Tutoring and Test Prep for Wheaton Families
FlyingMinds is an online school-skills platform built by teachers who have taught thousands of children over many years, and who know exactly where students get stuck. Wheaton and Glen Ellyn parents usually come with a reading or writing question rather than a math one: the child reads plenty but cannot say what a passage argued, or writes fluently and loses marks on evidence. Those are teachable skills, and they are what this platform was built around first.
What a Wheaton family actually gets
Skills that teach first
Every lesson opens with a worked example and a guided try before the questions start, then practises the skill at four levels. Kindergarten through Grade 12, in reading, writing, math, science and social studies.
Live small-group classes
Taught over Zoom by the teacher who writes the lessons, in small groups, with the platform included for the whole family.
SAT & ACT, skill by skill
Forty-nine skills, each taught and then practised on passages pitched a step above the real test, including a set built entirely on published prose.
College applications
CollegeOS helps a family shortlist colleges, track deadlines and keep essays moving — included for members.
The tests Illinois actually gives
Illinois tests English and math with the IAR in grades 3-8, and in grade 11 the state test is a college-entrance exam, now the ACT in Illinois, with the SAT still taken for admissions. The skills are continuous across that span: a fourth grader finding the main idea of a paragraph and a junior finding the central claim of a dense passage are doing the same thing at different weights.
FlyingMinds is not an IAR item bank and does not reproduce released state questions. It teaches the skills underneath — comprehension, inference, evidence, text structure, grammar and punctuation, and grade-level math — then practises each at four levels, ending with ACT and SAT work in high school.
| What's happening | Where to start |
|---|---|
| Report card is fine, but reading comprehension slips on tests | Benchmark Skills — pick the grade, start with main idea and inference |
| Child is ahead and bored | Use the grade above; the same skill is taught at every grade with harder text |
| Gifted-and-talented screening is coming | CogAT prep by grade and the free CogAT demo |
| Grade 9-12, SAT or ACT on the horizon | SAT vs ACT skills guide, then the SAT/ACT skill lessons |
| Writing is the weak spot | Essay structure and the Literary Essay Trainer |
Reading and writing, taught rather than tested
Most practice a child meets online is assessment wearing a teaching costume: answer, get a tick, move on. Here every skill opens with a worked example and a guided attempt before any question is asked, and the feedback names the rule and the trap rather than only the answer. For a strong reader who has never been taught to argue from evidence, that difference is the whole thing.
Two things we will not do: promise a score jump, or hand a child questions with no teaching in front of them. Every lesson teaches first.
Start this week
$29 a month for everything, cancel any time. Live classes are $160 a month and include the platform.
Start for $29/month Try the free demo firstQuestions Wheaton parents ask
Do you have a location in Wheaton?
No — everything is online, which is why there is no drive and no centre fee. Live classes meet over Zoom, in Central Time.
My child reads well but struggles to answer questions about the reading. Where do we start?
Start with main idea and inference at your child's grade, then command of evidence. Those three skills carry most of the marks on a comprehension test.
My child already gets good grades. Is this useful?
Usually yes, and the reason is boredom rather than gaps: strong students can work a grade up in the same skill, since every skill is taught at every grade with harder texts and bigger numbers.
Can two children share one subscription?
Yes. A family account can hold several children, each with their own login and their own progress.
What if we stop?
Cancel from the account page and the billing stops at the end of the month. There is no contract and no cancellation call.
Who teaches the classes?
A classroom teacher with many years and thousands of students behind her, who writes the curriculum on this site herself. Classes are kept small on purpose.