexplained Behavior problems for students who generally have been pretty
compliant in school.
Teachers often are especially attuned to language base problem. Because they’ll see the impact
on other academic areas. They know that a child who can’t follow what’s going on in class or
can’t participate is going to have academic problems and other subjects. Particularly in the
elementary years when most classroom instruction depends on the teacher talking about, or
those spoken words. Children with language problems tend to fall behind and not build the
foundation they’re going to need for later years in school. So, for a child with language
problems, math gets harder when you got story problems science gets harder when you have
to read an article from the library. Any subject gets harder when you’re expected to do a
presentation in class. Because it’s just a challenge to have to process the information and get up
and talk about.
So, another quick poll question here. Good place for us to talk about. What areas are you most
concerned about with your child? Is it homework, does it take too long, it’s a struggle, it’s a
huge fight, it’s just too hard? Or is it more about reading are they struggling with that fluency,
comprehension and decoding pieces. Do they have trouble with writing, organizing their ideas,
putting their thoughts into words and doing that properly with correct spelling? Or do they
have trouble with math those math facts having those memorized or maybe it’s the story
problems that they struggle with. And if it’s a different one again, none of these quite fit, go
ahead and put that in the QA box and then as soon as you respond please click submit.
So, we can see exactly what’s going on with a lot of these kids. Can give you a little bit of time.
Some people are saying a little bit of everything. Even for questions about adult auditory
processing so score. That’s still applied to a lot of these things as well. Going to see a lot of
commonality between students in and adults. I think we’ve had time for people to make a
selection and click submit. So it looks like the biggest area of focus is in the area of a reading
and we’re going to get into that, and talk about exactly what’s going on with students with
auditory processing issues and reading the impact that had. The next highest win, it looks like
his writing, which you know those are tied in together. Just different sides of the same coin so
to speak. Math word problems remembering facts those kinds of things. As well as getting
homework done, always a struggle. With that homework is hard to do.

In relation to reading since that was the number one topic, why would language and reading of
problems co-occur with these auditory processing issues? The first thing we have to understand
is that if a child has a lot of cold when they’re young. They’re going to have fluid in their middle
ear during the time that the brain is setting up for those speech sounds when is creating the
maps for listening to speech sounds. So, each of the Sounds in the English language or in any
language maps to the brain so if I can’t process those sounds clearly because of the fluid in my
ear. Then I’m not going to get a good clear map for each of the phonemes or sounds of the
language this also happens when a child has a lot of ear infections in those first few years
because of clear speech signals are not getting into the brain effectively and the sound isn’t
going through the ears very well so we’re not getting a good mapping again. Some issues run in
families, maybe you had a family member or two who had trouble learning language they had
trouble building listening skills or maybe had trouble learning to decode when they were
learning to read. So that can be a genetic influence it could be a predisposition to have some
difficulty with perceiving those speech sound and tying the sound to words and meaning for
language and then later for reading. Sometime children are just a fifth child in the family and
Mom and Dad work and there just isn’t a whole lot of time for them to talk to read to or work
with that particular child, or group of children. And that especially happens that date today, and
with the economy and busy home lives and just so much going on.

It’s just difficult to find time to sit down and read or work individually with each child. And then
there are other things that we probably don’t even think about unknown factors that might
influence such as a noisy environment. Maybe if you live near a factory or a lot of road noise or
anything that we interfere with the development of the sound maps in the brain all those kinds
of things can have an impact. So, the bottom line is that these children often have difficulty
processing language sounds clearly and effectively from an early age. It may carry through all
the way to adulthood, but it starts in the very early developmental stages. And that means that
they’re going to perceive sounds incorrectly in those early years, so they’re going to practice
them correctly. And that’s going to build faulty sound patterns in the brain. And that’s what we
want to change that in the brain.
So, let’s think about, Those auditory processing issues. And why that would lead to a language
and reading problem and so we’re going to look at what the brain has to do to perceive or hear
speech sounds. So, this is a visual representation a speech map or physical characteristics of
speech sounds. So, we have to speech sounds represented here /ba/ a and /da/. So, that’s what
we’re looking at with this example and the image shows for bands of energy that indicate
frequency. Three actually so you’ve got one at the top of the graph one mid-level and then, It
looks like one, but it’s actually two separate at the bottom of the frequency. The information
we use to distinguish the /ba/ from the /da/, is at that very first tiny part of that blue line on the
left. I have highlighted that with those yellow bars.

