There is a May 31st deadline for both the Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities (FES – UA) and the Personalized Education Program Several key points:
- The initial deadline to enroll for these programs for the 2024 – 25 school year is May 31st. While that may change, we strongly recommend parents enroll your child ASAP.
- A number of parents signed up for the Personalized Education Program last year and later realized their child could qualify for the Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities — that may be worth $2000 more per year for a student with mild disabilities and much more for students with more complex disabilities. REMEMBER: they can only use one- even if 2 are awarded. Note, these scholarships are only for students in private school or being homeschooled. Public and charter school students are not eligible.
- We encourage parents to get the required documentation for the Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities, also known as FES – UA ASAP, preferably before May 31st. Here is a link to more information on the FES- UA.
- If your child is going back to public school in the fall, they will lose whatever is in their account that has not been spent on the day they start school. If your child needs help before reentering public school, consider a summer program.
3D Learner Is a Provider for both the Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities (FES – UA) and the Personalized Education Program
Our focus is on the visual learner, kinesthetic learner or neurodivergent learner, who learns best when he or she sees and experiences information. We also identify and address dyslexia, ADHD, visual processing issues and executive function challenges.
We are Dyslexia certified trained for the UFLI ® Program — the University of Florida’s Reading Intervention that incorporates a Core Assessment, and an engaging and effective dyslexia treatment. This is an Orton-Gillingham based program.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can help your child and you, call 3D Learner at 561-361-7395 or click here to schedule a Conversation on How The Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities or the Personalized Education program can help your child.
7 ways 3D Learner is different than any other provider:
1. Our hands-on program is designed to help the right brain learner, kinesthetic learner or neurodivergent learner who learns best when he or she sees and experiences information.
2. We address both reading fluency and reading comprehension. We have had students make 2, 3 and even 4-year gains in their reading comprehension in 4 to 6 months. While we are a hands-on program, we also address phonemic awareness and reading fluency with the University of Florida’s UFLI Program ®.
3. We identify and address executive function, visual processing and related issues.
4. We strive to ignite a love for learning, while boosting self-esteem
5. We help parents to be even more effective coaches for their child.
6. We tailor our program to meet the individual child’s needs. We can also address math and writing issues.
7. Our assessment, that can be done live or online, will show a parent:
-
- How your child learns best
- Their learning strengths and challenges
- Whether there is an executive function or visual processing issue
- The child’s present level of performance for both reading fluency and reading comprehension
If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can help your child and you, call 3D Learner at 561-361-7495 or click here to schedule a Conversation on How The Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities can help your child
Homeschool successes with 3D Learner. We have helped:
If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can help your child and you, call 3D Learner at 561-361-7495 or click here to schedule a Conversation on How The Florida Empowerment Scholarship for Unique Abilities can help your child.
If you have a smart struggling child, you may be asking yourself, “Should we invest in a summer program for our child?” Our specialty is the student who is a lot smarter than present results would indicate and is what we call a bright right brain learner – who learns best when they see and experience information.
The simple answer is yes, if:
- Your child is a lot smarter than present results would indicate?
- You have the time and resources to do the right program.
- You find the right program that can help your child to make significant gains in months in multiple areas (e.g. reading fluency, reading comprehension, attention, confidence …)
- You get the help needed to be the coach and advocate your child needs
Is 3D Learner The Right Summer Program for Your Child?
If you have a smart struggling child, they may have been identified with dyslexia, ADHD, executive function or related challenges. We have found that most smart struggling students:
- Are a bright right brain learner
- Often have a sea of strengths and challenges
- Can do far better when one focuses on their strengths, while addressing their challenges
- Can benefit from the right summer program, when school pressure is not present
As we look back over the last 27 years, we notice that a significant number of students we helped over the summer made significant gains in their reading fluency, reading comprehension, math skills, attention and self-confidence.
What were the key actions that led to our student’s success:
– Their parents called us and had a conversation.
– Their parents then invested in our Comprehensive Assessment that in each case showed their child learned differently, had significant strengths and challenges, and had the potential to do far better with what we offered.
– We discussed how what we offered could be far more effective than virtually any other program because:
-
- We teach the way their child learns
- We tailor our program to meet each child’s needs
- We engage our students by both focusing on what is important to them and by using our hands-on methods, that are integrated, engaging and effective
- We address the relevant attention, visual processing working memory and/or processing speed issues that are often present as well as address phonemic awareness
- Our approach improves decoding, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. We strive to ignite a love for learning and reading!
