Benefits of NeuroNet Programs
NeuroNet is a research-based learning readiness program designed to help students develop core academic skills and become independent learners. NeuroNet exercises provide structured, sequential exercises for perceptual-motor development which lays the foundation for automating basic academic skills; e.g., handwriting, reading decoding, and math-fact retrieval. If basic academic skills of handwriting, reading decoding, and math-fact retrieval are not automated, it places greater demands on a child’s attentional-resources, which may lead to poor academic performance or behavioral and emotional problems.
Who Can Benefit
Individualized NeuroNet programs can be used to help struggling learners who have not automated basic reading, writing and math skills during early childhood.
CHILDREN WITH THE FOLLOWING BEHAVIORAL CONCERNS HAVE SHOWN SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS WITH NEURONET:
- Auditory processing disorders
- Speech delay
- Dyspraxia or apraxia of speech
- Developmental delays
- ADD and ADHD
- Balance disorders
- High-functioning autism
CHILDREN WITH A SIMILAR DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY:
- First ear infection prior to age 1 year
- Motor behaviors: overly fearful or excessive risk-taker, clumsy, messy eater, difficulty with cutting, tying shoes, handwriting
- History of ear infections or other respiratory illness (frequent colds or flus, pneumonia, sinusitis, asthma/allergies)
- Persistent negative middle ear pressure (>25 daPa), especially when compliance (amplitude of movement of eardrum) is low (less than .4)
- Acoustic reflexes, ipsilateral and/or contralateral which are absent or not well-organized relative to the onset, duration and/or offset of the stimulus tone
AUDITORY BEHAVIORS:
- Doesn’t overhear and jump into conversations (often strikingly absent)
- Frequently asks “what?” or needs repetition of questions and directions
- Auditory misperceptions (hears “cookie” for “cooking”; “hoot” for “hoop” etc.)
VERBAL BEHAVIORS:
- Late talking
- Articulation problem: some speech sounds still incorrect or unclear
- Difficulty learning verbal sequences such as months of year, alphabet
- Minimal interest in books or school literacy activities
The goal of an individualized NeuroNet program is to help your child become an independent learner. Children who complete NeuroNet programs demonstrate improvements in reading, math, and handwriting. But more than just improvements in academic skills, children develop a “can-do” attitude toward learning. Children learn to predict that they can be successful in learning.
View Program Options
1. PreK4 Program: for children ages 4 and up
This enrichment program will benefit children who have emerging skills but lack fluency in those skills. It provides structured practice to develop the learning sequence of “watch and listen, then think and do”. It requires more sustained, self-directed attention than the Early Learning Program. It develops sustained attention, auditory memory, visualization (visual/verbal integration), math readiness, alphabet knowledge, and handwriting readiness. This program will benefit children who are learning English as a second language. It can also be used as a remediation program for older autistic or developmentally delayed children who lack sustained attention, verbal skills, whole body coordination, and coordination of speech and movement.
2. Classroom Enrichment Program 0: for children ages 5 and up
This enrichment program will benefit children who have basic academic skills but lack fluency in those skills. It teaches problem-solving using the skills of pattern completion and muscle memory. It requires ongoing engagement and on-time matching of hand movement, foot movement, and talking. Exercise sequences target visual and auditory processing (auditory memory and auditory discrimination), along with coordination of speech and movement patterns. Children develop rhyme awareness for reading decoding, math skills for computation and subitizing, and integrated visual-auditory-motor memory for handwriting fluency. Although handwriting is no longer a significant part of the curriculum in many states, research continues to show that we remember more of what we write than what we see, hear, or type. The ability to learn and remember is a critical skill for all children for all subjects at any age.
3. Classroom Enrichment Program 1: for children ages 6 and up
This enrichment program will benefit children who have basic reading, math and handwriting readiness skills. In addition to problem-solving through pattern completion and muscle memory, it builds on math, reading, vocabulary and handwriting skills from earlier program levels.
4. Classroom Enrichment Program 2: for children ages 7 and up, who have already completed Program 1. Children age 9 and up are sometimes able to use this program successfully without having completed Program 1, but most often they will need to complete Program 1 in order to be ready to move on to Program 2.