About the Program
The Learning Disabilities program offered by the Calgary Catholic School District is designed to "meet students where they're at". You'll notice on your child's report card that the grades assigned in Language Arts and in Math have an asterisk next to them. This asterisk signifies that the student is working on curriculum from a different grade level than the one they're in. When your son or daughter first enter the program, we assess to determine what grade level they're working at and then support them at that level. This allows students to grow at their own pace and keeps them from becoming frustrated and/or overwhelmed.
The majority of our day in the classroom is spent doing Language Arts and Math work as we want to best support students by working with them on what they're struggling with. We do lots of different reading and writing activities, small group work, and play many educational games to support students' math and literacy skills.
Of course, we also teach Social Studies, Science, Religion, Health, Art, and Physical Education. However, because our focus is on Math and Language Arts, we spend less time on these subjects than a "traditional" class would. In these subjects, we work on selected curriculum outcomes which we feel will be most beneficial to the students. Students are all automatically exempt from taking the Provincial Achievement Tests and we fully support this exemption and recommend that students in the LD program do not opt-in to these tests.
Morning Work
Every morning, when students first come in to the classroom, they participate in "morning work". Our daily work consists of:
- a sentence of the day
- a math problem of the day; and,
- writing
The sentence of the day requires students to fix a sentence with spelling and/or grammatical errors. This is so that they can practice recognizing errors such as forgetting to capitalize proper nouns, excluding periods from their writing, etc.
The math problem of the day is a math word problem chosen at random and not necessarily related to the math unit we are currently working on. Practicing working with math word problems allows students to become better at understanding what they are being asked to do and what operations and skills they need to use to solve the problem.
Finally, we write every day in order for students to become more comfortable with the writing process. Many students feel intimidated by writing and sharing their ideas. In our class, students can journal write or they can choose a writing prompt. By becoming more accustomed to daily writing, it is easier for students to express their ideas when asked to write for other purposes (for example when we begin narrative writing, or when they are asked to write a letter to a friend, etc.).
Centres
Three days a week our class participates in centres in Math and Language Arts. Centres allow for the students to work at their own level either individually or in a small group with myself or our educational assistant. In Math, students work on math by myself, math with the teacher, or mathletics. In Language Arts, students participate in guided reading, word work, or read by myself.
Class Dojo
In our class, we use Class Dojo to monitor our work habits and earn prizes. We set a class goal and a student goal for each prize we try to earn dojo points for. It's also an excellent tool for communication and to share what we're doing in class!
Learning Tools
It's very important in our classroom to use learning tools properly. We have many tools for students to use and they are encouraged to find tools that best suit their needs. For example, we have fidgets to play with, disco sits, hokki stools, noise-cancelling headsets, various numeracy and literacy tools, and so on. In the classroom, we have a strict "no tools as toys" policy and if students are not using the tools provided to them correctly, then they will lose their privilege of using them.
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