Specialties & Methodologies

List of 8 items.

• Speech and Language Therapy

  Licensed and certified speech pathologists work with students to improve a broad range of communication skills. Some of the difficulties that our students experience include:

  • Problems finding the right word to express themselves
  • Problems remembering information they hear
  • Problems understanding abstract, idiomatic, or figurative speech
  • Problems understanding indirect requests, polite evasions, or varying tones of voice and facial expressions

• Occupational Therapy

  All incoming students are evaluated by our occupational therapist for deficits in:

  • Postural stability
  • Reflexes
  • Sensory processing
  • Perceptual-motor planning and coordination
  • Gross motor skills
  • Fine motor skills
  • Muscle strength
  • Range of motion
  • Balance
  • Practical life skills

   

  After an assessment, an individual treatment plan is created and implemented.

• Multi-Sensory Language Arts Therapy

  MSLAT therapists remediate all aspects of reading using a variety of multi-sensory methodologies and strategies. MSLAT services are provided via in-class, small group, and individual sessions. Following are descriptions of the some of the methods used in the MSLAT department:
  
  Lindamood-Bell Visualizing & Verbalizing®:  Students with weak oral and reading language comprehension do not image well and do not form the gestalt (whole) from the information given. They often reread material several times and still remember only a few details. They may understand only part of a conversation, have trouble following directions, or have difficulty with critical thinking. This program develops concept imagery, which stimulates the development of language comprehension and expression.
  
  Lindamood-Bell Seeing Stars®: English is very difficult for some children since phonetic rules do not always apply. This program enhances visual memory for sight words and their spelling by helping students see letters in their mind. The ability to visualize letters can bring phonemic awareness to the level of automaticity.
  
  

• Structured Literacy Support

  Structured Literacy specialists use adapted Orton-Gillingham and other methods designed to develop strong decoding strategies for students with dyslexia. By starting with the smallest unit of sight, sound, and feel—a single letter—and expanding upon that single letter, students gradually learn to associate sounds with their letter counterparts and blend the sounds into words. This multisensory approach has a proven track record of success.

• Social Thinking and Social Skills Development

  Many students at Star Academy have social processing difficulties and have not acquired some of the basic social

  skills that enable them to interact successfully among “typically” developing students. As a result, these

  students may lack the ability to make and keep friends, and feel lonely, alienated, and bewildered about how to fit in or join in among their peers. The good news is that social cognition and social skills can be taught, and Star Academy uses the highly successful Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum to that end. We use specific techniques for teaching social thinking and social skills in a way that makes sense and can be remembered. Students learn important rules of social communication, why they work, and how and when to use them. Social thinking and use of appropriate social behaviors are integrated into the classroom curriculum and reinforced throughout the day.

• Social Language Pragmatics Group

  Social pragmatics groups are an important component of our speech and language therapy program. The licensed and certified speech pathologists at Star Academy work with groups of up to five students to develop and practice language pragmatics (the social language of the playground). Interwoven into these practical skill building sessions is Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking curriculum. These sessions help students improve their communication and social skills with friends and reinforce their work in speech and language therapy and social skills groups.

• Executive Functioning

  Organization skills and study skills are taught and reinforced throughout the day by homeroom teachers and

  specialists. Students are taught how to follow their schedules and learn how to get themselves to classes and specialists on time. They also learn how to maintain well-organized binders and homework assignment sheets, so that they know where all their work and assignments are at all times and to reinforce good study skills.

• Individual Counseling

  Star Academy’s on-site counselors provide individual counseling services for issues relating to managing anxiety, depression, body image, maintaining emotional wellness, coping with adjustment or transition difficulties.