So, if you look at the bottom horizontal part of the graph what you see is three number you got
a 0 of 40 and then 250. These members are in milliseconds or thousands of a second so it’s
important to see that when we have a syllable like /ba/ or /da/ it last for 250 that’s really not
very long it’s just a quarter of a second for one syllable. Look at where that syllable changes.
And you’ll see where that that first part that helps us distinguish the two sounds, its only 40
milli-seconds long. That longer part from 42 to 50 that’s the vowel sound, so that stays the
same, what is different is that first part covered by the yellow bar. That’s about a 12th of a
second long So we have to be able to hear or perceive those changes really quickly to
distinguish speech sounds in the English language and whether or not we can do that will
determine our processing abilities.
Now why would auditory processing problems be associated with reading difficulty? What I
want you to look at here is the reading brain. So, in that spot upper left corner you have the left
hemisphere of the language center of a young reader like reading a superimposed if you will, on
the language center of the brain. So, you can see there there’s a little red butterfly shaped spot
in the corner of the brain that links the hearing part of the brain to the seeing part of the brain
and I’ve circled out with a yellow circle. That little butterfly area is where children are hearing
the sound and making that letter sound correspondence and linking it to the letter that they
see. So, if they see a letter “A” they may think “aah” or “aaa” or the various other sounds that
are associated with the letter “a” if they see an “o” they may take “oooh” or they may take
“ooo” if they see a letter B they might be thinking “baa” They might be able even to sound out a
word by going, “caat” I’m thinking if you put it all together it makes cat because they can link
the sound to the letters and sound them out quickly and effectively. At this point that aren’t
really comprehending much. They are reading for meaning yet because they’re decoding and
that’s what that little butterfly areas shows us it’s a very important area when we’re learning to
read.

Then if you look to the right side you see the brain of adult readers, adults don’t have to decode
as much we don’t have to sound words out unless it’s a new word we haven’t seen before we
can pretty much go from sound to meaning and you can see that all that activity did move to
the frontal lobe of the brain. That frontal parted is where all that at Red area is activated and
where we learn how to read to learn. Using what we read to think about new things using what
we read to follow directions so we can put a new item together maybe so we can read the
catalogs we can read novel. Whatever you’re using reading in anyway, whatever you’re doing
that the frontal lobe is involved because you’re making decisions about things and
remembering and processing information as you read. So, a child has to go from the ability to
decode to the ability to actually use reading to learn. We say that a child goes from learning to
read to reading to learn.

Another very important process for them to make, what I want you to see is that what that
little butterfly area in our first picture it’s dependent on the Integrity of the auditory processing
system because that’s what we need to link the sounds and letters together. We have to be
able to know clearly what those sounds are to be able to make the correct association with the
letters that we were going to use.
We have a new research dealing with auditory processing from two different places. One is
from the Speech & Language hearing Association whose research was just published from
February of last year in the Journal of speech language and hearing research journal and I found
that auditory processing deficit were found prior to school entry in children who later were
diagnosed with dyslexia. So, making that link between auditory processing and dyslexia is this
more research supporting that. The authors here you can see in that at bottom section, I said
that the results support the existence of a general auditory processing impairment and
developmental dyslexia which might be the cause of a phonological problem at least in a large
set of persons with dyslexia so that’s a connection, that a lot of people are interested in
wanting to know more about dyslexia.
And then we also have another researcher at Northwestern University Nina Kraus, who did a
study where she had a bathing cap with electrodes that picked up brain waves so she put this
bathing cap on 3 and 4-year-old in order to tell whether the children were actually perceiving
speech sounds or not. Whether their brains were registering the sound whether they could
perceive them accurately. While they were wearing these bathing cap and playing with toys, he
would pump down into the room such as bababa or perhaps dadadada. The sound might be all
by itself or it might be in an environment with noise, because we’ve got to figure out, can they
process with background noise going on because School classrooms can be noisy places. So,
with background noise it might sound something like this “babababa”. So, what she found out is
when those three and four-year-old had trouble perceiving speech sounds and noise and she
follow them for the next 3 years. Those children later had phonological processing issue. They
had trouble rhyming they had trouble figuring out what the first letters of words were. And
those children often go on to have reading problems, which might not necessarily be diagnosed
as dyslexia, but It definitely was pointed out that they did have issues with reading.
Now let’s get to the point of your student, your children because that’s why some of you are
here how do you know if your child’s brain needs boosting How do you know if an intervention
might be helpful. So, let’s go back to what we talked about earlier. Do you get a lot of “huh?”
what? those kinds of responses all the time where they don’t seem to be able to handle
information that’s coming at them through the auditory Channel. That’s a sign they could have
an attention problem and or an auditory processing problem often times those two things go
hand-in-hand. If they have trouble learning the alphabet, memorizing math facts, making those
letters sound connection remembering nursery rhymes especially if they’re presented orally.
So, if they hear something and they had trouble remembering it and they need visual help to
help them that could be an auditory working memory process problem that often goes along

