Learning & Language Archives

School of Life – Spring Term Registration

the Tree Group ㅣActive Learning Center Specialists

The Tree Group’s Active Learning Program will mark the Spring Term on 14th March, during which the children with language development, English acquisition problems, and emotional behavior problems can welcome the upcoming season with excitement.

The ultimate goal of Active Learning Program is to analyze children’s difficulties in depth through the comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation and develop the detailed psycho-educational strategies, allowing them to discover and acquire ways to learn by modifying their behavioral problems.

School of Life: Here’s a story of a child participating in our Active Learning Program.

“Child A, who is attending an English-speaking school, was unable to concentrate on class without confidence. As a result of the evaluation of bilingual comprehensive psycholo-educational evaluation, it was found that despite his excellent intellectual skills, it was difficult to understand the contents of school classes due to poor early English development.

The Tree Group’s Active Learning Program, we observed, applied, and helped Child A to acquire the individualized psycholo-educational strategies. As a result, my child started understanding lessons at school and shared what he enjoyed learning with his parents.”

School of Life is an opportunity to change children’s lives and futures.

If you want to register for the spring semester or have any questions, please contact us and we will kindly guide you.

Spring semester period: 2023.03.14 (Tue) to 2023.06.10 (Sat) [13 weeks]

More information about the active learning program can be found on the website below.

– School of Life – Active Learning Center Link

– Active Learning Program Link

– Active Learning Center Latest Updates

The Tree Group/Active Learning Center

info@thetreeg.com 02-557-8823

2023 Active Learning Winter Intensive Program

“Some parents with children who have language development and acquisition delays
and/or emotional and behavioral difficulties come to our clinic,
and they say that the number of medication is growing
but the children do not get better.

I have to calmly explain to them that the children will not get better immediately.
I have to explain that it takes time
because the children have developed secondary symptoms already
on top of their initial language or learning difficulties.

Our School of Life | Active Learning Center is a special place just for those children.
Accepting the child’s current conditions calmly,
developing and implementing neuropsychological routes to treat the developmental delay.

Some of the children who came to us are now looking forward to going to college.
They have completed college preparation which seemed impossible in the beginning.

We invite parents and children who want to make small miracles
through our 2023 Winter Intensive Program."

Yong Cho | Clinical Psychologist, the Tree Group / School of Life Active Learning Center

2023 Active Learning Winter Intensive Psycho-educational Program

When the bright, kind child who was exposed to English at birth came to the clinic for the first time, he did not answer other people’s questions and showed signs of depression. According to his comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation, his English development was delayed and he showed difficulties in phonemic awareness and phonetic recognition.

School of Life – Active Learning Center’s team of clinicians developed individualized psycho-educational strategies and implemented them. Consequently, the child started being aware of the sounds of different letters and the word meaning. He no longer presents with a quiet voice. His loud, confident voice echoes in the clinic. He is now happily conversing with teachers and parents without avoiding challenges and continues to develop his own strategies like a hero.

The Tree Group’s Active Learning Programs aim to help children’s developmental, emotional, behavioral difficulties and to improve their learning behavior by stimulating their language acquisition. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the child’s difficulties through a comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation and to develop individualized behavioral strategies, so that the child can have the problem behaviors treated and acquire independent learning habits. If you are interested in the program, please find the details below.

Date
2022.12.13(Tue) ~ 2023.02.25(Sat) [11 weeks]

*The program period may vary depending on the child’s school or personal winter break schedule.

Schedule

• 5 days per week from Tuesday – Saturday / 5 or 6 hours per day

• Weekly program schedule

➞ Clinical session: 1 hour (or more than 1 hour considering the child’s condition)

➞ Active Learning Center: 12-15 hours

➞ Self-studying sessions (ABCMM): 9-14 hours

➞ Total of 25-30 sessions per week

Registration

• Due: 2022.11.29 (Tue)

• Payment due date: 2022.12.06 (Tue)

• For more information: info@thetreeg.com / 02-557-8823

• Online registration:

If you would like to know more information about our Active Learning program, please check the links below.

