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Is it for my child?

The Bright Minds Therapeutic Learning Academy’s custom–tailored programs can enhance or remediate your child’s reading, learning and attention.

Your child has a unique learning style and needs, that’s why Bright Minds is not a cookie-cutter program.

We not only address deep cognitive learning challenges, but also enhance your child’s learning capacity. Our goal is for students to become comfortable, independent learners. We value each and every child and are committed to bringing harmony back into the household.


Cognitive Learning Challenges

We work with children and adults with various diagnoses of learning and attention challenges. These challenges can be changed. Children and adults do not have to continue to suffer the effects of learning problems but it will typically take more than special education or a traditional tutor.

Common Diagnoses
  • Dyslexia
  • Dyscalculia
  • Math Challenges
  • Auditory Processing Disorders
  • Learning Disabilities
  • Attention Deficit / ADHD
  • Executive Functioning Disorders
  • Processing Skills
  • Phonemic Awareness / Processing Disorder
  • High functioning Autism / Asperger’s

Cognitive Learning Enhancement

You know your child is smart, but struggling in school. Homework may be taking up to 3-hours. Your child works harder than their classmates for the same or lower grades. With specialized training, the brain can learn to think and process information in more effective ways which translates into better academic performance.

Common Symptoms & Behaviors
  • Difficulty with reading, writing, or spelling
  • Difficulty with math
  • Difficulty paying attention / easily distracted
  • Inconsistent school performance
  • Difficulty following or retelling a story or understanding words or concepts
  • Difficulty remembering, doesn’t retain what was taught
  • Trouble following directions
  • Poor coordination
  • Difficulty with concepts related to time
  • Problems staying organized
  • Difficulty listening well

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Bright Minds Program Details

Based on a thorough assessment of your child, the Director will recommend a combination of therapies and programs (more information on the different types of therapies below).

There are two key components: one-on-one sessions with a therapist and home exercises.

On average, a child is expected to commit 1-3 hours per session, and attend 2-4 sessions per week, in addition to practice at home. We support both the parent and child through this process to increase the effectiveness of the program.

Therapies & Programs

Our team has invested over 500 hours of training in the following nationally and internationally recognized programs developed by clinical specialists, developmental optometrists, neuroscientists and learning experts.

  • Auditory Stimulation and Training for Reading, Spelling (AST-R/S)

    Combines the techniques of the best researchers in the field of dyslexia and reading to develop the underlying auditory, visual, and language processing skills critical to successful reading with specific, sequential reading and spelling lessons.

    Lessons improve working memory; grammar and word usage; phonemic awareness; phonetic and visual decoding; visual attention to detail; reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension; and spelling.

  • AMPS

    AMPS is a cognitive processing skills program based on proven ideas from the fields of behavioral optometry and cognitive neuroscience. These brain exercises are designed to improve mental processing speed, working memory, attention, sequential processing, spatial processing, visual and auditory memory, phonological awareness, motor planning, problems solving, and reasoning. These are processing skills needed for easy, independent learning and functioning.

    AMPS uses fun and challenging non-academic activities to build more efficient mental tools for thinking and learning. The 46 different procedures provide variety and interest for the student, while reinforcing new skills in many ways. AMPS is provided on a one-to-one basis. Because it is literally developing new, more efficient neuro-pathways, or connections in the brain, frequency of instruction is critical to the process. For best results, it should be provided 4-6 hours per week in 30-60 minute sessions. Just as practice and drill develops skills in sports, AMPS drills develop skills for learning and academics.

    AMPS is designed for those who want their brains to work better and faster. It is particularly helpful for those students diagnosed with reading problems, dyslexia, attention disorders, working memory deficits, visual and auditory processing disorders, and slow processing speed. Not just for students! AMPS has been beneficial for individuals with brain injury and adults (including seniors) desiring more healthy and flexible cerebral functions.

