Listen to Renée read this article aloud.

On September 3, 450 new and returning students streamed onto our campuses. I was thrilled to welcome them, and optimistic about the productive struggle and growth that lie ahead for them in this new school year.

Families new to Carroll, in particular, may wonder what this growth looks like.

Most families find their way to Carroll because their child is struggling to read. Of course, a ton of student growth happens here in reading, language, and communication skills. But it’s important to make clear that progress is not limited to these domains.

Why is this important?

We know that dyslexia affects how a student learns across all content areas.

That’s why the very same approach we use to successfully teach our kids to read is applied to our entire academic program — to language and reading classes, yes, but also to math, science, history, and even our Multis.

From 8:15 am–3:15 pm, across all subject areas, Carroll students benefit from the same consistent, systematic approach to teaching and learning.

The result: Students' academic and social emotional skills improve, their confidence soars, and they thrive.

We use loads of different techniques in our classrooms, like:

• building in sufficient processing time for students to answer questions,
• helping them to sequence and visualize multi-step solutions to problems, 
• deploying plenty of visual and tactile experiences to activate learning,
• equipping students with essential educational technology, and
• focusing on relationships, so students feel safe, heard, and understood. 

 

 

Underlying all of our techniques and strategies, however, is this:

Our entire curricular approach is framed by the principles of Orton-Gillingham (OG).

Within their first year of hire, all our educators receive training in the OG approach — a structured, systematic, multisensory way of teaching. Whether they’re a reading tutor, a Lower School classroom teacher, an eighth grade math teacher, or a P.E. teacher, they are all trained in OG.

As a result, our educators better understand how the dyslexic brain learns best. Plus, they are able to incorporate these principles into their own classrooms, no matter what subject they teach.

You can read more about each of the nine Orton Gillingham (OG) principles here.

I’ll highlight just one principle — cognition — because it’s especially important to our approach. The OG principle of cognition means that we teach kids how to think at Carroll, not how to do. We are not interested in rote memorization. We are interested in empowering students to actively engage in, explain, and apply their own learning process.

Think of a science teacher starting with the vocabulary words in a lesson, before diving into the lesson itself. “In this envelope are a bunch of multisyllabic words, printed on different pieces of paper. Dump them out and sort them in a way that makes sense to you,” the teacher may instruct. Students are encouraged to identify patterns and make connections on their own, rather than a teacher telling them how.

Then, the teacher prompts: “Tell me why you organized them that way?” This type of experience requires students to talk about their thinking and provides an opportunity for teachers to scaffold and extend it. 

OG is not the only training our educators receive, of course.

They benefit from robust content-specific training and professional development. Teaching to math, science, and history standards at Carroll is no different because our students have dyslexia.

But here, we know how to build opportunities into our teaching so that students can find success in every classroom they’re in, no matter what they’re learning.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s pretty remarkable when you get to watch it happen.

Check out this video for a glimpse into how Carroll teachers animate learning — inside the classroom and out — and the impact it has on our students. 

Here’s to a remarkable 2024-25 school year!