with auditory processing issues. Then finally the big key for all of us. And people often ask what
question do I ask in an IEP meeting. This is it, is the child having problems sounding out words?
Are they having trouble with decoding? Or do they have a history of speech sound production
errors? Often these are kids who still are making speech sound errors mispronouncing words
much later than other children. So, if you see a child with one of these. Any of these areas or a
combination. Could recommend that the child have a complete auditory processing battery
done. To determine if the child does have auditory processing issue.
Let’s jump back into a pool question because, I need to know how many of you are coming, on
today’s call because your students already have an IEP. So if your child does have an IEP it’s yes
if not they haven’t been tested for any of these issue, it should be NO or perhaps if your child
has said other a testing done or maybe they have a plan or something like that go ahead and
click other and then put that in the Q&A box. And I will look for that. We see a lot of things with
Multiple items. Multiple issues and I do have a question I apologize, there’s a question about
what is an IEP? I’m sorry that’s it an American term it’s an individual educational plan. So, any
student that is in a speech program or receiving any sort of special ed services. They have a plan
designed just for them to help meet their specific needs and that’s called an IEP or an individual
education plan. Also, Corey someone just typed it in and said IEPs are also used in Canada. For
that person. Alright some are saying that. They do have a huge problem getting children tested
sometimes I do understand that. It looks like the majority of people do have students who are
receiving some type of services already. And some do not about it’s a little over 4th do not and
then we have some of the ones that have the 504 or they tried to get. Some type of services.
We also have some parents with students on the autism spectrum. That may be something
where you’re trying to figure out okay. Does my child have auditory processing issues or
attentional issues so we might get into that a little bit more when we get into the Q&A section
and I can address some of those specific question.
Going back to slides I’d like to talk a little bit about some strategies and modifications some of
your students could do have IEPs or have a plan and whatever program there in may have some
modifications already in place. But these are just a good general thing that teachers can do at
the specialty of the students do not have a plan in place already just to help those students
have an advantage in dealing with both attentional issues and auditory processing issue. So,
first of all, distraction can often be a problem so we’ve got to think about that we’ve got to
move the students so they’re not sitting by a window or door or a place where there’s a lot of
traffic because that’s just a logical place for kids to get distracted.

Seating at the front of the room is often helpful. Closer perhaps to the teacher’s desk not in a
punitive way but simply to give them the advantage of having a little more direct eye contact if
the teachers in the front of the room talking, they can move a little closer to the desk to help
that student get redirected a little more easily. Also, another thing to think about is improving
understanding with simple questions and direction. Key words. Picture clues. And those kinds of

things really help students focus in a little bit better. If it gets too much information it’s a lot
harder to stay focused for them just as it is with us. So, what they also may need more breaks
because I’ll tell you for these kids, paying attention and understanding instruction takes a lot of
effort. It can be exhausting and so we want to think about that for these students. And help the
teachers understand it’s simple things like that can make a big difference for these students.
There are some other things that are helpful as well. Show the students how to do things.
Rather than providing explanations especially in-depth ones sometimes when children are
young people are having difficulty understanding. We have a tendency want to want to talk and
explain more and that just adds to the problem. Simple simple simple is always our best
strategy. Again. Special cues can help the student when they’re up task. Maybe you have a little
signal or you have a little manipulative you hold up or at home you know you have you can
have your own little signals have you seen people pull on their ear and that’s a cue to the
students to know that they are listening. And I had a student years ago who was very bright but
when I was talking to the kids I can often see by his expression when he kind of left us mentally
and went off on a rabbit trail during a lesson or discussion. So, we just created a little code
phrase that would trigger him to come back and pay attention and stay focus. And it took a
little bit of effort but he was able to do that. Again, giving them more time eliminating
background noise whenever possible. Having the kids verbalize what they are learning. That’s a
big thing and helping them process the information. So bottom line the key is keeping things
simple and quiet when possible check for understanding give them more response time. And
that gives him a chance to process both the question and what they want to say. Both are very
important.
Now let’s talk about what else you can do to make a difference for your students who are
struggling in these areas. That’s why we’re all here and that’s what I want to share and what
Lynn is going to share. We know that auditory processing can be exercised and practice through
technology. If the technology, includes exercises that are designed to build up that capacity to
process of speech sounds to perceive them clearly, so the child can develop the ability to
process and perceive the sounds just as any other student would do.
Let’s go back just for a second to those quick components of the sound that I talked about that
/ba/ and /da/.
With technology we can stretch out those sounds and double the length of time that that
transition occurs that very rapid change that helps distinguish the /ba from the /da/ So, with
technology we can stretch out that 40 millisecond of time and have it to be 80 millisecond and
have it to be twice as loud. So, it gives us twice the time. and twice the volume which makes
speech sounds easier to perceive. And if the speech is easier to perceive the brain can begin
dealing with it, and making a map for those sounds. This makes speech sounds more accessible.
to children who struggle with speech and also auditory processing.

