Smithville Elementary School Receives Gold CAPS Award

Students at Smithville Elementary have participated in the Fast ForWord program and received the Gold CAPS Award.
The FastForWord program develops and strengthens memory, attention, processing rate, and sequencing-the cognitive skills essential for reading intervention program success. The strengthening of these skills results in a wide range of improved critical language and reading skills such as phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, decoding, working memory, syntax, grammar, and other skills necessary to learn how to read or to become a better reader.
Dr. Bill Tanner, Principal at Smithville Elementary School, shared the good news with the Board of Education on Thursday night. “Last year our Fast ForWord program won the Gold Cap award as being one of the schools that uses the Fast ForWord program. That’s a program our children go through that trains their brain on how to read. It’s a fifty five minute period that they go through during the day for thirty days. I try to schedule it so every class gets to go in there sometime during the year. We try to get it done before the end of the year. Last year we included the first grade in it also. We have increased the program. So we have won that award again this year. The Fast ForWord program develops and strengthens memory and attention. I feel like it is a good program. Our teachers are working hard everyday. Our paraprofessional who is in charge of the program does a fantastic job with that. Winning this award shows that we’re using this program to the nth degree. I think it was developed to begin with as a program to help brain injured people. In using that, they found out it was also an aid in helping people learn how to read.”
FastForWord reading intervention supports the existing curriculum-it doesn’t replace it. It is aligned with the No Child Left Behind state mandates and has been an important factor in AYP success. And, most importantly, the gains students achieve are lasting, the result of enduring positive changes in their processing skills and learning capacity.