Website links:

School of Life – Active Learning Center Main Homepage

https://thetreeg.com/ko/sol/

Active Learning Programs Choose

https://thetreeg.com/ko/sol/solprogram/

Active Learning Center Recent News

https://thetreeg.com/ko/lou/learninglanguage/solb/

Yekyung Kim | Active Learning Coordinator, Active Learning Center / the Tree Group

English language development and building confidence: present what I learned with a loud voice like a hero

“How does phonemic awareness and phonetic recognition influence language development delay?

The importance of developing clinical strategies for treating language development delay"

Yekyung Kim, BSc.

“I’m going to present what I learned today in class.”

A loud voice echoes inside the clinic. The voice comes from a bright child who can confidently present what he learned in front of teachers, parents and friends. In the past year, the child has achieved many clinical and psycho-educational treatment goals.

When the bright, kind child who was born in an English speaking country to the clinic for the first time, he did not answer other people’s questions and showed signs of depression. According to his comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation, his English development was delayed and he showed difficulties in phonemic awareness and phonetic recognition, which led him to have speech therapy for several years.

For example, he struggled to differentiation the sounds of /r/ and /th/ in words. He showed confusion in phonemic awareness and phonetic recognition, exacerbating his English language acquisition. He needed an individualized strategy to recognize phonetics and its relation to English alphabet letters.

As the child started developing his English language further, he was able to learn academic contents in English and was now capable of presenting what he learned in class.

Although he could present confidently in front of teachers, he was passive and dazed when he was asked to present in front of other people. Our behavioral analysis discovered a certain behavioral pattern. When he was given a difficult question or a challenging task, adults around him answered the question and completed the task for him. His repeated patterns of low self-esteem and helplessness was caused by other people’s constant helping behavior.

A language development delay can lead to secondary symptoms such as emotional, behavioral difficulties. Therefore, it is important that psychological treatments target both language development and behavioral difficulties at the same time. Once the child acquired the class materials, exposure therapy strategies were used for him to overcome challenging situations.

During his presentations, he read the English letters and words that he wrote, processed them, and pronounced them out loud to provoke his phonological awareness. Consequently, he was able to improve his problem behaviors.

He no longer presents with a quiet voice. His loud, confident voice echoes in the clinic. He is now happily conversing with teachers and parents without avoiding challenges and continues to develop his own strategies like a hero.

Yekyung KimㅣActive Learning Coordinator, Active Learning Center / the Tree Group

Dyscalculia – Part IV: Heritability and the effects of brain damage on numerical abilities

"If identical twins are found to be sufficiently more concordant than fraternal twins,
then there is a significant contribution of genetic factors."

By Seonghae Jeon, M.P.A.

Before we come up with implementation methods through which we can utilize to effectively intervene the learning process of dyscalculic children, we should know what actually causes this condition to occur.

It is well-known that there is a specific genetic effect on standardized test of math and that school performance on all the measures is affected by shared environment for the effects of domain-general cognitive abilities. However, there is very little evidence that dyscalculia is inherited or unchanging, and for most people, it is congenital; they are born with the condition.

To find evidence that dyscalculia may be inherited, psychologists and researchers conducted studies on twins by comparing the variance in the concordance of identical twins and fraternal twins to get an estimate of heritability. The assumption was, if the concordance is the same between the two groups of twins, then there is little or no contribution of heritability; if identical twins are found to be sufficiently more concordant than fraternal twins, then there is a significant contribution of genetic factors.

Through multiple studies over several decades, they concluded that there was a moderate to significant level of genetic influence on children’s mathematical ability along with their reading and linguistic abilities and IQ. They also stressed that a highly correlated factor called “generalist genes” affect all aspects of cognitive ability and disability and that non-shared, environmental influences operate as specialists and contribute to being bad at math.

In summary, continuity is genetic and change is environmental: age-to-age stability is primarily mediated genetically, whereas the environment contributes to change from age to age.

Other studies show that arithmetical impairments and core deficits have been observed in many genetic conditions, including but not limited to, Turner’s Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, and Williams Syndrome.

Children born very preterm ( more than 32 weeks) or extremely preterm ( less than 26 weeks) or with very low birth weight ( less than 1.5kg) are likely to show poorer academic performance at school especially at math and there appears to be a domain-specific deficit. Though there is no direct, cause-and-effect relationship between such birth conditions and incidence of dyscalculia, we may conclude that disturbance to pregnancy can lead to dyscalculia.