Let’s look at the evidence for that. That technology and Neuroscience technology specifically
can make a difference. So just last year there was research published that asked the question –
Is neuroscience research useful for educators? The authors concluded, that after reviewing the
research that the answer was. Definitely YES! Because when you use Neuroscience based
approaches you can see changes both in brain function and the behavior can change the child
now can perceive those speech sound. But you can also actually see that the brain itself has
been changed, that has been augmented. So, let’s look. An example of that this is research
done by at Ellis Temple at Stanford University she had typical readers there on the left whose
brains you can see. They we’re reading well they have areas of activation highlighted circles
that show that the brain is working in concert that phonological area, the processing and
memory area oldest the areas that are needed for good reading are working together in
concert. There were 35 of those students And what she did was to ask them to do a rhyming
test while they were in an FMRI scanner so that’s a functional magnetic resonance imaging
scanner, and what it does is look to see where blood flow is going to the brain because those
are the areas that are activated during different tasks. So that’s what’s happening in the left. On
the right we see another 35 children who were about 7 years old and who were diagnosed with
dyslexia. You can see that when they were asked to do a rhyming task even though they could
rhyme, those same areas of the brain in the frontal lobe in that temporal parietal region those
areas did not light up. The language in Reading parts of the brain they simply were not
activated properly. But after just six weeks on a neuroscience-based intervention that uses that
stretched speech, to build auditory processing, we can see those areas now or lighting up.
Research saw a change in function, and at the same time went back and tested those student’s
ability to read which Elise Temple actually did twice at Stanford and Nadine Gaab also did it at
Harvard a few years later. They saw behavioral changes in reading as well as the functional
changes in the brain. And the product that provided that stretch speech and was used in these
studies is a neuroscience-based program called Fast ForWord.
In addition to research studies in there many, many more available on the scientific learning
website. We have testimonials for parents and Educators. It’s always good to hear from
Educators and parents directly about what they think and to know that changes aren’t just
happening and scientific articles but also in real life settings. So, here are some examples of
posting from our Facebook page that different parents have made. Those postings are
unsolicited the parents just put these comments up and you can see that they’re talking about
the progress and a great result they’ve seen in their children often talking specifically about
auditory processing issues after at that have been resolved after students completed the Fast
ForWord products are one of those products or more.
So, we have some that are talking about a child with auditory processing who now is graduating
college amazing results best thing we’ve done those kinds of things. So, 96% of the parents
surveyed have reported Improvement in language, reading, general school work and their
cognitive skills which are things like their memory their attention their processing of

information and their ability to sequence things or put them in order, just from using the Fast
ForWord product.
So now I’d like to transition and let Lynn tell you more about her story and about the Fast
ForWord home program. Thank you so much Corey. I do appreciate all of the time that you
spent with our families today talking about auditory processing and I love this testimonial page I
actually had a conversation with a mom this week, and this is a mom of a 7 year old little boy
who has auditory processing challenges and they been doing it Fast ForWord program now for
14 weeks so they’re almost done with your subscription and the things that she’s told us that
she seen Improvement are really almost a checklist to one of your earlier slides. So, one of the
big areas that she said they saw improvements on were, better classroom participation he
actually had started to get awards now for having good behavior in the classroom. Left tuning
out, right, left causing small disruption so he doesn’t have to pay attention. she’s also talked
about the fact that now he readily raises his hand in the classroom, he wants to participate he
no longer has that “deer-in-the-headlights” look when the teacher calls on him. He’s able to
keep up with what the teacher is presenting in the classroom. She also said he’s spending less
time on his iPad and he’s actually wanting to read books.
He’s actively going to get books and spending time with books and putting the iPad aside. And
because of the auto processing challenges he really didn’t have a lot of friends in his social circle
maybe one child at a time and she noticed on the playground that he was actually in a group of
three other children and he was able to engage in conversation with all three of them and not
look left out. And she said prior that he always looks sad and left out on the playground and
she’s noticed said that social ability has changed for him in just in 14-week time period. So,
these testimonials that we get that are you obviously unsolicited are also things that we need
Fast ForWord.
Sales representative here all the time from our family. We always hear the Improvement that
these children are making, not just giant academic Improvement but all these little things right
the kids need to do well to be able to participate in the classroom to have less frustration to
have better social interactions, and have better Behavior we hear these types of improvements
from our parents all the time. Thank you, Cory, for introducing a testimonial page.
Fast ForWord is a program that you use at home, it helps to remediate the language and
reading skills are very fun and engaging way. It’s a service that will provide you with the
program itself but also your own one-on-one educational consultant who’s there to support
you and your child why they go to the program. One of the things that we talk about with our
families and the Fast ForWord program, is there will be time were they’re on the program that
they might have some frustration there might experience I’m a plateau of them achieving the
skills, and that’s what that Consultant is there to do, they are there to help you get through this
program in the most effective and efficient manner.

