Magrid arrives in Brazil through Vínculoo®: the method that prepares every child to read, write and count

Vínculoo® is bringing Magrid to Brazil: an evidence-based, language-free and fully visual cognitive foundation method that prepares every child's brain to learn to read, write and count.

Born from doctoral research in neuroscience and developmental psychology at the University of Luxembourg, Magrid has been in every public school in Luxembourg since 2021 and is used by more than 60,000 children worldwide. In Brazil, it arrives built into the Vínculoo® platform as the skills development module of our inclusive education ecosystem.

What Magrid is

Magrid runs in short, self-paced sessions of about fifteen minutes, even without an internet connection. In these sessions, children build the twelve skills that underpin literacy and numeracy: from working memory and visual perception to number recognition and the sense of quantity.

Because it does not depend on language, reading or verbal instruction, the method works for every child, including neurodivergent children, multilingual children and children who have not been diagnosed with anything yet. They all start from the same line, in the same room, with no separate track.

Magrid does not teach the curriculum. It builds the mental architecture that makes learning to read, write and calculate faster once formal instruction begins.

The foundation that comes before reading and counting

Before reading a word or adding two numbers, the brain has to master skills no one sees: spotting patterns, holding information in memory, rotating a shape in the mind, comparing quantities, coordinating eye and hand. Without that foundation, formal instruction lands on fragile ground.

Magrid trains twelve sub-skills, organized into two domains.

Cognitive and visuospatial domain

• Working memory
• Visual perception
• Geometry and patterns
• Mental rotation
• Mental folding
• Eye-hand coordination

Numerical domain

• Number recognition
• Number mapping
• Quantity recognition
• Number comparison
• Ordinality
• Early addition

Decades of child development research point in the same direction: working memory and early math skills, measured at school entry, are among the signals that best anticipate later school success. That foundation is where Magrid works. It strengthens the foundations of learning and does not promise individual results.

Inclusion by design

In Magrid, inclusion is not an extra feature. It is the mechanism itself. Because it is language-free, fully visual and paced by each child, the method removes the verbal instruction that usually separates the children who keep up from the ones who fall behind.

• No language, no barrier. In early childhood, language is what excludes the most: the child who does not speak the school's language, the child with a speech or hearing disorder, the child with dyslexia. Magrid has no instructions to read and no commands to hear. There is a visual task the child understands by doing. In Luxembourg's multilingual studies, this design closed the performance gap between native and non-native speakers of the language of instruction.
• Every profile, the same method. Children with autism (ASD), with ADHD, with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia or dysgraphia, multilingual children and neurotypical children all share the same learning experience.
• No medical report to get started. Magrid requires no medical report or prior classification, and it also reaches the child who will never be formally diagnosed. In a country where so many families wait years for a diagnosis, that is the difference between including now and including later.
• Same classroom, no separate track. The neurodivergent child does not leave the class or get a lesser version of the activity. They use the same Magrid as their classmates, at the pace they can sustain.
• Cognitive age, not biological age. The method follows cognitive development, not the age on a birth certificate. That is why it remains appropriate and respectful for special education students well beyond early childhood, without treating them as younger than they are.

Why Vínculoo® and Magrid complement each other

Brazilian law has raised the bar for inclusive special education. Under the Política Nacional de Educação Especial Inclusiva (Brazil's National Policy on Inclusive Special Education) and Portaria MEC nº 421/2026 (a Ministry of Education ordinance), every student with a disability, on the autism spectrum or with high abilities is entitled to individualized pedagogical plans, such as the PEI (Plano Educacional Individualizado, the individualized education plan) and the PAEE (Plano de Atendimento Educacional Especializado, the specialized educational support plan). These plans are continuously updated and cannot depend on a medical report.

Vínculoo® manages the plans the law requires. Magrid develops the skills those plans exist for.

The PEI and the PAEE set each student's development goals. Magrid works directly on the cognitive and numerical foundations behind those goals, in the same inclusive setting, with no separate track and no diagnosis required. It also produces individual evidence of progress, child by child, through three integrated assessments: initial, midpoint and final.

For schools and school systems, the benefit is direct: the plan stops being paperwork and becomes an intervention with measurable results.

How Magrid works inside Vínculoo®

• Skills development module. Magrid becomes part of the platform's inclusive education ecosystem.
• Three-stage individual assessment. Initial, midpoint and final, to follow each child's progress over time.
• Per-child progress dashboard. It shows where the child is strong and where they need more support. It is not there to label, but to guide the teaching intervention.

Magrid is an inclusive learning method, not a diagnostic or clinical tool. It does not replace a professional assessment: it informs teaching with evidence of learning.

Evidence and recognition

Magrid brings together more than 4,000 research-based activities and a track record in public policy and scientific research.

• Luxembourg. The Ministry of Education purchased licenses and, since 2021, Magrid has been in every public school in the country.
• Panama and Curaçao. Ongoing pilots with both governments are bringing the method to new public school systems in the Americas.
• Peer-reviewed controlled study (2019). In a controlled classroom intervention, training with Magrid produced moderate to large gains in visuospatial skills compared with the comparison group.
• Large-scale multilingual study in Luxembourg. It showed gains in numerical and cognitive skills and closed the performance gap between native and non-native speakers of the language of instruction.
• UNICEF Learning Cabinet (2026). Magrid is part of the UNICEF-led initiative that recommends digital learning solutions worldwide.
• MIT Solve (2022). Winner in the Re-engaging Learners category, for reaching children left out by traditional instruction formats.
• European Investment Bank (2021). First prize in the Social Innovation Tournament, for its impact on equal educational opportunities.
• World Summit Award. Winner in 2020 and Global Champion in 2021.

Schools and school systems that want to learn about Magrid in Vínculoo® can reach out to our team.