New brain scanning technologies are providing insights into the specific nature of the challenges faced by older children who are struggling with reading, and provide hopeful insights about how such difficulties might be overcome by research-based instructional support. Combining years of research on the psychology of reading development with the new tools of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, we can now image activity in the brain associated with basic reading skills, and we can see how the patterns of activity of struggling readers may be different from those of children who are already proficient. These fMRI images tell a vivid and visual story, suggesting that struggling readers tend to show different activity patterns both in the visual system (related to letters and printed words) and in systems important for language and sounding out words. When these children are given effective instruction designed in line with research findings focusing on systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, changes in before-after fMRI scans suggest important changes are taking place in brain activity as children learn.
In order to build a solid foundation in reading and to maximize the learning potential for older struggling readers, the System 44 instructional sequence begins with an intelligent and systematic approach that is organized according to the stability, frequency, and utility of sounds important in early reading. In addition, the scope and sequence integrates lessons on sound and spellings, high-utility sight words, and strategies for unlocking multi-syllabic words. This design is most effective for older struggling readers and encourages a metacognitive approach to learning the foundations of reading. Through the FASTT (Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching with Technology) model for software development developed at Vanderbilt University, System 44 incorporates the fundamental principles of working and long term memory, including protocols to enhance the learning, storage, and retrieval of new material. Embedded assessments throughout the software are designed to continuously assess and place students according to learned and new information. Assured of mastery, students then apply their learning to new words and decodable text. This allows students to immediately begin building toward fluency and to access diverse texts with increasing success. |