  • Auditory Stimulation and Training for Comprehension

    Auditory skills are improved through passive auditory training (listening to prescribed sound therapy music) and actively through the audio-vocal training lessons so that the learner gets clearer and more accurate information when listening. This impacts speech clarity, intonation, comprehension, verbal expression, and attention. Lessons are structured to stimulate and improve working memory, grammar and word usage, and reading fluency and comprehension.

    This is a scientifically-based auditory training program that uses a combination of sound therapy and specific brain-based audio-vocal training lessons that specifically address the auditory skills needed for good listening and processing of auditory information. It includes all of the critical components to comprehension starting with stimulating and improving auditory processing and receptive language and building to self-guided logical reasoning.

  • Auditory Stimulation Language

    This is a scientifically-based auditory training program that uses a combination of sound therapy and specific audio-vocal lessons to develop language competency. Auditory processing skills are improved through the sound therapy and audio-vocal training lessons that help the learner get clearer and more accurate information when listening. This impacts speech clarity, intonation, comprehension, verbal expression, and attention. Lessons are structured to stimulate and improve working memory, grammar and word usage, and vocabulary, articulation, and expressive language.

  • Balametrics

    Brain processing efficiency directly impacts sensory integration ability, gross and fine motor skill, spatial awareness, and learning. Balametrics has designed programs and therapies that can be applied by therapists in a variety of different disciplines. The Balametrics program works because it addresses brain processing problems at the source. By engaging in sensory integration therapies that cause the neural networks in the brain to grow and become more efficient, excellent results can be achieved in many different areas.

    Balametrics can help with a number of specific problems and disorders, including: ADD/ADHD, Central Auditory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, Reading Problems, Handwriting Problems, Brain Injury/Stroke, Sensory Integration

  • Brain Gym

    True learning is not just mental. It’s more than the memorization of information. Because the brain is informed by movement and the senses, true learning results from instantaneous moments of neural reorganization by which one is freed to think in new ways. From the simple act of organizing the musculature to sit or walk to more complex tasks such as coordinating the eyes, ears and hands to write, learning always involves patterns of physical activity.

    Brain Gym consists of 26 different activities that offer a context for learning through structured play. Their inclusion in a classroom or on a playing field gives a safe, secure environment where learners can develop sensory, perceptual and motor skills, achieve cognitive, emotional, social, and physical growth, and actively participate in their own learning through explorations of action and balance.

    In fact, by doing just some of the 26 activities for a few minutes each day the time they spend on learning is increased while time spent on discipline is dramatically decreased.

  • Core Learning

    This program helps eliminate the interference caused by primitive reflexes and under-developed visual and motor skills. It is a series of physical balance and movement activities that improve visual skills, internal organization, coordination, self-awareness, self-control, and attention. Core Learning Skills Training uses The Listening Program to help the student gain a sense of reference point and an understanding of space and time, which are so critical for developing attention awareness and control and organization skills.

  • Ease Into Reading

    The Ease into Reading Program is based on a strong phonetic-based approach called the sound-symbol system. This means that for each sound we say there is a representative symbol or combination of symbols that goes with it. English is a complex language but beginning to read does not need to be complicated. It has been shown that students who have a strong sound-symbol understanding at an early level become both good readers and good spellers. This is because they have learned how to learn a symbol system. As they practice reading they improve their memory until recalling symbols becomes an automatic skill.

  • Eyes On Track

    There are millions of misdiagnosed students of all ages struggling with undetected near vision problems. Due to increased demands upon the visual system caused by computers, tablets, and small print in books this problem is getting worse! These students may have 20/20 vision or have corrected prescription lenses and yet they exhibit symptoms of near vision problems. Eyes on Track is an integrative program that improves both eye tracking and visual perceptual skills.

    Here are common examples of behaviors that are tell tale signs of children who are trying to cope with this undiagnosed problem:

    Face too close to the page

    Finger used as a pointer and closing one eye

    Covering one eye to focus better

    Sight is the ability to see, but vision is the result of a person’s ability to understand and interpret the visual information they are presented with. Only when a person has efficient visual understanding abilities do they possess the “readiness skills” needed to fully benefit from classroom instruction.