When we talked about reading problems and we talked about kids who have IEPs or have
extended time to do certain tasks in the classroom, we view those other things as a Band-Aid
right. And what we talked about Fast ForWord is no more Band-Aids on these reading
problems. It’s the combination of this neural science technology and education right, a building
for the child to absorb all that’s going on in the classroom in the most efficient way possible we
are going to the root cause. We are targeting these missing scales and his weaknesses that
other programs and other methods don’t address. I talk to parents all the time who tell me
we’ve been tutoring them and reading for years and yet we really don’t see any gain, we’re still
multiple years behind and they’ll talk about what we do, more reading every night when we
eating 30 to 40 minutes every night and yet we don’t see this translating to gains in the
classroom and that’s because that’s not getting to the cognitive areas of the brain that need to
be remediated, so that these other activities that you’re doing can be that much more impact
for.

The program itself, this is the biggest differentiating feature to me is that its individualized.
Every click of the mouse your child makes the algorithms in the background are changing and
modifying for your child’s ability it is giving them more exposure right to go type of exercises
that are program identifies and they need more help with. Come into the 80/20 rule 80% of the
time we have to set those little brains out for success, right, because that’s what releases of
positive chemicals that’s how we start creating those amazing pathways and 20% of the time
we do have to challenge him and again that’s where your consultant will come in and help with
those areas that could be challenging for your child.

The program itself has to be intense right that’s how we make those changes in the brain. It is
not a little long period of time it’s over short time. It’s giving them five times more practice on
his cognitive and reading skills more than any other intervention or approach out there. And
the results that you’ll get from the program are continuous. We say once the brain is wired for
reading, it stays wired. This are life-long results. I know we have tons of research and
longitudinal studies that show ended the brain mapping of these children once they’ve done
the program the brain will use those new Pathways right and use them very effectively and very
efficiently in the more uses them for the better and better, they become. One of the things that
we’ve done to as we’ve introduced this on an iPad we know that this generation of kids they are
really great with technology so it is available on the iPad and we know that that makes a big
difference really with the younger kids they do stay focused for longer periods of time when
using the iPad.

I talked earlier and spoke about our Educational Consultants. So, when you’re using the Fast
ForWord program at home there are a couple things that that we want you to follow: – One is

our research protocol which is 3 minutes per day 5 days a week for a 4-month time period. And
30 minutes is the minimum you can do more than more exposure you give your brain to these
types of exercises the more experienced it has, the quicker those areas will start to a mediate.
Your assigned consultant is going to work side-by-side with you, you will have that same person
in the entire time you’re using the program. They will be providing you with weekly reports and
you’ll have regular schedule phone calls to talk about your child’s progress and we work with
you to make sure that these results come quickly. And that your child improvement continues.
We are constantly monitoring where they are and how they are going to the program.
This is what your child would be experiencing. A lot of people say what does Fast ForWord look

like. For Fast ForWord for elementary students will look like the images that you see on the left-
hand side so everything is character-driven. Which is what keeps children engaged and then we

