FLEX Summer Program Details

TouchMath

TouchMath is a multisensory math program designed for pre-K through third grade. The program helps make math concepts easier and more accessible for students with different learning styles or learning difficulties. The approach uses auditory, visual and tactile strategies for understanding numbers and operations.

Fast ForWord

Fast ForWord is an evidence-based, adaptive reading and language program that uses neuroplasticity to rebuild areas of the brain that are necessary for optimal reading retention. The program focuses on building cognitive skills such as; memory, attention, processing, and sequencing while also developing auditory discrimination, auditory processing, visual processing, phonological processing, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, phonics, and many more imperative reading skills. The Learning Lab uses Fast ForWord because this unique brain-based approach targets the root causes of reading difficulty to deliver lasting results that make better readers and lifelong learners.

Just Words

Just Words® supports struggling readers – those who have not mastered the foundational skills of language structure typically learned in grades K-3 – with strategies that will allow them to independently read and spell words and build the skills necessary to access and master grade–level standards.

Emphasizing phonemic awareness, phonics, word study, and spelling, Just Words is the word study component of the Wilson Reading System® curriculum at an accelerated pace. As such, the instructional principles  mirror each other.

Just Words addresses:

• Foundational and language standards that are absolutely necessary to be able to access grade-level text.
• Phoneme segmentation skills for up to six sounds in a syllable, with application for decoding and spelling.
• Study of the English sound system.
• Syllable structure including six basic syllable types in English and syllable division patterns used for decoding.
• Spelling with common Latin prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
• Processes for vocabulary study as well as the meaning of common Latin prefixes and roots.
• Decoding application with phrasing for meaning.
• Automatic reading and spelling of the first 300 most frequently used words from Dr. Edward Fry’s 1000 Instant Words as well as additional high frequency words.

The program design incorporates:

• Explicit, systematic teaching of skills.
• Extensive student practice with multiple opportunities to meaningfully apply concepts, skills, and strategies.
• Directed, accelerated pacing of word study and spelling instruction based on the research-validated Wilson Reading System program.
• An Instructor Manual and an online Intervention Learning Community for comprehensive teacher guidance and support.
• Lessons that are accessible to all students because the concepts are taught and practiced in multiple modes of learning: visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.
• Instruction that naturally builds upon students’ prior knowledge, reviewing and integrating past concepts within the learning activities.
• Modeling and scaffolding of instruction to ensure that students understand the skills being taught, learn the procedures, and are then able to use the skills and procedures on their own.
• Guidance and immediate feedback during practice so that the student’s correct responses are reinforced.
• Development of students’ metacognitive skills by having them think about the learning tools they have acquired and which to draw on if they need help, connect current learning to previous skills taught, and explain how the new skills will help them achieve future goals.
• Integrated assessments that allow teachers to monitor for student progress throughout the program, identify areas of strength and weakness, and differentiate instruction as appropriate.

Multi-Sensory Writing Instruction

We use a comprehensive, differentiated, and multi-sensory approach to writing instruction.

Starting with the basics, we create cumulative lessons to meet each child’s learning style and to reach specific learning goals. The end goal for all writers is to be able to construct a variety of writing pieces in the following areas; informative/explanatory, opinion/argument, compare and contrast, response to text, narrative, and creative writing. We use graphic organizers, color coding and other multi-sensory strategies to help our students develop and build their writing and language skills.