All students undergo an initial evaluation to find the child’s current academic level and equip the school with an understanding of how they learn. This information informs us of skills acquired, the level the student can access the curriculum and identifies the additional programming required to support your child in becoming a more efficient learner.
Our core curriculum is based on the National Curriculum of England with an important local slant making it relevant to our island students. We deliver aspects of the curriculum using a Project Based Learning (PBL) approach in which students actively engage in real-world, personally meaningful projects. Accommodations are varied and strategies to support learning are embedded into our approach.
Students will benefit from evidence-based intervention programming working at their own pace to master essential literacy and numeracy skills. The focus is to learn specific strategies to address and overcome identified challenges.
Our students also participate in the Arrowsmith Program doing cognitive enhancement exercises aimed at strengthening learning capacity. The Arrowsmith principle is rooted in neuroscience and the concept of brain plasticity- stimulation of weaker cognitive areas that contribute to learning difficulties can be strengthened. Once the source of the learning difficulty is addressed, the learner’s ability to perform complex tasks will also be improved. For more information on the cognitive enhancement program, please watch the TEDx Toronto video The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: http://www.arrowsmithschool.org/arrowsmithprogram-background/intro-video.html
All-encompassing is an emphasis on helping students develop effective learning behaviours. When students start to master the right learning behaviours, they experience success leading to improved grades, better self-esteem, and an individual who can take charge of their learning.
