[senco-forum] any advice please

Before you go spending big bucks on Fast for Word you might want to read
this.

Philip EP

taken from
http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=256460
p. 6

Similarly, Elise Temple and colleagues measured changes in functional
activity in a group of reading-impaired children in whom pre-intervention
functional magnetic resonance imaging indicated reduced activity in reading
related regions relative to children in a control group.61 After the
children in the experimental group participated in a six-week,
forty-five-hour intervention, including a commercial computer-based training
program (Fast For Word Language) and a special school curriculum for
children with dyslexia, their reading improved significantly. Changes in
their post-test functional MRI results were widespread, extending to
fourteen brain regions, some of which also changed in the non-impaired
group. Most of the regions undergoing change are thought to be typically
involved in reading; several are not. The size of changes in regions
associated with reading was correlated with improvements in oral language,
but not with reading improvements. Again, this study is difficult to
interpret because it lacked a reading-impaired control group randomized to a
different intervention. To make interpretation even more complicated, in a
separate randomized controlled study, more than 200 children in an urban
school district received Fast For Word but made no gains in reading compared
with a control group of reading-impaired children who did not receive the
program.62 This finding underscores the need for a reading impaired control
group in imaging studies and suggests that the strict adherence to an
intervention required in the laboratory setting may be unrealistic in the
classroom.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "dolfrog" <dolfrog at tiscali.co.uk>
To: "'Ruth Newbury'" <rmnewbury at ntlworld.com>; "'1BECTA Senco'"
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 6:18 PM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] any advice please

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