Barbara Patterson joins us once again to explain her role as an Educational Support Teacher.

The Educational Support Program at Oakland Steiner School provides exercises in movement, drawing and painting. These exercises are designed to help students with challenges in classroom activities that may include writing, reading and arithmetic.

We receive referrals for an assessment from the class teachers, and occasionally from parents, who are then asked to describe the challenges the student presents with academic skills, fine or gross motor movements and / or social interactions with peers.

As a result of the assessment, a program of individual exercises is developed based on the Extra Lesson approach and other related sources.  These exercises help children experience the normal movement and sensory development that they would have gone through in early childhood but had not fully experienced.  This foundational work helps strengthen the student’s capacities for academic work.

An age appropriate assessment is given to the children in the Kindergarten who are candidates to go on to first grade in the Fall, as part of their First Grade Readiness profile. In the Spring of the second grade year, another developmental assessment is given. The results of these assessments are shared with the class teachers.

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