Learning Support Program

From Reception to Year 12 St John’s Grammar offers significant support to those with special learning needs. The School’s programs assist students experiencing difficulty with literacy and numeracy skills and students with identified disabilities.

The programs emphasise skills and competencies, which enable students to participate as fully as possible in their regular classroom settings.  Students work with the Special Education and support staff on an individual or small group basis in withdrawal situations.  Support is also provided within targeted classrooms.

At the Junior Campus Literacy Support is essentially an early intervention program for students whose literacy skills are not developing readily. In order to assist these students the program offers comprehensive assessment and support from Reception through to the end of Year 2. Learning is predominantly game-based and oriented towards developing the students’ skills with rhyme, syllables, identification of sounds, sight work vocabulary, reading strategies, spelling, writing and auditory memory skills.

The Tutorial Centre, also at the Junior Campus, caters for students whose academic performance is out of step with their intellectual potential due to an innate organising difficulty which inhibits the development of literacy skills, particularly reading, spelling and written expression.
Other students included in the tutorial program have been identified as having a specific learning difficulty or disability such as dyslexia and dysgraphia.

Many students attend lessons in the Tutorial Centre once a week to develop their literacy skills. Students work at their own pace through a structured, phonics based program which builds an evolving structure to language through the combination of memory with hearing, vision and touch.

As the students mature it is important that they become involved in decision-making, leading to empowerment and the achievement of personal goals.  Liaison between the support staff in Carter House and Home Group teachers, subject teachers, parents and the student, is an important aspect in the development of effective support.

The access card identifies students’ individual requirements on the Secondary Campus, and is used as a tool for negotiation between students and teachers.

The Touch Type Read and Spell Computer Course is an extra-curricular activity held twice a week for students, which focuses on spelling, and has the support of the British Dyslexic Association.