move on to the middle through to high school, you’ll see those characters change, we do want
to make them more age appealing to older students. Which is a key component writing keeping
kids involved in the program itself. There are some additional videos that you can look at online
I know we have some things on the Fast ForWord homepage that will kind of allow you to look
at these a little bit more in depth. Here’s a good question, Here is a conversation I had with my
family all the time, is your child currently receiving any extra help for his or her areas of
weakness, are they getting tutoring, do they have an IEP, do they have a 504? what other things
have you tried? what are things have been successful? what are the things haven’t worked for
you? Are they receiving extra help at this time for the area that you feel they struggle with? So,
if you want to go ahead and answer that.
And if you have other things please do you know as Cory instructed earlier you can go ahead
and put that in the QA box.
Wow! a large percentage of you your children are currently receiving extra help for their area of
weakness. So, there are getting some extra things in the classroom and maybe some extra
tutoring outside of the classroom maybe things that you’re doing is parents at home maybe
you’ve got some additional programs that you’ve been using but obviously you’re doing a lot of
things right to try to help get these areas when needed for your child.
As a parent when you think about what you’re doing what you could be doing its always kind of
a big question, what’s the next best app to take with your child? because there are so many
options. And all kinds of things out there can sound very similar here you’ll see what we’re
doing this reading program or we heard about this program and we just want you to know that
we’ve talked with hundreds of parents and we are more than happy to just talk with you to help
you determine if Fast ForWord is a good fit for you and for your family. We want to make sure
that this is the right program. And whatever you decide to do as a family we encourage you to
keep seeking out new information, but we are confident that you probably won’t find a better
program than Fast ForWord. So, this are the questions you could ask yourself. When is a good
time to start and what is it now, how long does it take to get started, you know, what are the

next steps? And your Fast ForWord representative will be more than happy to answer any of
these questions for you.
I want to introduce my Fast ForWord home team. I do manage a great group of professionals I
have been with the company, you know quite a while, so it for any of you that are maybe
currently receiving emails or you’ve been in conversations I would like to introduce you can be
a pictures in a little quote from the each of my team members We have got Cindy Kupfer has
been with Fast ForWord now for 7 years. We have got David Dixson who’s also been with Fast
ForWord for 7 years. Myself I’ve been with the company for 5 years and Laura Higgins has been
with the company now for 3 years. We have people who are dedicated to answering the
questions that you have about your child and making sure that this program is going to be the
right fit.
Really you want to thank everyone for joining us today you will get an email from your Fast
ForWord home representative with a link to the webinar. Please feel free to share this with
your spouse, share this with other people who are part of your child educational circle of
learning get input from other people. I mean as a parent myself I always look to my friends here
to find out things that they did write that help improve their child’s academic struggles so,
share this with your friends if you know that their children are struggling as well, you will get a
PDF of all the slides. Please do visit our Fast ForWord homepage we have a lot of resources
there. We’ve got great videos, we have all of our scientific research, we have parent
testimonials, we do put any type of offer that we’re having on that Fast ForWord homepage as
well. But it’s a really great place that you can go and get additional information. I think what
we’re going to do now is actually going to open up to Q&A, so Carrie I am going to go ahead
hand this back to you.
Great thank you so much, to Cory and to Lynn. I’ll start with the questions I got throughout the
webinar today. And the first question that came in, this is for Cory, this person is wondering,
she’s saying: –
Q & A
Out of curiosity many of these problems naturally exist with kids on the Spectrum so how do
you separate auditory processing from autism any ideas on that?
Well that is a challenge, because a lot of time. You know attention issues processing issues. Are
represented in a variety of different disabilities or conditions so it is hard sometimes to tell
them apart and I think maybe a visit to an audiologist who could perhaps do more in depth
testing then perhaps the school can even do would be an option.
The great thing though is if your child has autism can wear a headset, and tolerate the headset,
then you could go ahead and use Fast ForWord because whatever the cause it should address
it. Doesn’t matter what the initial cause is, it going to work on the issue itself. So, I think that
that would be a big help. Going through your school district if they have some good testing

options for you to try to narrow this down or going to an audiologist some areas have clinics
that specialize in autism they might be able to give you some more information as well but it is
a challenge because a lot of things issues such as attention and processing are represented in a
variety of issue.
What does an auditory processing battery consist of, any idea on that one?
Well they do one of the things, it’s kind of like we talked about, can they make that letter sound
correspondence as so for example there’s a test called Lindamood auditory conceptualization
test and they have little blocks, so, they’ll have like three little different colored blocks and the
speech pathologist might say this is /ca/ this is /a/ and this is /ta/ Pointing to the three different
blocks. Make it say “cat” or where they have to manipulate the blocks, just as if they were
changing the word bat from bat to tab. Manipulating the blocks just as they would letters and
words. But they are using the letters it’s helping them process the sound you did an idea of do
they understand that manipulation, can they distinguish those sounds. So, there’s different
assessments like that where they can pinpoint whether the child truly is processing the sounds
clearly and effectively and can manipulate those sounds. So, its different assessments like that
is typically done in a school district it would be done with a speech pathologist in most cases
but again you could also go to an audiology as well. But you do have to find an audiologist that
specializes in auditory processing issues.
How can I find out if my daughter is on the Spectrum?
Well again it’s going to depend on the school district so for example the school district I was in
had a team that would do a multidisciplinary team so it was a diagnostician, a speech
pathologist, a school psychologist, a school counselor in some cases would come and observe
the child, do some different assessments and make those kinds of determination. You also
sometimes we’ll have a local facility that can help with that it may be some kind of a child study
center. Or sometimes if you’re in at university town they may have some resources if they have
an education department and or you also could even go to your pediatrician or physician and
find out what resource are available in your area specifically.
Okay so next question we have several but I’d like to get through a few more by today.
My daughter is a healthy seventh grader, she does well in school she doesn’t like to read, I
think she is a slow reader, she gets confused when she’s reading or she’s overwhelmed by
thick books and books with a lot of words in them there in our narrow spacing would rather
watch videos what can we do to get her interested in reading and comprehending what she’s
reading?
Well you know there is really two different kinds of processing. In play we’ve got the processing
of the individual sounds of language being able to tell that /b/ sound from the /d/ sound I think
you’ve also got processing of what I called chunks of information or macro processing where I
have to read a chapter and be able to come back tomorrow and talk about it, or read a book

