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F.A.S.T. Reading System
A program that was developed at Denver Academy can help many struggling and non-reading children. The F.A.S.T. Reading Program is designed to address specific reading disabilities. It is the creation and synthesis of 25 years of teaching on the part of Stephan D. Tattum, combined with the research of Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams and Dr. Diane McGuinness. The initials F.A.S.T. stand for Foundations of Analysis, Synthesis and Thoughtfulness, but the name is especially appropriate because the program achieves its goals and objectives so quickly. The program addresses the various components of reading including the blending, segmenting, and manipulation of sounds, as well as spelling, sound tracking, and reading and writing of sentences. The F.A.S.T. Reading Program is an intense program that begins with direct instruction in sound/syllable tracking, spelling, reading and writing sentences. From there, the student is introduced to blending, segmenting and phonemic manipulation. Blending teaches the student to mix vowel and consonant sounds such as mat, cat, hat. Segmenting involves the ability to separate groups of letters into syllables, and phonemic manipulation is the ability to say for example the sound of "cat without the c". Another element in this program's success is the correlation of reading skills with a highly motivating and interesting reading series, created specifically for the F.A.S.T. program by Stephan D. Tattum. One of the greatest aspects of the F.A.S.T. Reading Program is that it is application based, not rule based. In other words, it eliminates the "rote memorization" which many other reading programs are based upon. F.A.S.T. First Steps
Children with speech and language disabilities can be at risk in the area of phonemic awareness and the development of their phonological system which may be detrimental to their success with reading. As viewed by Speech Language Pathologists and Educators of Early Childhood "LANGUAGE IS LITERACY" These programs are taught by Elizabeth A. Fry and Robin G. Palay at this office location. Please refer to Robin's bio for additional information. |
honemic
awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual
sounds in spoken words. An example of how beginning readers show us they have
phonemic awareness is combining or blending the separate sounds of a word to say
the word ("/c/ /a/ /t/ - cat"). In particular, a child's control of
sounds at the phoneme level is highly predictive of decoding and spelling
skills. Children that have a difficult time hearing the difference between
certain sounds will most likely have a difficult time manipulating certain
sounds within words (decoding) as well as in spelling. 
he F.A.S.T. First Steps
program is designed for Kindergarten students and entry-level first grade students.
It focuses on phonemic awareness skills, which are closely correlated to beginning level
reading and spelling success. The F.A.S.T. First Steps program follows a sequence similar
to that of F.A.S.T. Reading System. The sound component focuses on isolating sounds and
identifying letters that have a specific sound. The syllable component focuses on segmenting,
blending and manipulating phonemes at the level of the syllable. The word component focuses on
word assembly for simple phonetic words, and then develops into phrase and sentence reading.
(from Tattum's F.A.S.T. Reading First Steps) See