8 months language & literacy gains in 2 months: gold standard research study

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Peter Barnes
Fast ForWord, Learning Capacity Success Stories

Reading and literacy gainsCan you get your struggling students to achieve 4 times the reading growth you would normally expect from 2 months of teaching?

One group of primary and early high school students did last year.

Read how in the article below, reproduced from The Science of Learning Blog.

A “gold standard” research study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Fast ForWord123 program on improving language and literacy skills. In the 2018-2019 school year, eighty-eight students in grades 3-8 from two Boone County Schools in USA participated in a randomised controlled trial.

Students were randomly assigned to two groups: an experimental group that worked on the Fast ForWord product and a comparison group that did not work on it until after the study. 

Research evaluators such as the What Works Clearinghouse consider this randomised controlled trial design a “gold standard study” that provides the strongest evidence about an intervention’s effectiveness.

Students placed in the experimental group worked on Foundations exercises for 50 minutes per day, five days a week, in addition to using the Reading Assistant Plus software for 20 minutes a day, two days a week for seven weeks, averaging a total of about 26 hours. 

Foundations I, Foundations II, and Reading Assistant Plus are components of the Fast ForWord program, an online evidence-based, adaptive reading and language program that targets reading, cognitive, and executive function skills to help struggling readers succeed in school.

Students’ early reading skills were assessed at the beginning and end of the trial.  The results show that students in the experimental group who used the Fast ForWord product jumped from the 37th percentile to the 54th percentile

The experimental group improved by an average of 8 months in the 7.5 weeks between assessments, compared to the 2 months improvement for the students in the comparison group.

Fast ForWord improved early reading skills study

Students who used the Fast ForWord123 program for 7.5 weeks improved their skills by 8 months, jumping from the 37th percentile to the 54th percentile.

The statistically significant results of this study support a substantial body of research that demonstrates the Fast ForWord program’s guided reading support, immediate feedback, and rigorous learning experiences lead to stronger language and reading skills.

For more information, see the research briefing on this study.

See some of the 30+ years of multilevel neuroscience research and over 300 research studies supporting the Fast ForWord product here.

Find out how Fast ForWord123 can help your students

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