We must keep in mind that simply being bad at math is not a symptom of dyscalculia. Knowing that more research needs to be done to learn what causes dyscalculia to occur, how can we diagnose a child with dyscalculia and on what base?

Butterworth, B., (2018). Science of Dyscalculia. 1st ed. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315538112

Dyscalculia – Part III: The Arithmetic Network

"While the functioning of the grey matter and white matter is essential for a successful arithmetical connection to be made, the dyscalculic brain shows anomalies of structure and activation in the parietal lobes."

By 양미린 Mirin Yang, M.A.

Did you notice that there is an arithmetic network in our brain? Even before the advancement of modern neuroimaging, two major findings have been made clear through neurological patients who suffered from different brain injuries: frontal lobes are involved with unfamiliar calculations or problems and parietal lobes are related to the basic numerical processes.

Our frontal lobe is where everything begins; it is the region where we define tasks and goals when we face a new problem. The intraparietal sulci (IPS), which are bilaterally connected to the frontal lobe, are where the arithmetical network starts to operate. It is related to number abstraction, meaning it responds to the numbers no matter how it is presented (i.e. arrays of dots, digits, number words) and carries out simple calculation. Let’s imagine that you are given a problem 3 x 4. Without even thinking about the steps, you will answer 12 right away. Although you come up with the answer right away now, it must have taken a lot of effort and time when you just started to learn about the concept of multiplication.

For most people, lots of practice are required to transit an unfamiliar problem into a known fact and our frontal lobes actively take the role in this stage. When the arithmetical fact is retrieved, the network now shifts to the parietal lobe. Specifically, the retrieval depends on a region called the angular gyrus which is just below the IPS. It was also found from research with children of 7-9 years old: children that can retrieve answers to single-digit addition problems used the hippocampus more than the children that still used basic counting skills to solve the problem (Butterworth, 2019).

Then what about the dyscalculic brain? Although there is still much work to be done on this topic, some significant findings of the dyscalculic brain have been made: lower grey matter density in the left IPS and reduced white matter volume. The grey matter in the brain is where information processing occurs and the white matter delivers the processed information to different grey matter areas in our brain. While the functioning of the grey matter and white matter is essential for a successful arithmetical connection to be made, the dyscalculic brain shows anomalies of structure and activation in the parietal lobes.

Butterworth (2019) suggests that further research on the dyscalculic brain, especially on how the different parts of the network are connected, will provide a deeper understanding of dyscalculia.

I will end the article by throwing a question for all of us to consider – is there any way to construct an arithmetical network for dyscalculic children who have abnormalities in their brain structure through learning?

Butterworth, B., (2018). The dyscalculic brain. Science of Dyscalculia. 1st ed. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315538112

Dyscalculia – Part 2: Core deficit of the Number Module

"The number module refers to our innate ability of processing numerical information. When there is a core deficit in the number module, individuals develop dyscalculic traits."

By 김예경 Yekyung Kim, BSc

There are various causal factors in the development of dyscalculia, one of which is the deficiency of the number module. The number module refers to our innate ability of processing numerical information. When there is a core deficit in the number module, individuals develop dyscalculic traits.

Dyscalculic individuals struggle with basic numerical operations. For instance, they struggle to understand that 4 is composed of four 1s or that addition and subtraction are inverse operations (e.g., 5 + 3 = 8, thus, 8 – 5 = 3). Such deficiency in processing numerical information could develop into everyday life difficulties.

For example, Samantha Abeel who reported having dyscalculia, said that she could not tell what time it was, calculate money in restaurants or supermarkets, nor understand distances. This made her feel anxious, resulting in sleeping problems. Thus, it is important for us to acknowledge that dyscalculia is a grave problem that needs to be addressed and researched further in order to support those in need of support.

How do we know who has a core deficit in the number module? There are several ways for assessing the capacity of the number module, such as dot enumeration. During the dot enumeration task, participants are asked to count how many dots there are on the screen and their speed and accuracy are measured.

Reeve et al. (2012) conducted a longitudinal study in Australia using dot enumeration, and found that children could be put into three groups depending on their performance. Children in the Slow group were only able to subitize up to two items, the Medium group were able to subitize three, and finally the Fast group could subitize up to four. Furthermore, the performance in dot enumeration predicted the arithmetic operations, such as subtraction and multiplication. The study suggests that dot enumeration allows early assessment of core deficit in the number module and the development of dyscalculia.