and understand and follow the story those kind of things so it could be that your daughter has
the capability of decoding and dealing with that letter sound correspondence. But then it just
gets to be too overwhelming too much information she doesn’t understand what she’s reading
very well those kinds of things. So, again Fast ForWord which is available at home as Lynn
talked about the schools often have it as well.
That can help with that micro that phoning processing as well as they’re the big chunk
processing of micro processing. So, is it really helps them be able to assimilate that information
and just reading to make more sense more enjoyable and I had lots of kids whose parents told
me they went from the student couldn’t stand to pick up a book to they read everything they
saw and so that’s what we want our kids to do right there.
Does it matter how old the child is when they start the program and grow as they progress,
so age and maturity and all that, does that make a difference?
You know the great thing that I found with Fast ForWord and I think a research holds it up is
that it works at any age. You know course ideally; we would want to get to the younger children
and address the issue early on but we’ve had a high schooler use Fast ForWord and made
phenomenal gains. Because it’s like all those pieces kind of all of a sudden fit together in make
sense. School and school work was just not so hard anymore. And so, we often see really big
gains in older students which makes sense because they’ve got the biggest gaps in most cases,
so any age I would recommend any age getting on it. I’ll tell you I went through as an adult I
didn’t have an auditory processing issue but auditory memory was not my strong point I
remember things I saw but not what I heard so much. And it made a big difference for me at a
very short time. So, I would say, yes even if auditory processing is not the issue, are they
primary issue that there’s a lot of things that’s Fast ForWord helps with memory, attention,
different kinds of processing sequencing as well as general reading and understanding and
building that enjoyment of doing it and feeling success often for the first time.
Okay we’re going to take a few more questions if you and Lynn can go over the hour here if
that’s okay? I’m sure we have a person writing asking,
Their son is 23 with autism, he learned to read by himself before the age of 4 we aren’t sure
how much he understands he thinks Fast ForWord could work for him?
Just on a side note before you answer, that our blogpost this week is located at
www.scilearn.com/blog has a story a real life story about how Fast ForWord made a difference
with their child with autism.
Okay and yes it very well could help him. Let me give you an example I had a student with
autism that first summer that I ran Fast ForWord he could read bet his parents were inn a kind
of in the same situation they didn’t know if it was just word calling or if there was really good
understanding going on and he went through the program and we saw some significant
changes in his test scores for example that Lindamood auditory conceptualization test, I

mentioned where the manipulating sounds his score went from 33 to 66 in less than two
months. So, that’s a big jump that’s a huge change and understanding and I got a note from his
mom after we finish the program and because we did a summer school session and she said
you know he didn’t talk until he was 4 and 1/2 years old and at that point we didn’t know if he
ever would talk. She said now after Fast ForWord we’re not sure he will shut up.
And then she said that’s okay because it’s music to our ears. And he began to be more
expressive and he began to give more effective type statement. So, things like “it makes me
angry when you do that Mom” things that he has never said before he started doing after Fast
ForWord, that can make a big difference in general socialization and function.
Will this help both executive function and cognitive ability, my son has been diagnosed with
ADHD, APD, ASB miles along with multiple learning disability? Yes, I got it.
Yes, it’s hard when they have multiple issues, I certainly understand that. But again, I would say,
give it a try. Because, Fast ForWord works on those cognitive skills it’s not just language it’s not
just reading it’s working on the Foundation Learning issues. So processing, paying attention,
being able to do all those kinds of things including the executive function can he sit still, can he
pay attention, can he maintain focus and respond appropriately. I would have to say yes, I’m
not going to promise you that it’s going to magically cure everything immediately. And I would
say don’t believe anybody who tells you they have something that can. But it’s going to make a
difference. And if you just, I’ll tell you the key as it is with anything use it correctly, use it
consistently and make sure they understand what they’re doing and they’re doing it correctly
and we have lots of help. That’s what Lynn’s team is there for and that will help make it work.
The best for your child the quickest to the most effective way.
We got before we end, this is more for Lynn, we did get pricing questions.
How much does it cost?
I will make a disclaimer before Lynn answers, if you are outside the US and Canada please you
can actually contact me directly and I can get you in touch with our International Partners you
can email me at webinars@scilearn.com but Lynn can address the question from the
US/Canada perspective.
Thank you, Carrie. So, the price for the Fast ForWord home program is inclusive of 4-month
block of time for your child that use the program that includes any levels that they can
complete in that 4months time period. And also include you working one-on-one with your own
consultant it’s a one-time fee of $1,500 1500 US. dollars to participate in the program for that
block of time.
Beautiful so thank you so much for that for answering that question. We got a few people
asking that one. We will do one more question, if you guys are up for it. The last question, is

