Would FastForword help?

here’s a website that might be helpful to you:

http://www.angelfire.com/fl2/capd/michael.html

If you decide to do FastForWord, you might want to consider doing The Listening Program (http://www.advancedbrain.com) first. TLP can make FFW easier to get through.

TLP would be something you could do with a 6yo. I think that FFW is more suitable for age 7 and up.

Nancy

For part of this answer please read my post right above yours “Name of the program?” I implement Fast ForWord for a school district. It is very intensive auditory work with similarities to Earobics. FFW is individualized for each child. I have had young students and many of them do well in the program which is 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. Does the person who tested him find auditory processing deficits? Do they recommend FFW? Check to see if your public school district offers FFW and see if you can look at the demos. That may help you see if it would be appropriate for your child.

We use TLP in our program also. I have had some kids on FFW that just can’t seem to do several tasks (especially Circus Sequence). They have gone on to do TLP and I have had the opportunity to return them to FFW after their 8 weeks of TLP. I am hoping to see an improvement in Circus Sequence. As of yet I have not noted a significant change. What do you think? Maybe those kids with 0% need more than once through TLP or a more intensive program. I wish Scientific Learning would direct us more about children who get 0% in Circus Sequenc.

Angela,

Isn’t circus seqeuence an auditory memory task? If so, I can see no possible way that TLP could have any effect on that game. I can see it having an effect on sound discrimination, but working memory is another whole area as far as I am concerned. (But I have not used either program yet… so this is just a logical conclusion).

Janis

By Scientific Learning’s own description Circus Sequence (CS) is a “listening accuracy” task. The student hears two sounds much like a whistle. There is an upsweeping sound and a down sweeping sound. Students have to identify whether they heard an up/up, down/down, up/down or down/up. For struggling students I take the motor task away and have them tell me what they heard. There is, of course, memory, and order in addition to descrimination. My most recent student who had 0% on CS has now done TLP and his CS score is now 6% and rising, I hope. I know TLP recommends doing the program twice. I will continue to follow how much TLP helps my FFW students. There are other exercises that require working memory.

We did Tomatis and found much better results vs. TLP. (we have done both) Tomatis really broke down some concrete roadblocks for my dd. She cruised thru Earobics. HOWEVER, she was still stuck and having difficulty with Karloon’s Balloons, which I understand is similar to Circus Sequence. We did Brainbuilder and after only 1mo., she cruised thru Karloon’s Balloons, went on to Earobics Step with no difficulty in any exercise.

Brainbuilder is very boring, but if you do it every day for 3-4 weeks I think you can see improvement in the auditory memory sequencing tasks(we did). My dd was only able to do a level 3-4 when she first started BB. Once we hit a 5, we started to see alot of movement with her. (karloon’s Balloons really only worked 5 pieces of info at once - so level 5 of BB was all she needed to get thru that exercise). She plateued on level 5 for quite awhile. Ideally, you want to be on a level 7 and goal to get to a 9. We used TLP for boosters and I discovered that TLP helped push her on to the next level. Audiblox would be another alternative to Brainbuilder. (which we did when we completely burned out on BB).

I think TLP can be very helpful in breaking down some of the roadblocks, but you need a cognitive type program to help further develop the auditory memory deficits.

There is a more intensive listening program out that might be helpful for students like this, it is called Samonas Auditory Intervention. There is a website you can check out at www.samonas.com and you can search for practitioners there. Basically it is like the listening program but more individualized and specialized for kids with learning and speech related, even motor type problems. Most of the practitioners are OTs, SLPs and LD specialists with learning centers. I have been using it at my learning center in LA for about 6 months with pretty impressive results. I agree that something like this may be necessary for some kids BEFORE going through Fast ForWord (I am also a licensed FFW provider), but figuring when to do what is exactly part of the problem, isn’t it? A program like PACE, which also addresses both auditory and visual working memory, might also be what is needed if it is memory that is the problem, though in my experience Samonas also does help the auditory memory. Hope this helps!