1. Rooted in science

Our method has its basis in learning science and behavior analysis, which provide the guiding framework for everything we do. Learning science adheres to “pragmatism” as its philosophical system – where effective action serves as the rubric by which we judge our work as scientists and clinicians. In other words, we evaluate our work in terms of its effectiveness at producing a desired result or outcome.

2. Learning Environments

In traditional education, a student is often held accountable for his or her own learning/successes. So, when a student struggles or stagnates, it is often attributed to inherent characteristics of that student. They are often tested, labeled and then placed in special classes classified as having something wrong with them. When students at FIT fail, struggle, or require any kind of acceleration, we look to modify the instructional environment that is primarily responsible for learning gains. We evaluate teaching practices such as how learning materials are designed and presented, how feedback is provided and how learning is measured and evaluated. When learning problems or mediocrity are seen as existing within the student, it limits access to effective action. The key to producing profound learning gains with every single student is due to our adherence to examination of instructional environments rather than viewing students as having some inherent flaw.

3. Fluency

Fluency serves as the goal for everything we train at Fit Learning. We have tested and evaluated hundreds of students on thousands of skills and have established fluency “aims” for every skill we train. These aims have been established by systematically evaluating the levels of speed and accuracy on a skill that reliably produce the desired outcomes described.

When students achieve fluency across a broad array of core skill areas for a particular subject, they experience an actual transformation as a learner. A fluent foundation produces learners who have cognitive fitness – or the ability to learn and perform as an expert in any academic setting on any type of task. Students who are cognitively fit tend to be agile, flexible, focused, perseverant, confident, determined, and able to think critically. Fluency is synonymous with being an expert and with the type of training that Fit Learning provides, students become experts in the core skill areas of reading, math, thinking, and writing. As such, they can effortlessly complete classroom and homework assignments and engage with material in such a way that they actually begin teaching themselves new things. It is these kinds of students who will go on to impact our world in profound ways.

4. Component skill building

Fit learning’s model builds essential skills to proficiency and follows a logical, linear progression through a skill sequence where larger and more advanced skills are not expected until the smaller core, or component skills are sufficiently in place. For example, we would not expect a learner to be able to effectively solve a complex math word problem before achieving mastery of core numeration and basic computation skills. However, students today are expected to perform these kinds of complicated skills with little time spent training and mastering the components.