How do you track a report progress on improvement, how do they know they’re making
progress as they go through the program?
Okay so, you will receive weekly reports and these reports will tell you every step of the way
how your child is doing on the particular exercises in the Fast ForWord program. So, exercises
for instance that would be focusing on auditory processing, you will see where they start, how
they go through, where they make advances. You’ll even see where they struggling. The next
part of the program itself is we will identify arears that they are struggling with. These will be
ongoing conversations also that you have with your education consultant talking about how
your child doing while they’re on the program. For a lot of our parents you know they’ve got
the spring testing or they have the most recent reading results right so we’ll start with that are
we like a parent input. We will take the information that you have and as the child goes through
the program, they will have opportunities in school to be retested, or have new state score or
things like that. And you can then see for yourself where they’ve progressed. The report that
you get from us on a weekly basis are really about the child going through the program but we
do provide our parents with a checklist and we encourage them to give it to the teachers as
well. So that they can see where they’re seeing gains. And you know I want to say this for a lot
of our families, it’s not just academic gain we are not just looking for them to be better readers
we’re looking for them to have better social interactions, to have more self-confidence. Those
things or something you won’t see on a report write you as a parent you’ll see that with your
child if you sit beside them while they go to the program or like a parent I spoke with this week
if you watch them on the classroom or in the on the playground, you know engaging in a much
better way. That’s going to be kind of the things that we look for me we give feedback to our
parents. What we look for feedback from you guys as well. We want to know what you’re
seeing in the day-to-day changes in your child.
Cory if you have anything you want to add to that as well.
Well the only thing I would add is that, if you’re in school, and using it from a former School
District perspectives there are tons of reports that you get as Educators to help you know
exactly how the students are progressing, what kind of mistakes they’re making ideas for ways
to help you intervene and support the students as they are going through the exercises and
there’s even a report that can be sent home to parents from the school that helps or emails,
that helps the parents know how well the students are progressing as well. So, lots and lots of
support built-in for both parent that Lynn’s team worked with as well as educators, using the
product as well and of course for those across the world and we have our bars team that
provides support as well.
Couple of Logistical questions for Lynn and Cory. Before we end another 2 minutes before we
get to the end of our webinar,
Is the summer program if you were to use this for summer we’re coming up on summer
vacation and ideal time to be running Fast ForWord is there a shorter version of the 4-month

program for summer school or how would that work and then the other question is do we
have a payment schedule that allows people to pay over a series of months?
I will do the alternate to the four-month subscription. Yes over the summer we do run what we
call a two-month intensive Fast ForWord program so on a typical 4 month subscription, kids are
logging on 5 days a week a minimum of 30 minutes a day when we truncate that right when
they could be a two month subscription, we are looking for a lot more participation 60 minutes
a day to up to 90 minutes a day. So, yes, we do offer the summer program it is a shorter
duration but it is more intense. And we do have a payment schedule you can do the three
payments of $500 to cover your one-month subscription cost.
Thank you both for staying on a little bit longer for the webinar really appreciate that and I
think we answered everyone’s question. I think if we didn’t get to your question please email
me at webinar@scilearn.com. Excellent we got a lot of questions during this webinar. Thank
you so much to Cory and Lynn for their time today. Thank you our attendees for joining us and
again in about an hour or two you can actually click back on the links or join now Link in your
confirmation email will send you right back to hear if you want to be this again will try to get
this out by end of day tomorrow and thank you so much for joining us this concludes our
webinar for today.
Thanks everybody have a great evening or afternoon, wherever you are. Bye