Language Remediation

Current research suggests that dyslexia and specific learning disabilities can be remediated with long-term, multisensory instruction. The CLASS curriculum utilizes these practices in order to create new neural pathways within the brain to help make reading and spelling more automatic. For more information on how dyslexia/specific learning disabilities function within the brain, check out About Dyslexia.

Any good remediation program should utilize multiple senses throughout class time. Your instructor will have you perform various activities that utilize sight, hearing, speech, movement, and touch in order to create long-term changes in your brain.

Orton-Gillingham is the most widely-researched and accepted method of remediating dyslexia. It consists of explicit instruction in a structured, sequential curriculum that is designed to train your brain to recognize the shapes and sounds of individual letters, and then build upon that knowledge with syllable and word analysis that can then be applied to sentences and larger pieces of written text. You can read more about the traditional Orton-Gillingham method here.

CLASS encompasses a full Orton-Gillingham course of study. However, we move beyond a traditional OG program by giving our students an expanded knowledge base and a wider skill set. The CLASS program provides you with a more comprehensive method for “decoding” (reading words) and “encoding” (spelling words), so that you are able to utilize these tools independently and continually build your reading and spelling skills. We also put your new phonetic knowledge into a greater context—while it is helpful to be able to pronounce new words, our goal is to help you move beyond reading into understanding. We accomplish this by placing a greater long-term emphasis on morphology (the study of word components, their meanings, and their relationships to other words) than a typical Orton-Gillingham program.

Every student at WILDD meets individually with their instructor in real-time via video conferencing software. Students and instructors are able to see and hear each other, and can work together simultaneously off of a shared online whiteboard. Students will never complete offline or out-of-class assignments as a part of their instruction at WILDD. (See “Technical Requirements” for more information about necessary equipment.)

All programs at WILDD use a comprehensive system of testing to ensure your individualized instruction is working for you. Each academic therapy service is divided into phases, levels, and or units depending on the topic. Each phase, level, or unit will begin with a pre-test to assess prior knowledge and guide instructional planning, and end with a post-test to ensure mastery of those concepts is achieved. Your instructor may also utilize short “skill checks” periodically to monitor intermediary progress. All testing results are included on your personalized progress reports, which are shared about halfway through each of our three 16-week terms.

While the length of time spent in CLASS does vary, program completion usually consists of 2-3 years of consistent attendance (meeting at least twice a week). That time frame can change depending on the age of the student, their learning needs, their ability to retain and generalize information, their level of engagement, and whether they have any other comorbid learning disabilities such as ADD/ADHD.