Please contact us if you are interested in coming to the upcoming Arrowsmith Program Open House to learn how struggling learners transform into confident contributors by strengthening cognitive training for children, youth and adults. Meet Arrowsmith instructors and talk with parents whose families have benefited from participation.
The Arrowsmith Program is based on more than three decades of experience and the latest neuroscientific research that show it is possible for students to strengthen select weak cognitive capacities that underlie learning dysfunctions through a program of specific cognitive exercises.
LDA Manitoba has proudly offered the Arrowsmith Program since September 2013. The Learning Disabilities Association of Manitoba hosted an evening with Arrowsmith Program creator/founder/Director Barbara Arrowsmith Young, focusing on how the Arrowsmith Program addresses learning disabilities through a cognitive approach that improves both brain deficits and academic outcomes.
To read Frequently Asked Questions about our program in Manitoba, please click here.
To find out more about the Arrowsmith School and it’s groundbreaking approach, click here.
Students capitalize on their increased learning capacities through individualized assessment and programs developed for children, youth and adults. Activities focus on the student’s specific critical areas of weakness in cognitive processes such as visual and auditory memory, fine motor skills for writing, working memory, executive function, and verbal and non-verbal reasoning capacities. Students progress in priority areas selected or in the comprehensive full Arrowsmith Program.
All students benefit, regardless of where individuals start on the broad spectrum of mild to severe learning challenges, and whether they participate in partial or complete Arrowsmith Programs.
The program has proven effective for students having difficulty with reading, writing and mathematics, comprehension, logical reasoning, problem solving, visual and auditory memory, non-verbal learning, attention, processing speed and dyslexia. For an overview of the more common problems addressed please read our Chart of Learning Outcomes.
Participants completing three or four year program, can function without special education assistance or program accommodations. Some may require additional focused training in using their newly strengthened cognitive capacities. Flexible tutoring options can also target specific academic skills, raising these to grade level.
Arrowsmith is founded on two important areas of scientific research. The first determined that different areas of the brain work together to carry out complex mental activities such as read, writing and mathematics. A weakness in one area can affect various different learning processes. The second area of research concerns the principle of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change physically in response to stimuli and activity. It can develop new neuronal/synaptic interconnections, which allows it to develop new functions believed to be the physical mechanism of learning. Neuroplasticity refers to structural and functional changes in the brain that are brought about by training and experience.
Modern neuroscience continues to shed new light into the ways the brain changes in response to what it experiences. This leads us to the conclusion that the brain is dynamically changing through our lives.
Students with learning disabilities have traditionally been treated with programs designed to compensate for their difficulties – students who have difficulty with handwriting, for example, would be taught to use a keyboard or accommodated with more time to write exams. By contrast, the Arrowsmith Program’s objective is to help students strengthen the weak cognitive capacities underlying their learning dysfunctions. It is designed to deal with the underlying causes of the learning disability rather than its symptoms.
The Arrowsmith Program has proven successful with students in elementary school through to post-secondary school and with adults. Elementary school students return to a full academic curriculum at their appropriate grade level following the completion of a three or four year program.
Our goal is for our students to become effective, confident and self-directed learners for life and to enable them to achieve their goals of academic and career success.
You may read more about the development of the Arrowsmith methodology in the book “The Woman Who Changed Her Brain,” by Barbara Arrowsmith Young.