What is the Arrowsmith Program?
The Arrowsmith Program is based on the theory of neuroplasticity which is the ability of the brain to change both its physical structure and its functional organization in response to training and experience, to form new neural connections, to strengthen existing connections, to fundamentally change the brain’s capacity to learn and to function.
The goal of the Arrowsmith Program’s cognitive exercises is to strengthen a range of weak cognitive capacities that underlie a number of specific learning difficulties.
The Arrowsmith Program, through a careful assessment, identifies areas of learning strength and weakness to create an individual learning profile for each student and then designs a program of individualized exercises for each student to target their precise areas of weakness.
Complete an Arrowsmith Questionnaire and download your results to determine whether you or your child’s learning difficulties are typical of those addressed by the Arrowsmith Program.
Who Will Benefit From The Arrowsmith Program?
- Reading
- Writing
- Mathematics
- Comprehension
- Logical reasoning
- Problem solving
- Visual and auditory memory
- Non-verbal learning
- Attention
- Processing speed
- Dyslexia
For an overview of the more common problems addressed please read the Chart of Learning Outcomes. 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.
Complete an Arrowsmith Questionnaire and download your results to determine whether you or your child’s learning difficulties are typical of those addressed by the Arrowsmith Program.
The typical attendee for the Arrowsmith Program
- Is of average or above-average intelligence
- Has a combination of the learning dysfunctions that are described in the Descriptions of Learning Dysfunctions on the Arrowsmith website
- Does not have severe intellectual, cognitive, emotional or behavioural disorders that would significantly affect his or her ability to participate in the Arrowsmith Program
- Does not have acquired brain injury or an autism spectrum disorder
These are guidelines only. There are many attendees who fall within these guidelines; others who may require further consideration and still others for whom we feel this program cannot provide meaningful benefit.
For example, we do not accept children with severe autism but the Arrowsmith program has had success with high functioning students with Asperger Syndrome.
Some professionals consider Asperger Syndrome to be the same as or similar to high functioning autism, others associate it with a non-verbal learning disorder. There is no hard and fast rule and we will consider their appropriateness for our program in consultation with the children’s parents.
If it appears your child may be a suitable candidate for the Arrowsmith Program, please contact us by email at caterina@brainathletics.com.au or fill in the Expression of interest form.
For enquiries and enrolments contact us today for an obligation free discussion about the Arrowsmith Program
The 10 cognitive functions strengthened by the Arrowsmith Program
Quantification Sense
Ability to carry out internal sequential mental operations, such as mental math.
Does counting on fingers sound familiar? Problems with math and counting processes could signal trouble with your child’s quantification sense. This dysfunction impairs a child or adult from doing mathematics inside his or her head, or carrying out internal sequential mental operations.
Non-verbal Thinking (Artifactual Thinking)
Ability to register and interpret non-verbal information and plan and problem solve non-verbally.
Is your child’s behaviour sometimes inappropriate for the situation? Children and adults with this dysfunction often have trouble registering and interpreting their own emotions, or the facial expressions and body language of others. In class, a student may not be able to interpret a teacher’s reactions—therefore not knowing if the teacher approves of her work or not.
Lexical Memory
Ability to remember several unrelated words in a series.
Does your child have trouble learning the names of things? This dysfunction is associated with trouble remembering more than three words in a series, or that one word is a synonym for another.
Symbolic Recognition
Ability to visually recognize and remember a word or symbol.
Does your child study a word many times before she can visually memorize it, recognize it, and then say it correctly the next time she sees it? Often children and adults with this dysfunction cannot recognize a word like “house” as the same word she has seen before. The result: learning to read and spell words is a very slow process.
Symbolic Thinking
Ability to develop and maintain plans and strategies through the use of language
Is your child easily distracted from a task and frequently labelled as having a short attention span? Children and adults with this dysfunction cannot maintain the focus of their attention in their studies, job or a social situation. They are often passive in learning situations, unable to plan how to start a task.
Broca’s Speech Pronunciation
Ability to learn to pronounce syllables and then integrate them into the stable and consistent pronunciation of a word.
