The Learning Mastery Program

This processing & cognitive enhancement program is a twelve week, intense, one-on-one, cognitive training program that corrects and enhances learning skills.

Condensed Length
Unlike programs that take 12 to 18 months and produce very gradual changes, this program makes very significant changes in a relatively short period of time. This is extremely important because the child must see changes.

The Child Must See Changes
If a child sees changes in his or her performance, it will raise their self-esteem. This will make the child want to work at improving his or her skills even more. In fact, within 1 week of beginning the program, we offer students (even those in kindergarten) are able to name the Prime Ministers of Canada forwards and backwards. This technique develops memory and visualization strategies and improves the ability to create mental images.

We then ask the child to go to school and recite the Prime Ministers in front of the class. This does amazing things for the self-esteem of a young child who normally struggles in school. Teachers, peers, and parents will know the child's abilities are far greater than before, and so will the child. As a result self-esteem will soar.

Intense Sessions
One-on-one training is extremely important, especially when one considers that a child in the public education system gets only an average of six and a half hours of one-on-one instruction over a 13-year period. The program we offer provides 60 to 80 hours of one-on-one training over 12 weeks.

There are two reasons for one-on-one training. The first is feedback. When the child does something correctly, he or she is praised. When the child makes an error, he or she is made aware of it so that it can be corrected. Immediate feedback allows faster learning.

The second reason for one-on-one training is sequencing. Sequencing means the program is personalized to the child's deficiencies and needs. If a task is too difficult, the child will become frustrated. If the task is too easy, the child will become bored. So the trainer designs the task to be challenging and then slightly increases the demand of the task to force the deficient skills to improve.

It's very intense, but children love intensity. Think about the hours that children spend playing video games like "Mario Brothers." These games are based on sequencing and immediate feedback.

Parental Involvement
To help reduce costs and make sure we are getting the maximum amount of change in the shortest time possible, we require parental involvement. This allows us to get extra one-on-one training for the child's weakest skills. It also helps build positive family relationships.

How Does It Work?
The primary cause of poor learning is that many skills needed for efficient learning, which should be subconscious (automatic) are not. For example, a fluent reader does not sound out words or pause to think of their meanings. These skills are automatic and if they are not comprehension suffers.

The child who has to work consciously at sounding out letters and blending sounds uses a considerable amount of energy and effort on the act of reading. This means that it may then become difficult or impossible to comprehend the information that is read. Therefore, understanding and memory suffers. The program we offer procedures help conscious and deficient skills become automatic (subconscious). Then, the conscious mind can concentrate on comprehending, remembering, and understanding.

To improve a poor habitual skill, the skill must first be brought from the subconscious level (where all habitual skills reside) to the conscious level. Then, as the skill is refined it is forced back to the subconscious level with cognitive training so that the child can perform better. A child who does not have to think about the act of reading is a much better reader - just as a typist who does not have to think about finger placement on the keyboard is a much better typist.

Normally, new skills are put into the subconscious by repeating them over and over. All traditional training works this way whether it's physical, speech, auditory, language, or occupational. Our learning program causes new skills to become subconscious more quickly and effectively.

Our training requires the child to do an increasing number of processing tasks at a time. If the child is able to do two tasks at the same time, a third is added. If he or she is able to do three tasks simultaneously, a fourth is added. Since the conscious mind can only handle one task at a time, the others are forced to the subconscious, which is exactly where you want most processing skills to reside.

The child no longer has to learn how to process information and is now able to process information to learn.

This training improves concentration, memory, visualization, phonemic awareness, integration, and processing speed making these cognitive skills more automatic. In turn, this makes learning easier, faster, less stressful and more enjoyable.

Successful learning is the ability to stay on task and not be distracted. Successful learning is the ability to handle multiple things at one time. Successful learning is the speed at which a child can handle a task. Successful learning is the ability to comprehend and remember what was read.
Successful learning makes a child feel good because of his or her improved studies and accomplishments.

Parents feel good as well because the average improvement after 12 weeks of training is 3.6 years in processing abilities.

The third most common comment that parents make at the end of training is that their child is able to stay on task. The second most common comment is that their child gets homework done faster or often does not need to bring homework home anymore. This is because the child's ability to concentrate, comprehend, understand, and get things done faster is greatly improved.

Additionally, with training a child achieves success after success and can see the improvement in his or her ability to learn. This causes self-image to improve - which is the most common comment parent upon completion of the training.

Fees
If we can help your child, we will discuss the fees during the consultation. However, you should know that fees vary depending upon the level of parental involvement and the degree of cognitive deficiencies present.

For more information or to contact us to book an appointment . Click here.