You can train techniques, but what about speed?
”When you are facing your final exams in reading as a young person, then speed is crucial to your result. Because if you cannot finish reading the material then that’s just too bad. That’s how it is. You need to reach a certain speed to be able to complete the reading exam.”
In Hjørring the municipality decided to purchase FrontRead for every school in order to compete with the increased desire for reading fluidity. The methods and techniques previously used are too difficult and do not provide a good enough result. Even though there are other applications that help children with their reading, there just aren’t that many that help them learn how to read faster. Mette Hjarbæk Poulsen, a reading consultant at Hjørring Municipality heard about FrontRead through her network and wondered if this was where she might find aid to solve that particular problem.
“Speed is important. Try to read the subtitles on TV – if you read at a sub-par speed, it can’t be done. Reading councillors have been searching for a method or some material to help facilitate an increased speed when reading. Because even though you can learn techniques and train them up, actually increasing your reading speed can be somewhat of a challenge. Then along comes this program that offers exactly what we are looking for, so how can we not jump aboard and try it out.”
Hjørring has only been using FrontRead for half a semester, since August 2016, but already there has been a positive response from both students and teachers.
“It is a program that is easy to approach and our teachers have been very excited about it because there wasn’t a lot of material they had to learn in advance,” Mette Hjarbæk Poulsen said. “It was actually the very first bit of feedback we received from our teachers: “Oh how liberating and easy it is. Also for the students. Log in, and begin. ”