Academics

The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading, writing and spelling goes not come easily to individuals, such as those with dyslexia. The essential curricular content and instructional practices that characterize the Orton-Gillingham Approach are derived from two sources: first from a body of time-tested knowledge and practice that has been validated over the past 80 years, and second from scientific evidence about how individuals learn to read and write; why a significant number have difficulty in doing so; how having dyslexia makes achieving literacy skills more difficult; and which instructional practices are best suited for teaching such individuals to read and write.

The Wilson Reading System (WRS) teaches the structure of the English language and supports the delivery of the Orton-Gillingham Approach. Through the program, students master fluent decoding and encoding skills and receive instruction in:

• Phonemic awareness
• Decoding and word study
• Sight word recognition
• Spelling
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Oral expressive language development
• Comprehension

Social Thinking is a program by Michelle Garcia Winner that helps all students improve their social skills and learn strategies for better self-regulation. The program helps students:

• Connect their thinking to their personal self-monitoring and self-control systems
• Become more mindful of how their actions impact others
• Improve self-regulation
• Understand how they think and feel
• Consider the thoughts and feelings of others

This program is used to teach self-regulation by helping students understand the four different zones that our feelings and emotions fit within. It incorporates Social Thinking concepts, and teaches students how to identify and manage their feelings and the feelings of others.

This program uses a method of sequenced, repetitive word recognition with errorless learning to help students think of themselves as readers. It incorporates oral and sight word vocabulary, social skills enrichment, positive reinforcement and more to help children learn:

• Comprehension of words, phrases and stories
• Visual memory of words
• Left-to-right reading/tracking
• Thinking and discrimination skills
• Association between oral language and print

When students who have math learning problems first develop a concrete understanding of a math concept/skill, they are more likely to perform that math skill and understand math concepts at the abstract level.

TQS has embedded this methodology in its math instruction. Eureka Math is a curriculum that embodies a “C-R-A” teaching approach, which creates meaningful connections between Concrete, Representational and Abstract levels of thinking and understanding.

• Concrete (chips, unifix cubes, base ten blocks, beans and bean sticks, pattern blocks)
• Representational (tallies, dots, circles, stamps that imprint pictures for counting)
• Abstract (using only numbers and mathematical symbols)

TouchMath helps our teachers connect with different types of learners to build strong math skills. It’s a multisensory program that is built on the Common Core State Standards and includes technology components and hands-on manipulatives.

This program supports student growth in writing, vocabulary, language, reading, and speaking and listening. Students learn to produce organized, clear and coherent writing, as well as how to use technology for research and work.