- While we help students with dyslexia, ADHD, executive function and related issues, we use the positive label of a Bright Right Brain Learner.
- We help parents to be the coach and advocate their child needs. NOTE: we offer one of the few programs that has parent coaching as an integral part of the program.
– The parents recognized that we could tailor a program to meet their child’s needs, help them to be the coach and advocate their child needed, and had a high probability of generating significant results within months.
– Their parents chose to work with us
What did our most successful parents do that led to truly outstanding progress? They
- Leveraged our intensive program that laid the groundwork for significant gains – note, in the last few years as we leverage zoom, we have been able to help students via zoom, too.
- Did the follow-up over the next few months to generate the maximum benefit from our joint efforts
Their child then made gains like the three cases outlined below:
One mom of a third grader was really frustrated. Despite investing in other programs, her bright 3rd grader was really struggling. 5 minutes into the initial call, she commented, “How is it that after 5 minutes you appear to know my child better than people who have known him for years”. She had been told to find another private school for her son, whose reading comprehension was 2 years below grade level,
She lived out of state and asked, “What is the best way to do your program”. We responded that while we offer a 5-day intensive program, we have seen excellent results with students who came for 3 days (for 2 to 4 hours, depending on the age of the student) and then another 2 days 4 to 6 weeks later. That is what she chose to do. Her son was able to improve his reading comprehension 3 grade levels over the next year, to excel at his school.
His teacher said “I have never seen a student make such dramatic gains in 27 years of teaching
For students who have come to us from California, Washington, Arizona and other states that are further away, a one-week intensive program is often more practical.
A rising 6th grader was really struggling with attention, self-control and reading comprehension. He was also struggling with baseball where his average had dropped to 260, as the pitching became harder to hit. As we spoke with him, we discussed how our program could help his baseball skills, as well as his attention, self-control and reading comprehension. Sports, dance, or martial arts are often what our students want to improve. By working on their neural timing and their visual processing, we are often able to engage the students and help them to dramatically improve their performance in sports and other activities.
With our help, he was able to:
- Improve his reading comprehension 4 grade levels in 5 months
- Double his reading speed
- Go from special education classes to regular education classes
- Be far more attention and control his impulses
- Increase his batting average from 260 to 382 and increase his home run production from 1 to 10
- Become much more confident in his abilities
A rising 9th grader who was a C+ student, his reading comprehension was 4 years below grade level, he was reading at 200 words per minute and was considered unmotivated. In our initial conversation, mom was delighted to hear that we would leverage her child’s strengths. With our work with the student and his parents he was able to:
- Improve his reading comprehension 4 grade levels in 100 days – from the 5th to 9th grade level
- Increase his reading speed from 200 to 360 words per minute
- Become a highly motivated student
- Excel in high school and get several full scholarship offers for college
Our program was developed to do this for our high school daughter. We realize our goal is to both motivate, train and support our students. We get student buy-in before we accept teenage students.
Both the Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES- UA) and the Personalized Education Program vouchers are designed to help private school and homeschool students.
Private school parents can often use the vouchers towards tuition or to improve their child’s academic skills.
Homeschool parents often use the vouchers to improve their child’s academic performance.
Note, many private schools and homeschool students are what we call neurodivergent right brain learners.
At 3D Learner, we help the neurodivergent right brain learner to improve their academic, executive function and related skills.
We define neurodivergent right brain learners as students who:
- Learn differently – sometimes called neurodivergent, visual, kinesthetic or right brain learners. These students learn best when they see and experience information.
- May have dyslexia, dyscalculia or a learning disability,
- May have ADHD.
- May be on the autism spectrum – especially intelligent students with Aspergers.
- Are often smart enough to succeed but lack some key skills.
In this blog post we will discuss three other ways to leverage both the Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES- UA) and the Personalized Education Program vouchers.
1- Some homeschool parents want their child to enter private or public schools in the fall. The challenge is their child may be struggling with reading comprehension, math, attention, executive function and/or anxiety challenges. 3D Learner addresses all these issues and more. The May – August time frame is an excellent time to close the gap.
2- A few parents realize their child is too far behind and use the Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES- UA) and the Personalized Education Program vouchers to close significant gaps utilizing a gap year. This has helped three students to make much more significant gains this year, than they would have made with traditional schooling.
3- Some states offer significant scholarships for students who meet the GPA (Grade Point Average) or SAT – ACT requirements. The Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES- UA) and the Personalized Education Program vouchers can be used to significantly improve SAT – ACT scores. This allows students to both earn a scholarship that may be worth $20,000 to $29,000 over four years and to get into better colleges or universities. You can read more about this on our blog post in the Bright Futures Scholarship.