How common is dyscalculia? Studies suggest that the prevalence rates of dyscalculia are around 3.5% to 7% of the population, due to the core deficit in the number module. In conclusion, dysfunctional number module is sufficient to cause a disability in processing numerical information. Although we have mainly focused on the cognitive basis of dyscalculia, other factors interact with the number module during the development of the disorder. For instance, what brain areas are responsible for the number module? Is dyscalculia heritable? We will answer these questions in the next articles.

Butterworth, B., (2018). Core Deficit of Dyscalculia. Science of Dyscalculia. 1st ed. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315538112

My favourite place

boy in white long sleeve shirt playing puzzle

The Tree Group was my favourite place, I felt happy that I made new friends.

Child Client, School of LifeㅣActive Learning Center

“Hello,

My name is _____ and I am graduating the Tree Group.

I am finally graduating.

The Tree Group was my favourite place, I felt happy that I made new friends.

I don’t want to say goodbye to the teachers here.

Thank you for helping me. Goodbye.”

* We appreciate our clients for their honest and sincere testimonials.

2021 Winter Intensive Program

"Introducing School of Life - Active Learning Winter Intensive Program!"

By 전승혜 Seonghae Jeon, M.P.A.

2021 Winter Intensive Program

Introducing School of Life – Active Learning Winter Intensive Program!

Program Dates: 12.14.2021 (Tues) ~ 02.26.2022 (Sat) [ 11 weeks long ]

Registration & Tuition Deadline: 12.07.2021 (Tues)

1.Psychological Behavior Modification

Our program allows children and young adults to improve behavior based on over 500 psycho-educational goals. ex) Improve basic academic habits, increase non-disruptive behaviors

2.Developing strategies

We develop individualised programs and strategies in order to support bilingual children’s education.

3.Knowledge acquirement

By practicing critical thinking and effective communication, students acquire skills and knowledge.

How do you get involved in Active Learning Winter Intensive Program?

If interested, please complete the forms and email info@thetreeg.com or contact through Microsoft Teams.

Psycho-educational program to improve low organizational skills

"School of Life – Many students in our Active Learning Program go to international schools and complete International Baccalaureate (IB) during which they face various challenges. "

By 전승혜 Seonghae Jeon, M.P.A.

School of Life – Many students in our Active Learning Program go to international schools and complete International Baccalaureate (IB) during which they face various challenges. One of the challenges is organizational skills, where they find difficulties in preparing correct class materials and planning homework due to frequent changes in classroom or studying settings.

The current article introduces an Active Learner who had low organizational skills, despite their high functioning temporal/spatial awareness. Their school had a class schedule based on flexible themes, rather than a set weekly schedule, which did not allow the Active Learner to plan and organize themselves for the upcoming classes in the following week. Therefore, the first mission for the Active Learner during our program was “organization”.

Based on the Psychoeducational Evaluation for Bilingual Children, the clinicians at the Tree Group established that the Active Learner would be good at drawing a map based on their spatial awareness and prepared a part of our clinic into a similar environment as their classroom. During every active learning session, the Active Learner prepared the relevant folders and school materials as part of a game.

The Active Learner’s organizational skills were targeted more heavily than their academic advancement. Once they were more used to the skills at the clinic, we prepared a list of organizational tasks to be practiced at home, which the Active Learner successfully achieved.

Our Active Learning Program emphasizes the importance of organizational skills and allows children to build confidence in their school life. If you are interested in the program, do not hesitate to contact us through 02-557-8823 or alc@thetreeg.com

Fall Term Has Begun – Season of Calm Colours

"School of Life – Active Learning Program has begun as of September 14th"

By 전승혜 Seonghae Jeon, M.P.A.

The Fall Term at the School of Life – Active Learning Program has begun as of September 14^th.

Fall is the season of sharing appreciation and letting go of greed through harvesting. Over the next three months, the children will achieve their individual psycho-educational goals and enjoy their own harvest of experiences and efforts.

The Fall Term at the School of Life – Active Learning Program has begun as of September 14^th.