ummit View School offers comprehensive elementary, middle and secondary school programs for students with learning differences. An innovative and integrated curriculum, coupled with small class size and high teacher to student ratio, enables students to experience academic success.

The fundamental areas of learning include:

• Academic achievement: reading, writing and mathematical skills
   
• College preparatory courses such as lab sciences, foreign language and computer technology
   
• Critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving and test taking strategies
   
• Organization and study skills
   
• Receptive and expressive language
   
• Perceptual and motor skills
   
• Motivation and goal attainment
   
• Attention, memory and concentration
   
• Creativity and self-expression

Based on each student's learning profile, an individual instructional plan is designed to maximize his/her learning. This instructional plan incorporates best practices, which are based on current research, and is re-assessed on an ongoing basis.

Learning comes alive through classroom and small group participatory, interactive, hands-on, multisensory instruction in a stimulating and motivating environment. At Summit View, students are given the opportunity to achieve their fullest potential, prepare for post-secondary education, and experience success in the workplace.

The Elementary School concentrates on the acquisition of knowledge in the language arts, reading, mathematics, perceptual, and motor domains. As the students progress, they begin to apply their basic skills in a variety of learning contexts and continue to develop the fundamental academic building blocks.

In the Middle School, students build on their repertoire of basic skills. The strengthening of students' organization, time management, critical thinking skills and work habits are integral components of the program.

In the High School, the curriculum focuses on the student's integration, synthesis and application of their individual learning styles and the knowledge they have acquired. Students can fulfill all high school diploma and college entrance requirements as they prepare for post-secondary education and success in the workplace.

Summit View program is enhanced by:

• Small group tutorials
   
• Computer education
   
• Creative and performing arts
   
• Post-secondary and career guidance
   
• Library studies
   
• Community service projects
   
• Study skills training
   
• Interscholastic team sports
   
• Student council, yearbook, newspaper and other enrichment activities
   

SPECIALIZED INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS

Summit View recognizes that students with learning differences have unique patterns of strengths and deficits, assimilating information and internalizing concepts through different channels and at different rates. In an effort to meet the student's individual needs and address diverse learning styles, Summit View employs various specialized research-based educational strategies to ensure mastery of skill and maximize learning. Some of the programs are described below.

SCHOOLS ATTUNED

Schools Attuned is a program from All Kinds of Minds developed by Dr. Mel Levine at the North Carolina School of Medicine. It provides a thorough study of the eight neurodevelopmental constructs (attention, language, memory, fine and gross motor function, spatial ordering, temporal-sequential ordering, higher order cognition, and social cognition). Through "Management by Profile," a practice of offering individualized educational care, the teacher develops a program that assists students to understand their strengths and deficits. It provides interventions to strengthen a weak function and accommodations to circumvent a child's underdeveloped skill. Schools Attuned empowers teachers to cultivate success in all students, regardless of their individual learning patterns and profiles.

The Wilson Reading System is a direct, multisensory approach that teaches students the structure of words. Through a carefully sequenced 12-step program, they master decoding and spelling. Students work from sounds to syllables, and words to sentences, by hearing sounds, manipulating color-coded sound, syllable and word cards, and performing finger-tapping exercises. The program is organized around the six syllable types and allows students to learn cumulatively and systematically.

LANGUAGE!

Language! Is designed to teach students all the essential skills of reading, language comprehension, and composition in a cumulative, sequential Curriculum. This research-based program provides the vital foundations that enable fluent reading to develop. Students are taught the basic orthographic, phonological and morphological processing skills that would unlock for them the mystery of print. They learn about sounds, spellings, and syllables in a systematic manner as they start on the road to becoming confident, independent readers.

MULTISENSORY PHONEMIC AWARENESS PROGRAM

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LEARNING STRATEGIES CURRICULUM

The Learning Strategies Curriculum (The Strategic Instruction Model from the University of Kansas) focuses on how to learn and how to effectively use what has been learned. The strategies were designed to enable students with learning differences to cope with large amounts of information and to effectively demonstrate their knowledge in content area classes. The Word Identification Strategy helps older students quickly attack and successfully identify unknown words in their reading materials by identifying prefixes, suffixes and roots, and by following three short syllabication rules. The Paraphrasing Strategy improves recall of main ideas and specific facts. The Sentence Writing Strategy teaches basic principles in the construction of simple, compound, and complex sentences. As a result of learning these strategies, students are better able to meet the complex demands in high school.

READ NATURALLY

Read Naturally is a computerized reading program used to increase reading fluency and comprehension. This is done through three research-proven strategies: teacher modeling, repeated readings, and progress modeling. Reading passages are of high interest to all ages. Fluency goals and passage levels are strategically increased as student progress is made.

This innovative software product reads printed text aloud to students in clear, synthetic speech. Pages from textbooks can be scanned into the computer and the appearance of the page modified to suit individual needs. Text can be enlarged, spacing between words, lines and characters can be changed, and the background color can be altered. Each work is spotlighted to provide simultaneous auditory and visual input. In addition, the student can highlight important passages, insert bookmarks, and add written and spoken notes.

Concept mapping is a process that has been widely recommended for studying content area material and for enhancing the writing process. Inspiration is a powerful computer program that teaches students to visually develop and organize their ideas. Students are motivated to brainstorm and outline for creative writing assignments. The software enables links to be drawn indicating different types of relationships. In addition, a single keystroke converts visual maps into structured outlines. The Outline view also enables students to quickly prioritize and rearrange ideas. Students are able to outline a textbook chapter that can later be used as a study guide. Inspiration facilitates excellent study strategies and actively engages students in the learning process.

Developed specifically for students with learning differences, this unique strategy teaches keyboarding by utilizing a sequence already familiar to the student - namely the alphabet. The steps are categorized logically according to the fingers used to type the letters (e.g. c, d, e uses the middle finger on the left hand going "up the stairs"). Students master the alphabet in two or three sessions and acquire automatically through regular practice.