If you would like to discuss how we might help your neurotypical, neurodivergent and right brain learners leveraging the Florida Empowerment Scholarship or Personalized Education Program vouchers, call 3D Learner at 561-361-7495 or book a time on our schedule at Let’s discuss the Florida Empowerment Scholarship – Unique Abilities or Personalized Education Program vouchers.
.
The purpose of this blog post is to alert parents of neurodivergent learners who might not yet have the GPA or SAT – ACT Scores for the Bright Futures Scholarship there may be a chance for your child to still earn the scholarship.
Note, the Bright Futures Scholarship is designed to keep our best and brightest kids in the state university system and to make college affordable for high performing students. The awards are worth approximately $20,000 to $29.000, depending on a student’s GPA.SAT – ACT scores and the tuition at the school they attend.
The Bright Futures Scholarship has two different award levels:
1- The Florida Medallion Scholarship – that requires a 3.0 GPA and a 1210 on the SATs or a 25 on the ACT and 75 volunteer or 100 work hours. This award is worth about $20,000 over 4 years — specifically 75% of the student’s tuition, so the value may vary by school.
2- The Florida Academic Scholarship – that requires a 3.5 GPA and a 1340 on the SATs or a 29 on the ACTs plus either 100 volunteer or 100 work hours.
Reading Comprehension, Reading Speed, Vocabulary and Test Anxiety Are 4 Key Issues we address. Call us at 561-361-7495 to discuss how we assess for these 4 items and how we might be able to help your child earn a Bright Futures Scholarship
3D Learner has helped two groups of students:
- The more traditional learner, who often has the GPA and test scores to qualify for the Florida Medallion Scholarship or the Florida Academic Scholarship. With the increased GPA and SAT – ACT scores, some students have been able to qualify for top universities elsewhere — where they would probably not have qualified without the increased GPA and SAT – ACT scores we helped them get.
- The neurodivergent right brain learner, who may need higher GPA and/or SAT and ACT scores to qualify for the Florida Medallion Scholarship or the Florida Academic Scholarship.
3D Learner helps students in 7 different ways to earn the Florida Medallion Scholarship and the Florida Academic Scholarships:
- We provide an assessment that looks at the present level of performance for reading speed, reading comprehension, vocabulary and executive function.
- We work with the student to set Goals. Since reading comprehension, reading speed, GPAs and SAT and ACT scores are measurable and there are defined targets, this focuses the student’s mind and ours.
- Even students with excellent GPAs often have a reading comprehension level that is below grade level. We have helped these students to improve their reading comprehension 2, 3 and even 4 grade levels.
- We improve reading speed. One student was reading at 125 words per minute and was unable to finish the test or to get test accommodations. We helped him to improve his reading speed to 300 words per minute, while improving his reading comprehension 2 grade levels. This allowed him to finish the test and improve his SAT test scores by 270 points.
- We help students improve their GPAs. This can allow them to qualify for the scholarship, get into better schools and be more successful in college.
- We lower their anxiety. Using both the Safe and Sound Protocol ® and HeartMath ®, our students are able to be much calmer than they would otherwise be.
- We improve their self-esteem and confidence, often by seeing their practice test scores continuously rise.
One student did the math and realized he would have to work over 2000 hours in college to pay for the same amount the scholarship was worth. He created a $20000 check made out to him and put it over his desk. It resulted in a student who was not yet motivated to become highly motivated., We helped him to increase his GPA his last two semesters to a 3.75 and his SAT scores high enough to earn the Florida Medalion Scholarship.
Note, the hard-working student with a high GPA and low-test scores is often the easiest to help. They just need to improve their reading speed, reading comprehension, and math skills, while lowering their anxiety. They often get tricked by the wording on the test and really benefit from our vocabulary building, efforts to improve their math, reading speed and reading comprehension levels; and they become much more confident as we teach them test taking skills.
Neurodivergent Right Brain Learners Often Have Significant Upside Potential
The neurodivergent right brain learner may need more foundation skills.
Who is a neurodivergent right brain learner?
We define neurodivergent right brain learners as students who:
- Learn differently – sometimes called neurodivergent, visual kinesthetic or right brain learners. These students learn best when they see and experience information
- May have dyslexia, dyscalculia or a learning disability
- May have ADHD
- May be on the autism spectrum – especially intelligent students with Aspergers
- Are often smart enough to achieve the Bright Futures Scholarship, but lack some key skills
The neurodivergent right brain learner may appear to be unmotivated, but in many cases money and getting into the right college are motivating.
