Improved Reading and Comprehension Skills Make For Strong, Confident Students
LearningRx Atlanta-Buckhead’s owner and executive director, Susie McDaniel, has good reason to believe in the benefit of cognitive skills training. She’s had personal experience with it.
When her two sons were young, Susie enrolled both of them in brain training with LearningRx. In addition to improving crucial core cognitive skills, Susie’s sons have benefitted from improved reading and comprehension skills through our ReadRx and ComprehendRx programs. Here’s their story and a little more about the programs that helped them.
The Problem: Struggling to Focus
As a child, Susie’s oldest son, Matthew, struggled with attention, sensory, and social issues. His weakest cognitive skills were short-term memory and processing speed, and the combination of those weaknesses presented as an inability to focus and impaired executive functioning.
Matthew’s attention struggles were so severe that he was essentially kicked out of his preschool because of them! As he got a little older, he also had trouble with spelling (especially reversing letters), and he would often forget to turn work in once he finished it.
Because he routinely forgot to turn in work, his teacher failed him in conduct one term. That did a number on his self esteem, and threatened his chances of getting into the private high schools he wanted to attend. His struggles affected his sense of belonging as well — he always felt like an outsider, and it seemed like he was always in trouble for something.
Searching for Solutions
Matthew was having so much trouble in school that Susie began having panic attacks.
She wanted to find the most natural way to improve his attention, with medication as a last-resort option.
She began researching tools within the physical therapy field (her field of work at the time), trying a wide range of interventions, including occupational therapy, speech therapy, vision therapy, auditory programs, social thinking classes, and tutoring. You name it — she probably tried it!
Susie saw benefits from everything they tried, but knew a big piece of the puzzle was still missing.
That was when she learned about cognitive skills training and LearningRx from a friend in another state. She traveled there to see it firsthand, and immediately knew this was what her son needed. It differed from a tutoring program in that it strengthened core cognitive weaknesses, allowing students to learn, read, and process information better, faster, and easier.
Even though her younger son, Thomas, wasn’t having the same struggles as Matthew, she wanted to give him the tools to be the strongest student possible, and brain training through LearningRx seemed like the best way to do that.
So Susie decided to enroll both of her sons in LearningRx’s programs. Both boys have since been through all of our programs, including ReadRx and ComprehendRx.
Addressing Reading and Comprehension Skills With ReadRx and ComprehendRx
LearningRx offers two programs to help students improve the cognitive skills that affect reading so they can become stronger, more confident readers: ReadRx and ComprehendRx.
ReadRx
ReadRx addresses the mechanical aspects of reading, using the principles of brain training to develop and improve a range of cognitive skills tied to reading. It teaches students to:
- Recognize sounds made by letters and letter combinations
- Break up unfamiliar words into smaller units of letters
- Translate these units of letters into units of sound
- Combine these sound units back together into full words
- Turn imagined words into written and spoken language
ReadRx teaches reading by mirroring the way humans naturally learn language, making it an ideal reading program for kids who are learning to read for the first time. It gives them a strong foundation for reading, writing, and spelling. This program can also help older children, teens, and adults improve core reading skills.
When a student begins the ReadRx program, we create a custom training plan for their specific needs and cognitive abilities. For some students, this means focusing on how they visually process written text; for others, it means focusing on how they verbally and mentally sound out words. By tailoring the program to each child, we help them improve the specific skills that will make them a more confident and successful reader.
Over the course of this program, students develop a strong system for understanding written language, giving them the foundational skills they need to enjoy a lifetime of reading.
ComprehendRx
While ReadRx develops fundamental reading skills, ComprehendRx builds on those skills to help students read more quickly, deeply, and confidently. Reading comprehension helps students grasp the underlying message in what they read, think critically about what they read, and remember key information.
ComprehendRx helps readers improve their reading comprehension by focusing on:
- Reading speed and accuracy
- Picturing images and visualizing concepts
- Expanding vocabulary when reading and writing
- Remembering key information while reading
- Processing complex sentences and language
As with ReadRx, in ComprehendRx we create a custom training plan for each student, allowing us to tailor the program to their existing skills.
Training sessions focus on the core cognitive skills that affect reading, including memory, logic, reasoning, visual processing, and attention. Training these skills significantly improves reading comprehension, enabling students to read and comprehend at higher levels.
For example, visual processing is the cognitive skill that allows readers to picture mental images, which is a critical part of reading comprehension. Improving this skill helps a student better compare ideas, make analogies, retain information, and understand abstract concepts.
ComprehendRx is an excellent tool to prepare students for and improve their scores in standardized testing — regardless of whether or not they are having reading struggles. This program is also a great fit for readers who want to read more quickly, expand their vocabulary, and understand more of what they read.
ReadRx and ComprehendRx in Action
Both of Susie’s sons took part in ReadRx and ComprehendRx training. Matthew started with ReadRx at 7 yrs old, adding in ComprehendRx later on. Thomas began with ThinkRx at 5 yrs old, later layering in both ReadRx and ComprehendRx.
While neither child had specific reading difficulties, both were attending private schools and learning at a faster pace (typically about a year ahead of other schools), so Susie thought that improved reading and comprehension skills could only benefit them.
Plus, these programs address the cognitive weaknesses that often go along with reading issues…not just the reading issues themselves. For instance: weak memory, slow processing speed, visual processing issues, and attention issues can cause reading to be more of a struggle. Some of the cognitive skills these programs strengthen to improve reading and comprehension would also help Matthew with his other learning struggles.
For both boys, the ReadRx and ComprehendRx programs made their reading much stronger, enabling them to read and comprehend at higher levels. And the higher-level English language rules addressed in the ReadRx component helped them better execute school writing assignments as well.
The Result: Strong, Confident Students
In addition to improved reading and comprehension skills, brain training with LearningRx has helped strengthen Matthew’s short-term memory and processing speed, and his attention and executive skills improved as a result.
Matthew graduated from a private high school, tackling a challenging curriculum and making the honor roll. He is now a sophomore in college majoring in robotics engineering. He has made the dean’s list and earned a Hope scholarship. In addition, he experiences less stress with schoolwork (even with the amount of work required at the college level) and better organizational skills. He never had to go on medication for his attention struggles.
Even though Thomas never had any specific learning issues, brain training helped him become a stronger, more competitive student. He is an extremely confident student (“almost too confident,” according to his mom), and very little causes him stress. He gets excellent grades without having to struggle, and has become an avid reader — often reading a book a day! Even for students who aren’t struggling, higher cognitive skills allow for greater opportunities and achievements — both in school and in life.
When they took their college entrance exams (Matthew took the SAT and Thomas took the ACT), both boys received top scores in the reading portion. Susie attributes this to the cognitive skills training they received at LearningRx.
Susie has had the pleasure of seeing her children’s lives changed through the individualized brain training programs at LearningRx. And as any parent can attest, there is nothing better than seeing your children thrive.
If your children could benefit from improved reading and comprehension skills or other cognitive skills training, contact us to get started today.
