Welcome!

Overview

Becoming a really great reader requires that these basic skills are automatic.  When readers become automatic, they don’t have to think about how words work (like sounding out words). Instead, they focus on comprehension, or understanding the meaning of the text, which is the goal of reading.  That’s when stories come to life and your child learns to love reading.

Cross-training for Reading uses the same learning models that are used to develop expert skills in athletes (like soccer and basketball players), or in musicians (like pianists).  This is the first program that uses these same models for learning to read. In each instance, the learners must become automatic in using basic skills so they can perform the real goal—like playing the game of basketball, playing a complex piece of music or reading for comprehension.

What does it mean to have automatic skills?  In basketball, skilled players can automatically dribble the ball with one or both hands without thinking while they are finding just the right time to shoot or pass to the right player. 

Reading works the same way. Readers must learn how to quickly recognize the words in a sentence, without having to think about sounding out each word.  After practicing in many different tasks with different sounds, words, syllables and sentences, they learn how words work and begin to automatically and quickly read words.  Most importantly, they improve their comprehension of text.

Getting Started

Welcome to the Foundations Learning System, Cross Training for Reading! This program will help make sure that your child’s basic reading skills are in place when school starts again. These are the foundational skills required by most state standards.

Same place, same time—every day

Pick a quiet workplace where your child can work each day at the same time for about 20 minutes. We do not recommend multiple sessions per day, especially if they are back-to-back. If your child requests more sessions, we suggest no more than 2 sessions per day with at least 90 minutes in between sessions. We recommend using headphones with all devices. 

Username and password

Your child will be issued a username and a password to login. This username cannot be shared as the program personalizes each child’s learning experience. If you need a new login for another child at home, please contact Foundations in Learning for help.

Login to the program

We recommend you use the Google Chrome browser to login into the program.
Go to the website https://student.foundations-learning.com/ to begin.

In the beginning

Your child will take a test that allows the program to get the best picture of his or her basic reading skills. Encourage your child to give his or her best efforts even though some tasks may be challenging.

The program will develop and update an ongoing profile that will adjust the practice sets for your child’s needs. Once the testing is completed, your child will move right into the practice sets.

Every session

Once in the program, your child will be traveling on her or his own personalized pathway through a virtual world and will advance along a pathway with different levels. Each student must complete many different tasks and will see both easy and challenging words in each level. The program will always be adjusting as your child needs easier or harder work.

Coaching as a Caregiver

Once your child begins using the Foundations Learning System, we encourage you to take the following steps:

• As children move through the program, they will earn points for both accuracy and speed. Earning points helps keep them motivated and allows them and you to track progress.
• Each day your child should try to earn at least 6,000 points and complete two levels in the program (represented as dots on the game pathway). At the end of the week, your child should have completed 8 levels and earned about 30,000 points.

• Reaching these goals every day will help your child build these important foundations and he or she can see how many points are earned on the screen.
• During each session, your child can choose a character to join her or him on the screen. As children reach certain goals, they can add new characters to their carousels.

Q&A