I posted the above question about Auditory Memory and Fast Forward. As I understand it, FF has about 6 “games” only one of which deals with following oral instructions. The girl described in the above post (and my son as well) has good phonemic awareness, blending, segmentation — their deficit is auditory short term memory and possibly word retrieval. My son went through a FF demo a couple of years ago, and had absolutely no trouble whizzing through all the games (except for the auditory memory)/ I couldn’t see making my son sit through all the games for a couple of hours a day when all he could benefit from would be instruction game.
Is it possible to find a provider who could adminsiter only a portion of the FF program—just the auditory memory?
Thanks Kathleen
Re: Question for Fast Fwd Providers
It sounds like those kids don’t have problems with the things FF (and Earobics, for that matter) addresses. FF is getting at the actual processing of the sounds of the language; auditory short term memory and word retrieval are probably more involved with the language part of the language — what the words mean, remembering words of a certain kind (the words to describe a person for a paragraph you’re trying to write or a sentence you’re trying to say) and when to use them. I would work with exercises that had more thinking involved — try some “language generation” exercises (list all the things you can that you would see on a soccer field, in a grocery store, etc.) Priscilla Vail’s books on language skills have lots of ideas for this kind of thing (“Common Ground,” “Clear & LIvely Writing,” “Reading Comprehension” are some titles if I”m remembering them correctly), and Diana Hanbury King’s _Writing SKills for the Adolescent_ has lots and lots of ideas for all kinds of language development.
Re: Question for Fast Fwd Providers
hOW MANY HAVE HAD HELP WITH THIS VERY EXPENSIVE PROGRAM, ANYONE USED EAROBICS?
Re: Question for Fast Fwd Providers
I bought earobics 2. My son did most of the games with ease except the one for memory. He got very frustrated and would cry the few times he played it because once he was able to remember a certain number of elements, the computer consistently gave him things that were too hard. The other games were too easy and did not progress quickly enough to a more difficult level.
Re: Question for Fast Fwd Providers
My son was helped by FASTFORWORD, after six weeks of two hours sessions, he can now name all the letters and sounds of the alphabet. His vocabulary increased, and he has begin sounding out simple words. For my son this program was great, but I have talked to other parents who were very disappointed with their children progress. You really don’t know until you tried, and you just hope you get successful for the sake of your child. I did purchase Earobics, but my son would get too frustrated because he could not understand the different sound, rhymes,etc. After FASTFORWORD, he was able to do Earobics better. They are both excellent programs.
I became a provider to do FFW for my son and I would say no. The program is computerized and games come up on a certain schedule. You can skip over games but you have to do something everyday or else it won’t go to the next day. Block Commander (the memory one) doesn’t come up everyday. I wanted a few more sessions with it for my son at the point that he had mastered all the rest of the games and the only way I could get the program to go to the next day was to complete a game myself! Anyway, that was the point where I said, “enough”.
I would suggest doing Earobics or another memory program instead that is more under your control.
Beth