Dive Deeper: Explaining Foundational Components to Students

Are you feeling somewhat mystified by the Foundational Components: Foundations or Elements? 

Fear not as our Fast ForWord expert Tom Chapin chats directly to students (and you!) about about some of the trickier exercises in the Fast ForWord program. 

In this unit, you’ll watch some videos (pay attention to the grade levels) to get a deeper understanding of the powerful, but sometimes misunderstood, Foundational Fast ForWord exercises.

Let your students who are working on any of these exercises watch these videos if they get stuck. Here’s where they can find this resource: Student Dashboard>Resource Tab> Foundations I/Elements I Resources.

Some students may find using keyboard shortcuts easier, especially in exercises like Sky Gym or Jumper Gym. You can find this resource in the student dashboard mentioned above.

Videos for primary school

How to Be a Sky Gym Professional
The purpose of Sky Gym is to develop a student’s listening accuracy skills like sustained and focused attention, auditory sequencing and their auditory memory.

Speech Science Background: In the exercise, students listen to frequency-modulated sound sweeps that change their pitch, going from low to high (an up-sweep or “weep”) or from high to low (a down-sweep or “woop”). Many speech sounds (phonemes) include sweeps. 

For example, to distinguish /b/ from /d/, one must be able to distinguish and recognize the sweep components of those speech sounds. The sweeps – like human speech – are sometimes subtle and fast, training the student’s ability to attend to and process these subtle changes in sound while using their sequencing and memory skills.

How to Succeed at Whalien Match

Whalien Match is based on the classic card game, Memory. The purpose of Whalien Match is to develop auditory word recognition and phonological awareness skills by matching pairs of syllables and words.

Speech Science Background: Phoneme discrimination is essential in acquiring the speech sounds of a given language. Because many English speech sounds sound similar (think of the /d/ and /b/ or the /f/ and /v/ sounds) students may misperceive sounds in connected speech. This exercise trains the student’s listening, phonological awareness and memory skills.

Videos for teenagers and adults

How to Succeed in Ocean Explorer

The purpose of Ocean Explorer is to develop a student’s basic listening accuracy skills like sustained and focused attention, auditory sequencing and their auditory memory.

Speech Science Background: In the exercise, students listen to frequency-modulated sound sweeps that change their pitch, going from low to high (an up-sweep or “weep”) or from high to low (a down-sweep or “woop”). Many speech sounds (phonemes) include sweeps. 

For example, to distinguish /b/ from /d/, one must be able to distinguish and recognize the sweep components of those speech sounds.The sweeps – like human speech – are sometimes subtle and fast, training the student’s ability to attend to and process these subtle changes in sound while using their sequencing and memory skills.

How to Succeed in Space Salvage

Space Salvage is based on the classic card game, Memory. The purpose of Space Salvage is to develop auditory word recognition and phonological awareness skills by matching pairs of syllables and words.

Speech Science Background: Phoneme discrimination is essential in acquiring the speech sounds of a given language. Because many English speech sounds sound similar (think of the /d/ and /b/ or the /f/ and /v/ sounds) students may misperceive sounds. This exercise trains the student’s listening, phonological awareness and memory skills.