Learning Center
The Hilltop Learning Center
The Hilltop Learning Center is available to students in Kindergarten through Grade 8, who have been identified by the learning center faculty, as needing additional support in the classroom to achieve their full potential. These may be students who would benefit from additional academic support and/or students who have been diagnosed with a learning difference.
The Learning Center utilizes a multi-tiered system of supports. The Hilltop Student Planning Team works together to match the student’s level of need with the level of support. Our goal is to address a student’s needs while giving them the strategies and tools they need to be successful.
If a child has been diagnosed with a learning difference the team will review psych-educational testing, manage accommodations, introduce assistive technologies, and teach academic strategies and organizational skills.
Accommodations are granted to students with a complete and updated (within the last 3 years) psycho-educational testing and a thorough review by the Learning Center Faculty/Student Planning Team.
Faculty in the Learning Center have experience using and teaching many different supplemental reading and writing programs and multi-sensory math instruction, but we have found the following researched-based teaching methods to be effective for our students:
Orton- Gillingham Multisensory based language Instruction Program
The highly structured program introduced the idea of breaking reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, and then building on these skills over time. It also pioneered the “multisensory” approach to teaching reading, which is considered the gold standard for teaching students with dyslexia. This means that instructors use sight, hearing, touch and movement to help students connect language with letters and words. Orton–Gillingham focuses on teaching kids to read at the word level. Orton–Gillingham also puts a strong emphasis on understanding the “how” and “why” behind reading. Students may explore why the letter s sounds one way in the word plays, and another way in the word snake. Once they know consistent rules and patterns, they’re better able to decode words on their own.
Recipe for Reading
Alphabet Series Readers
Contain decodable, controlled text that will enable emergent and struggling readers to practice decoding and comprehension skills while reading motivating selections.