Students complete their morning routines, which allow them to develop and practice their Executive Functioning Skills.

Classes are held that address students’ specific needs in the areas of reading decoding, spelling, and reading fluency.

Multi-Sensory Reading Instruction
Many HPDS students participate in multi-sensory reading instruction such as the Wilson Reading Program. This type of instructions breaks reading down to its smallest parts, allowing students to use all their senses to access the sound/symbol code necessary to read.

Reading Fluency Instruction
Read Naturally is also used by many HPDS students to help them develop reading fluency skills that have been proven to be necessary to develop good reading comprehension.

Morphological Instruction
Some HPDS students have strong reading decoding and spelling skills, but their needs relate to language. For these students, Structured Reading is a time to help them develop skills that help them understand language down to its smallest meaningful parts, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

During this block, students’ reading comprehension and written expression skills are the focus.

Reading Comprehension
Many HPDS students comprehend at a different level than they decode, so texts are used that address students’ skills at their true comprehension level, rather than their decoding level. Instruction focuses on reading to gain meaning, including vocabulary development; learning and using active reading strategies; enhancing fluency to include expression, phrasing, and accuracy as well as rate; and understanding higher order language, literary devices, and narrative elements. Visualizing and Verbalizing, a comprehension program developed by Nanci Bell, is also taught once per week in each class by one of the HPDS Speech/Language Pathologists.

Written Expression
Students write for a variety of purposes, beginning instruction at their baseline level. The Step Up to Writing (sic) program is used to provide consistency and continuity for HPDS students. One of its significant benefits is its scaffolded, structured approach, which allows for skill development that addresses each child’s individual needs. It is an expandable program that fosters the consistency and practice HPDS students need. Students can enter the program at the sentence formulation level, and continue all the way to writing a high school level research paper. Writing is not a stand-alone component at HPDS, but is tied into other learning areas to help students generalize across all content areas.

Recess is held daily either outside or in the gym, depending on weather.

By using the research-based program JUMP Math, students learn at their instructional level and develop overall understanding as well as their problem-solving skills.

The benefit of this program for HPDS students is the concrete-to-abstract approach for each concept, as well as how well the program breaks the skills into discreet, easily understood steps. Using JUMP Math also enhances individuality, as each skill can be addressed across three grade levels to provide for enhanced understanding and practice opportunities, through extension instruction for those students who need it.

Students may bring their own lunch from home or order a hot lunch through Marla’s Lunch program (marlasbrownbaglunch.com)

The focus in these classes is two-fold. The subject-area content is taught, along with skills development. This is the area in which morning content is generalized in a whole group, co-taught setting. Study skills, understanding expository text, note-taking skills, research and writing skills are all directly taught and applied during these content classes.

All integrated services are co-taught with the classroom teachers to provide the opportunity for carryover throughout each student’s day, along with ongoing feedback in the moment from classroom teachers and all HPDS staff members.

The occupational therapists teach the Zones of Regulation and Handwriting/Typing Without Tears programs along with the classroom teacher, in order to allow for application across all content areas.

The Success Attributes Curriculum is taught by HPDS social workers, which is based on longitudinal studies that identified six attributes present in successful adults who had grown up with learning disabilities: Self-Awareness, Goal-Setting, Proactivity, Perseverance, Emotional Coping Strategies, and Use of Support Systems.

The speech and language pathologists team up with reading teachers to teach a program developed by Nanci Bell that encourages students, through a very structured approach, to “make a movie” as they read in order to develop and enhance reading comprehension.

Art and Music (1 time per week) – whole grade instruction

Physical Education (3 times per week) – whole grade instruction