With this dysfunction, struggling with thinking and talking at the same time, requiring more concentration to pronounce words, or sometimes losing one’s train of thought are all typical problems. These difficulties result in shyness (quietness) in new situations involving talking with people, and a tendency to get drowned out by people who find it easier to speak
Predicative Speech
Ability to see how words and numbers interconnect sequentially into fluent sentences and procedures.
Does your child try to be helpful, or do they often do something without asking beforehand? With this dysfunction, a child is not capable of considering the possible consequences of the action beforehand. For example, the child washes his father’s car that has just been waxed, or the child trims the tree in the front yard almost cutting it down.
Memory For Information Or Instructions
Ability to remember chunks of auditory information.
With this dysfunction, parents may think their child is being stubborn, irresponsible or lazy because they ask their child to do something but it doesn’t get done. The reason is because the child forgets. The child has trouble remembering oral instructions and acquiring information through listening. If the child is told to do something, but then gets distracted, the instruction will be totally forgotten. The child may even insist that the request was never made.
Symbol Relations
Ability to understand relationships among two or more concepts.
Children and adults with this dysfunction often have an inability to read an analog clock; to discern the difference between the hour and minute hands. They have trouble with cause and effect relationships like why events happen. Grammar and reading comprehension suffer because the relationships between elements or characters are not understood. For many with this dysfunction, there is a constant sense of uncertainty about whether the intended meaning (while reading or listening) has been correctly understood.
Motor Symbol Sequencing
Ability to learn and produce a written sequence of symbols.
Writing out the alphabet, or a sequence of numbers, or expressing thought in speech are problems for children and adults with this dysfunction. Words may be misread, or handwriting may be messy and irregular. While focussing on writing, the content is often neglected, and sometimes the same word is spelled different ways on the same page.
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Barbara Arrowsmith Young – The Woman Who Changed Her Brain
The Arrowsmith Program of cognitive exercises originates from Barbara Arrowsmith-Young’s journey of discovery and innovation to overcome her own severe learning disabilities.
When she was in grade one, Barbara was diagnosed as having a mental block; she read and wrote everything backwards, had trouble processing concepts in language, continuously got lost and was physically uncoordinated. Barbara continued throughout her educational career to have difficulty with specific aspects of learning.
In graduate school she came across two lines of research that intrigued her. Luria’s description of specific brain function lead her to a clearer understanding of her own learning problem and the work of Rosenzweig suggested the possibility of improving brain function through specific stimulation.
This lead to the creation of the first exercise designed to improve the learning capacity involved in logical reasoning. The results were positive with gains in verbal reasoning, mathematical reasoning and conceptual understanding.
This lead to a further exploration of the nature of specific learning capacities and to creating exercises to strengthen them. This is the ongoing work of Arrowsmith School which can currently identify 19 cognitive areas and has programs designed to strengthen the functioning of each of these.
The program originated in Toronto in 1978 and today is implemented in over 100 educational organizations in Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and Asia.
As the Director of Arrowsmith School and Arrowsmith Program, Barbara continues to develop programs for students with specific learning difficulties.
As the Director of Arrowsmith School and Arrowsmith Program, Barbara continues to develop programs for students with specific learning difficulties.
It is her vision that this program will be available to all students struggling with specific learning difficulties so they may know the ease and joy of learning and realize their dreams.
You can read more about Barbara’s journey in her book “The woman who changed her brain”.
What Is Neuroplasticity?
Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change
For almost four decades, Arrowsmith Program founder Barbara Arrowsmith Young has argued that when the brain is stimulated in precise ways, its physiology and function change and cognitive deficits can be addressed.
Barbara’s own life story (told in her bestselling book, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain) is ample evidence of this, for she overcame her own quite severe learning disabilities by applying those principles to herself and devising – and, over decades, revising — specific, targeted brain exercises.
The goal of the Arrowsmith Program is to identify, intervene and strengthen areas of cognitive weakness that affect learning. It deals with the root causes of a learning disability, rather than managing its symptoms. The goal of the Arrowsmith program is for everyone with learning disabilities to become effective, confident and self-directed learners for life.