School Profile
The Language and Literacy Academy for Learning is classified as an ESE Center School, within the meaning of section 1008.3415, Florida Statutes, and Section 6A-1.099828, F.A.C., for purposes of the Florida grading and accountability system. We are a non-profit, public charter school that serves students’ academic needs, rather than their diagnoses.
The Language and Literacy Academy for Learning offers an educational and therapeutic program for students with disabilities that comprehensively and intensively addresses the child’s social and emotional learning by assessing their functioning status. With the collaboration of a highly specialized team of experts we will assess the child’s health and contextual factors intently, to provide highly specialized interventions.
We believe a more pragmatic approach, social and emotional development/learning, is necessary for meeting our student’s “life needs” while also checking off standards and measuring success. The Language and Literacy Academy for Learning contributes to narrowing the achievement gap between students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers by assessing their functional status and setting functional goals that will ensure our students are engaged in the learning process. This is central to the mission of the Language and Literacy Academy for Learning.
Our niche is to employ therapeutic interventions to accelerate and/or remediate literacy skills in a way that is specifically designed to engage students with disabilities. To prepare students for high academic rigor, the Language and Literacy Academy for Learning, will provide more intensive and aggressive therapeutic services from speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, behavior analysts, reading specialists, mental health therapists and registered behavior technicians than what is offered in traditional public schools.
Curriculum Design
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies)
- Read 180
- Math 180
- Waggle for Reading
- Waggle for Math
- TeachTown (Access Point Curriculum)
- Zones of Regulation (Social & Emotional Curriculum)
- Differentiated Instruction
- Universal Design for Learning
Philosophy
Our philosophy is to provide our students with an educational experience that will allow them to reach the highest level of independence possible with the ultimate success of having them to enter the workforce or to matriculate into a postsecondary setting. The strength and purpose of our school is to address academic success by reducing functional limitations with specific emphasis on the limitations presented due to the health condition or disability of the child. This is not enough. Every child brings their own set of functional limitations (or strengths) based on their environment (limited vocabulary), attendance (parent support) and their personal issues (emotional irregularities) which usually manifests in the traditional school setting as aggression and frustration. These major behavioral challenges functionally prevent the child from effectively participating in school and developing successful social skills needed for future employability and good mental health. We will provide a high-quality learning experience with strong emphasis on social and emotional development along with the collaboration of a highly credentialed team of experts who will plan the appropriate intervention strategies within the classroom environment.
Highly Effective Teachers
The Language and Literacy Academy for Learning will use research-based instructional strategies of Robert J. Marzano in The Art and Science of Teaching as well as the research of Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design. These strategies can greatly influence and assist teachers in planning lessons that truly meet the learning needs of all students. Having teachers reflect on classroom practices, procedures and instructional strategies implemented in their classroom is a technique that can assist them in raising the quality of their classroom instruction. Each of the strategies provides students with a learning environment that is academically rigorous, challenging, innovative, focused on individual student learning needs.
Keeping the focus on sustaining successful academic learning, we will also have the teachers to employ planning questions that frame the instructional strategies. We will use a backwards planning design that is commonly known as Understanding by Design, UbD. Utilizing this framework, the teachers start with the desired results first and develop a learning plan.
The Language and Literacy Academy for Learning administrative team will conduct daily informal observations and casual walkthroughs to observe student engagement, teacher instruction, and classroom management. Formal observations will be conducted quarterly using the Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model. Feedback will be given to the staff immediately encouraging the teachers to engage in self-reflection and open dialogue regarding their development.