Hamilton Curriculum Overview
While Hamilton students have great overall cognitive ability, they often struggle with acquiring reading, spelling, written expression, math, organization, and study skills due to dyslexia or other learning differences. We believe that our students can learn these skills so that they can function well, and even, excel in school and in life.
Our curriculum is designed to teach compensatory strategies so our students can master these critical academic skills. Hamilton students have separate academic classes where teachers use specialized methods (i.e. Orton-Gillingham, Teaching Basic Writing Skills, and Read Live) to teach students reading, written expression, and math. Language arts is the heart of the curriculum and is designed to help students expand their reading decoding and fluency, handwriting, spelling, grammar, and written expression skills. Generally, students are taught in small instructional groups. Hamilton’s class sizes range from four to 10 students.
The Hamilton School’s instructional methods are designed to teach children academic skills so they can “learn to learn.” Skills are directly and systematically taught, reinforced, and re-taught throughout the program. LD children usually learn best using multisensory techniques which reflect our kinesthetic and tactile instincts which reinforce and bond with our visual and auditory pathways for learning. Our instruction, largely hands-on and experience-based, is complemented with field trips, multi-media technology, music, and drama. While Hamilton teachers do not always cover the same quantity of content, the curriculum for each grade parallels the content within the corresponding Wheeler grades.
For art, music, physical education, electives, lunch and recess periods, field trips, and after school sports and other non-academic programs, Hamilton students are fully integrated with Wheeler students. These combined classes account for more than 50% of a student’s day.