Online Learning Disability Courses
Aid Neuro Learning
Can NOW! Programs® help me?
YES! Most any individual – from 5 to 75 – can benefit from (and HAS benefited from) our learning disability courses online. Plain and simple, of course there are situations where starting with our Learning Disability course may not be the best first step and we can help you make that decision. We want what’s best for you or your child’s learning and development.
Do you or a family member suffer with a language, reading or other learning difficulty or a comprehension learning disability?
- Is reading slow and effortful?
- Is word articulation and pronunciation difficult?
- Are writing and spelling painful?
- Is remembering and explaining what you read a chore?
The good news is, our online learning disability courses can help.
Our evidence-based and research-based methodologies produce the following results for neurodivergent learners:
Students show improvement in school, grades, classroom participation.
There are functional life changes when you complete NOW! Programs®. Our neurodivergent learning programs can have an immediate effect on the quality of life outside of the program. NOW! Programs® improve memory, reasoning, literacy and language (expressive/speaking and receptive/listening). Our online learning disability courses enable improved communication skills which can pave the way to more strengths, better relationships and a fuller, happier life.
Frustrations in school, which ruin the educational experience for students of all ages, can be reduced. Competence and strengths in language and literacy skills builds students’ confidence. Confident students are better students who become more engaged not only in the classroom, but out in the world as a functional participant. Parents, spouses, siblings and others report that after completing one or more NOW! Programs® the student has stronger self-esteem, sets more goals and feels empowered to do more, because with stronger skills in reading, spelling, writing, comprehension and math, they can now take an active role in their own academic or occupational success. For the first time, these students can begin to take control and explore the world fully without support, accommodations, aids/strategies or assistive technology. Students who complete the NOW! Programs® online learning disability courses are more likely to explore, learn or do what they are interested in and want to do, not just aim for what they think they can do with their current difficulties or limitations.
Empowering Foundational Skills
Through Neuro Learning
Most phonics or structured literacy programs start at a level with assumptions of skills and often overlook the leading causes of language-based learning difficulties, like Dyslexia or SLD in Reading. In short, these programs begin instruction with alphabet letters and words, and also try to empower the student’s language and phonological awareness skills. Scientists call this a “print” (written words) to “speech” (spoken words) approach to literacy instruction. However, the human brain does not learn to read or learn “print” (letters) before learning sounds and to speak, eg, Dr. Conway commonly explains to educators and parents that “speech processing develops before learning letters and reading or spelling words. There is a specific developmental hierarchy to how the brain builds these speaking and reading skills and speaking skills develop first.”
In contrast, NOW! Programs® empower the foundations of speech, language and literacy skills. For people with mild, moderate or severe reading difficulties, this program strengthens foundational speech and language skills and helps to close the gap in these skills compared to those of their peers. Thus, NOW! Foundations for Speech, Language, Reading and Spelling® is designed to follow the neurodevelopmental path of how speech and language skills typically build or grow; beginning with perception of the spoken sounds of a language and the sounds in words. Brain scientists tell us that this is far more complicated than just using our ear to “hear” the sounds in words or even hearing words. Many parents ask us, how come he cannot hear the difference in what I’m saying and what he is saying? I’m saying the word frustrated and he’s saying the word “flustrated. There isn’t a letter L in the word frustrated.” How come he cannot “hear” the difference? First, it is not a hearing problem, as has been shown with audiology testing showing the ear of a person with Dyslexia works just fine. Dyslexia is most likely caused by a deficit in phonological awareness. Phonological Awareness is the human brain’s ability to perceive several multisensory inputs that help identify each sound in a word, eg are there 2, 3 or 5 sounds in the word. However, Phonological Awareness also means being able to tell if sounds have been added, deleted, reversed, substituted or repeated in a word. Like the example above where the parent was saying the word frustrated and their child was saying back the word “flustrated” and their son could not tell that he had changed the letter R sound into a letter L sound when repeating the word. That parent’s son has poor Phonological Awareness and is going to be less skilled at speaking, reading and likely poor at spelling too.
To summarize the details above, when parents understand that phonics programs are “print to speech” programs, not developmentally appropriate, and the NOW! Programs® for Dyslexia and SLD in Reading is a “speech to print” program, then they better understand why the NOW! Programs® is far more successful in empowering students of all ages to better speech, language, auditory memory/working memory, reading and spelling and overall literacy skills. Only the NOW! Programs® have a scientifically tested and proven method to empower the brain’s multisensory neurology of Phonological Awareness, using structured, systematic, explicit and scaffolded from a developmentally appropriate hierarchy by first training the four senses of Phonological Awareness, ie hearing, seeing, feeling parts of the mouth move (kinesthetic) and feeling these mouthparts touch together too (tactile).
Red Flags Signaling
Neurodivergent Learning
These warning signs may signal a language learning difficulty or other learning disability, also known as neurodiversity or neurodivergent learners. Signs vary with each child and all signs may not be present. A very strong warning sign is any family history of learning disabilities/difficulty — they are genetic.
Children 2.5 to 4 Years of Age
- Speaking — Trouble with articulation, persistently mispronounces words
- Grammar — Trouble using correct verb tenses, plurals, or pronouns
- Listening — Trouble rhyming, playing sound or word games
- Word finding— Knows colors, but cannot name them when asked
- Sequencing — Difficulty telling an event or story in order or sequence
- Auditory memory — Difficulty remembering multiple-step directions
Children 5 to 8 Years of Age
- Speaking — Persistently mispronounces words, and slow word finding when talking
- Phonological awareness — Misses or changes sounds in words that are heard, spoken, or read
- Reading and Spelling — Difficulty learning to sound-out words for reading and spelling
- Reading — Relies on sight words, reading is slow, effortful, and unpleasant
- Sequencing— Errors when reading — e.g. says was for saw telling an event in order
- Auditory memory — Difficulty following directions, learning phone number
- Self-esteem— Repeated difficulties or frustrations lead to lower self-esteem
Children 9+ to Adults
- Speaking — Persistently mispronounces words, and slow word finding when talking
- Phonological awareness — Misses or changes sounds in words that are heard, spoken, or read
- Reading — Slow; avoids it; relies on sight words; guesses and makes errors
- Spelling— Poor spelling, poor memory after spelling test, mixes up letters in words
- Writing— Avoids it; written sentences are short and poorly organized or ordered
- Auditory memory — Difficulty following or remembering multiple-step directions,
- Visual memory — Difficulty remembering alphabet for phonebook or dictionary use
- Self-esteem — Increasing frustration and poor self-esteem
- Language expression— Difficulty putting ideas in words and sequencing them appropriately
- Foreign language — Trouble learning other languages, e.g. Spanish, French
- Achievement tests — Much better at math than reading, poor performance on FCAT