  • The Listening Program

    TLP is a music and sound stimulation method that focuses on re-educating the ear and auditory pathways for increased learning, attention, communication, listening, sensory integration, and physical coordination. This is accomplished through the use of specially modified classical music that stimulates the auditory system to take in a full spectrum of sound.

    A home listening protocol is developed for the individual student based on his/her needs. The student will do approximately 15 minutes of listening twice a day at home 5 days a week. This is a very prescriptive program, requiring weekly consultation in therapy sessions or by phone.

  • Literacy Speaks

    Literacy Speaks! ® is a program designed to teach children letter-to-sound correlations and to introduce children to essential sight words with a sound targeted approach. The natural progression of the technique leads to literacy skills and improved speech intelligibility.

    An outline of the progressive learning steps follows:
    1. Recognition of alphabetic letter
    2. Correlation of alphabetic letter to target sound
    3. Incorporation of target sound into word(s)
    4. Exposure to sight words (a, the, I, see, have)
    5. Combination of target words and sight words to create
    phrases and sentences
    6. Incorporation of sight and target words into books
    7. Carry-over of sound/literacy skills into natural environments

  • Master The Code

    Developed by the people that created PACE, Master the Code is an intensive reading and spelling program that develops phonemic awareness (the thinking process critical to understanding sounds for phonics and spelling), and an understanding of the phonetic code of the language.

    MTC uses procedures that evaluate, pinpoint, and develop to advanced levels the underlying mental skills required to assure fast and efficient learning-to-read skills. Some of these skills include:

    Memory (the ability to remember the sound-symbol relationship)
    Segmenting (the ability to separate or unglue sounds)
    Blending (the ability to put together sounds to form words)
    Auditory analysis (the ability to manipulate or analyze small changes in groups of sounds)
    Processing Speed and Working Memory (the ability to retain incoming information and properly process it quickly)
    Attention (the ability to stay on the given task)
    Visualization (the ability to create and use mental images)

  • PACE

    Processing And Cognitive Enhancement (PACE) program. PACE was developed to train cognitive learning skills and it is what many affectionately refer to as “mental boot camp.” PACE focuses on the underlying cognitive skills required for learning. Your child’s processing skills are targeted so that s/he learns easier and faster. PACE is designed to make rapid changes so that your child experiences success right away. This causes self-esteem to soar and motivates your child toward success. The average improvement after 12 weeks of training is 3.6 years in processing skills!

    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 should be automatic. If they are not, comprehension suffers. The child who has to work consciously at sounding out letters and blending those sounds, uses all his/her effort on the act of reading. This means there is very little or not enough left over to actually comprehend the ideas that were read. Therefore, memory and understanding suffer. The child gets to the end of the page and has no idea what was read. PACE helps conscious and deficient skills become subconscious. Then the conscious mind can focus on comprehending, remembering and understanding. The result is that the child no longer has to learn to process information and can now process information to learn.

    PACE is designed to develop the following processing skills: Attention, Auditory Processing, Comprehension, Logic and Reasoning, Memory, Planning, Processing Speed, Visual Processing

  • WriteBrain

    WriteBrain, developed by Jeanette Farmer, improves the flow and pattern of handwriting and improves attention and focus by pairing therapeutic music with the drawing of shapes and patterns. Because it is multi-faceted involving rhythm, visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile stimulation to engage the brain to produce organized fluent movements that result in organized, legible penmanship. Studies have shown a strong connection between handwriting (something often overlooked in today’s classrooms) and attention, impulse control and overall learning.

  • Other program and therapies

    Belgau Balametrics, Discover Reading, Discover Math, Education-Kinesiology (Edu-K), Executive Function Training, Learning Without Tears, Speech and Language Therapies, Study Skills and Test Taking Development, Symbol Mastery, Vestibular Integration Sequence,

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