Our Experience with Neurodivergent Right Brain Learners and the Bright Futures Scholarship
Our initial assessment often uncovers foundational skill gaps that may hamper them in school, on the SAT or ACT, in college and beyond. These might include:
- ADHD issues, where they lose focus when testing.
- Processing speed issues, where they read tortuously slowly.
- Working memory issues where they just do not remember things.
- Language and vocabulary issues. Both the SAT and ACT are written in a tricky way that often confuses the student who does not understand high frequency words (e.g. except, but, greater than, always etc.).
- Math skills, especially with respect to algebra – that is the focus of the SAT and ACT math sections. Combine this with the tricky questions and good students often get scores closer to 500 on the SAT when they should be getting 600 to 650.
- Test anxiety — when one has the other challenges, anxiety often follows.
- Belief in themselves. When a student has always struggled on standardized tests, they often do even worse on the SAT and ACT.
The good news is that with practice, they can often do far better.
If you would like to discuss how we might help your neurotypical, neurodivergent and right brain learners earn a Bright Futures Scholarship or improve their GPA and SAT – ACT scores call 3D Learner at 561-361-7495 or book a time on our schedule at Let’s discuss the Bright Futures Scholarship.
3D Learner offers a tailored, integrated, engaging and effective option that has helped thousands of neurodivergent, right brain and kinesthetic learners from 46 states and 13 other countries.
As Dr. Linda Silverman, the Director of the Gifted Development Center in Denver Colorado said,
”Your program is what many gifted students who learn differently need. I recommend many of the components you use, but you are the first professionals who have so effectively integrated them with your very unique and effective learning system.”
Many smart struggling students get identified with dyslexia, a learning disability, ADHD, and/or Executive Function challenges.
What is often missed is that a large number of these students are neurodivergent, right brain or kinesthetic learners. These students have a sea of strengths and challenges that may include:
- A neurodivergent, right brain or kinesthetic learner who learns best when they see and experience information
- Struggling with phonics, phonemic awareness and/or reading fluency – -may be dyslexia
- Able to focus on that which is interesting and have difficulty paying attention to that which is boring – they may or may not have ADHD.
- Able to remember what they see and experience and have a working memory challenge for what they hear or read
- Slow processors. Processing speed is often a problem that hampers their standardized test scores and frustrated parents and teachers, who expect your child to respond quicker
- Anxiety and frustration
- Suffering from intervention fatigue. They need something different
We recognize that our parents live in many different places and want a program that will work for both their child and them. In this blog post, we share:
3D Learner Options
3D Learner offers parents several unique options including:
- Coming for a one-week intensive program followed up with 10 hours via zoom. We have had students come from California, New York, Texas and many other states — as well as hosting students from 13 other countries.
- For students who live closer, but not close to our office (e.g. elsewhere in Florida, Maryland, New Jersey), students have come for 3 days of intensive training, followed up with 2 days of intensive training 4 to 8 weeks later. We then can do the appropriate follow-up via zoom.
- We have traveled to other places to do training for multiple clients – with Singapore being the place we traveled the furthest.
- We have also helped students solely via zoom – -which works well for some students – although we do prefer a live option. Note, for the very busy parents where travel is not an option, our program may be far better than local options.
If you have a neurodivergent, right brain or kinesthetic learner and want to discuss the options, call us at 561-361-7495 or click here to schedule a Let’s Discuss Creating a Pathway to Success for Your Child.
Here is a screening tool you can use to see if your child is probably a neurodivergent, right brain or kinesthetic learner. We recommend doing this with your child – -their answers may surprise you.
Note, we have had students make dramatic gains including:
- A rising 5th grader from Texas who improved her reading comprehension by 4 grade levels in 6 months, while doubling her reading speed and cutting homework time in half.
- A 7th grader from the State of Washington improved his reading comprehension by 3 grade levels in 5 months and made great strides in all his subjects.
- A student from St Petersburg, FL, went from a C- student to an A student and her ulcer disappeared.
If you have a neurodivergent, right brain or kinesthetic learner and want to discuss the options, call us at 561-361-7495 or click here to schedule a Let’s Discuss Creating a Pathway to Success for Your Child.
3D Learner — Helping Neurodivergent, Right Brain and Kinesthetic Learners Go From Stress to Success in Months
Recent Comments