Educational assessment for proper learning Intervention
“When at school age there is a consistent inability to work independently, when a child is constantly failing despite being tutored regularly and is unable to handle the academic content in his level, there is a problem.
Whether that problem is big enough for it to be identified as a learning disability is what needs to be determined,” said Cynthia Tinsay-Gonzalez, school administrator of Reach International School which she established in 2006.
A child with a learning disability has problems processing information to a degree that he is unable to learn as quickly as regular children.
The most common learning disabilities include Dyslexia (reading disorder), Dyscalculia (difficulty with numbers), Dysgraphia (difficulty with writing), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
Many kids with learning disability pass all the entrance ex- ams in the early years. The challenge is keeping them in school, they usually get kicked out by grade 5 or 6 because they can’t handle higher order learning without assistance. At Reach, they are admitted to a regular program but are provided the needed support. This is done through the highly individualized Accelerated Christian Education program using the School of Tomorrow curriculum, an innovative educational system developed in the United States and currently being used in thousands of schools in over 130 countries worldwide.
Gonzalez claims that locally, no other school is as comprehensive as Reach which accommodates regular students, stu-- with learning disabilities and special needs.
“Our advantage are our assessment tools that we brought in from the US which can identify specific weaknesses in academics and behavior. These tools have the accompanying programs that can help address areas of weakness of a student,” Tinsay said.
Through the Reach educational assessment division (READ), these tools are made available even to those who are not enrolled in Reach. READ is where you should go if you want to know what level your child is. Just because the child is in grade 5 doesn’t necessarily mean that all the skills for grade 5 are there. “In a traditional school, the student is just labelled as weak in that subject. But what makes him weak in that subject? We are able to find the specific problem and pinpoint what it is that the student is not getting and we are able to provide the intervention,” emphasizes Gonzalez.
For behavior modification, they look into the behavior inside the classroom and see how that behavior gets in the way of learning. “I think we are the only school that can measure and evaluate behavior quantitatively and qualitatively.” She was quick to clarify though that the tests are used only to determine educational placement and not to provide diagnosis as only doctors can do.
For more information, visit Reach at Paseo de Magallanes Commercial Center, Makati, or call +632 7519950 or log on to www.reachinternationalschool.edu.ph.