Totem Learning Center - Experts in Multisensory Education Therapy

Research Based Educational Programs

Language! (www.language-usa.net)
This curriculum was developed by Jane Fell Greene, Ed.D., and was specifically designed for students who have not become fluent readers, writers and spellers by exposure to conventional programs. This structured program helps the student who lacks age or grade level mastery in reading, writing, comprehension and grammar. Language! is for students who need a systematic learning experience with direct teaching of concepts and skills through Orton-Gillingham multisensory techniques.

Framing Your Thoughts
This program by Project Read®, was designed on the theory that students need to understand the function of words in written language to assist them in expressing their own thoughts through writing. The goal of Framing Your Thoughts is to give students mastery of sentence structure as well as paragraph development and composition. This grammar-based program is presented in a sequential order; it begins with the concept of a simple subject and predicate, then to expanding the predicate area, describing the subject, and on to the development of paragraphs and multiparagraph compositions.

Read Naturally (www.readnaturally.com)
Read Naturally provides a cutting edge approach to reading fluency, through modeling, repetition, and practice while incorporating reading comprehension and vocabulary building. These techniques help students to gain maximum results in a short amount of time.

Lindamood Bell Programs

Visualizing and Verbalizing™ (www.lindamoodbell.com)
This Lindamood-Bell program teaches language comprehension and thinking through specific steps that help develop concept imagery–-the ability to visualize a Gestalt (whole). The program applies concept imagery to reading comprehension, oral language, following directions, higher order thinking skills, expressive language, and writing.
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LiPS® Program
The Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing® (LiPS®) Program successfully stimulates phonemic awareness. Individuals become aware of mouth actions that produce speech sounds. This awareness becomes the means of verifying sounds within words and enables individuals to become self-correcting in reading, spelling and speech.

Step Up to Writing
This basic and practical program by Maureen Auman, M.A., offers helpful instruction for writing assignments, assessments and every day writing tasks. It can help improve the writing skills of all students – regardless of ability level through multisensory teaching strategies and student writing activities.

Handwriting Without Tears™ (www.hwtears.com)
This is a simple, developmentally-based curriculum developed by occupational therapist, Jan Z. Olsen. Its goal is to make handwriting available to children of all abilities as an automatic and natural skill. Children who write comfortably perform better in school, enjoy their classes more, and feel pride in their work.

Digi-Block® (www.digi-blocks.com)
The Digi-Block program offers a new type of math manipulative that provides ways for children to gain a profound intuitive understanding of the base-ten number system. Only when children truly understand our number code are they able to work meaningfully with the arithmetic operations. This program helps students actively explore our number system, develop deeper and more meaningful computation techniques and gain mental arithmetic skills.

Saxon Math (www.saxonpublishers.com)
The Saxon Math program is a curriculum for students in grades K – 12. This unique program is based on repetition and concept mastery of real life math skills. The lessons build upon one another and add complexity and information to each concept. The curriculum introduces concepts such as algebra and geometry in the lower grades, so these topics are not so difficult later in the student’s academic career. This program focuses heavily on real life math skills such as time, temperature, money, etc.

PACE (www.processingskills.com)
PACE is an intensive cognitive processing program developed by LearningRx™, that targets and trains processing skills critical to academic success. Through fast-paced, fun activities, skills are developed in areas of auditory and visual processing, working memory, processing speed, attention, logic and reasoning, and phonemic awareness. Skills are highly integrated throughout the program, as successful academic learning requires integration of skills.

Subject Specific Tutoring
Individual (1:1) advanced tutoring for students based on specific subject needs.

It's Hard to Get the Message When
You Have a Bad Connection!

Noise from every activity of modern life invades our auditory systems. Environmental noise. Rock band noise. Aircraft and transportation noise. Construction and traffic noise. Low emitting noise from lighting systems. Computer work stations. Air conditioners. Unintelligible babble of Crowd. This, to the extremes of our auditory sensitivity. The constant barrage of compounded noise is a profound source of physical and mental stress.

Yet, the brain needs sound. Healthy levels and amounts of sound effects learning, communication, emotions, sleep, relationships, coordination, creativity, organization and a general sense of well-being. It is when auditory information is signaled to the brain that it transforms the information to language signals that are coded, organized, interpreted and understood through our speech.

There is a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive. Listening is active and conscious and has a huge impact on learning. Inadequately developed listening skills cause problems with: auditory processing disorders, speech and language disorders, learning disabilities, autism, spectrum disorders, attention deficit disorders, and reading and spelling disorders.

A Central Auditory Processing Deficit (CAPD) can include a variety of symptoms. . .

About 75% are male -Normal hearing acuity -Difficulty following verbal directions -Inconsistent response to auditory stimuli -Short attention span -Poor long and short term memory -Trouble listening when there is background noise -Difficulty knowing where sound is coming from -Difficulty with phonics, reading or spelling -Mild speech-language problems -Disruptive behaviors -Often says "Huh?"

TOTEM Learning Center has recently integrated two programs into its repertoire of therapeutic education programs--Samonas Sound Therapy and Learning Ears.

Samonas Sound Therapy

Samonas is designed to stimulate the hearing mechanism to take in a full sound spectrum that impacts such skills as phonemic awareness, speech and language, organization, attention focus, verbal and written expression, social skills and comprehension. Each program segment is optimal and personally attuned to detect and learn to use the complete spectrum of sound.

Learning Ears

The program design develops listening skills and the ear-voice connection enabling an individual to process information effectively and independently, increasing focus on the relevant and discarding the irrelevant, therefore improving that person's ability to think and learn. Program exercises produce better voice quality, intonation, verbal expression and pronunciation. Reading, spelling, motor skills, handwriting and written expression are enhanced as well.