City's dyslexia investment will help area students

PS 295 on 18th Street in the South Slope is one of two schools in Brooklyn that is receiving a $50,000 investment for a dyslexia pilot program. The other school, PS 107 on 8th Avenue in Park Slope, also received $50,000.

This new specialized program is for students with dyslexia or who are otherwise struggling to read, Schools Chancellor David Banks announced.

The schools are part of a promise made by Mayor Eric Adams, whose dyslexia was not diagnosed until he was in college, to bring at least one program like this to each borough. Adams’s administration had previously announced dyslexia pilot programs in Manhattan and The Bronx.

“I am very appreciative of what we did get,” PS 295 principal Valerie Vaderpuije said. “It’s really nice that I can invest in some of the decodable readers that I have been able to this spring so that is going to be a nice influx of books that are more tailored towards the programming that we are using.”

With the investment, the principal has been able to train the staff in helpful programming. She is arranging for more training with the Orton Gillingham program, which some of the staff had already been trained in.

“Now we can afford to get even more people trained in that program, so that is really nice,” Vanderpuije said. “Orton Gillingham is a way of teaching literacy that has been shown to be very effective for students with dyslexia.” However, the program is not just for

Summit Academy holds college fair

by Nathan Weiser

On March 16, Summit Academy charter school hosted their second college fair. The fair, which was held in Summit’s gym, gave students an opportunity to learn about college admissions, financial aid, housing, degree programs and dorms. Questions answered to help in their college search. Some of the colleges that were represented at the college fair were Manhattan College, University of Connecticut, SUNY New Paltz, Utica University, University of Maine, NJIT, Kean University, St. Francis College, University of Rhode Island and Virginia State.

The college fair has grown significantly since the first one last year. According to Kim Cincotta, who is the college and career readiness coordinator, 15 colleges came last year and this year there were 25 in the gym.

They also had the US Army, the National Guard and Universal Technical Institute since some students are interested in trade schools or the army. The US Army has been going to a

by Nathan Weiser

students with dyslexia. It works well for students with dyslexia since it is a strong, systematic and powerful approach to teaching literacy in the foundational years.

The two schools in Brooklyn and the others chosen around the city are among the landmark structured literacy schools, which means all those teachers are trained to support students who are at risk for dyslexia and other print based learning disabilities.

The funds for the school are being used to offer the specialized training for the educators. The training for the teachers will allow them to continue this new revamped and improved programming in the years to come.

The pilot program officially started at PS 295 last September. PS 295 had already taken steps to help students with special needs and to transform their approach to education overall last year.

“The funding allows us to do this change more rapidly and more cohesively because we have the resources we need to do it,” the principal said. “But this is a change that started last year. Last year was the first year we moved to Super Kids, which is our reading program in kindergarten through second grade.”

Everyone at the school has been screened for dyslexia with a universal screener called Acadience, which happens throughout the district.

“Everyone is getting screened with Acadience to see if there are areas where certain students need to focus and areas where teachers need to few different schools letting students know about benefits.

Cincotta chose the schools that would be represented at the college fair based on the schools this year’s seniors are interested in or ones that past seniors have applied to. She thought they got a good turnout of schools.

“I personally reach out to each college they are interested in, reach out to the reps and hope they can come join us to give more information,” Cincotta said.

“All week they have been prepared with who is coming and questions to ask them,” Cincotta said. “Some of them are really interested in sports so they are asking about the sports teams they have. Our juniors and seniors are asking more closely about what they are interested in, like their majors.”

Many of Summit’s 35 seniors had applied and had been accepted to a lot of schools already. A few of them even applied at the college fair at the school’s table.

Last year, a couple of Summit students took a gap year, but most of the students went to four year colleges.

This is Cincotta’s second year at Summit as the college coordinator. In her first year, they tried to have college look at carefully,” Vanderpuije said. “Depending on how they do with the Acadience screener, there would be further screeners for those who are flagged as needing further screening.”

“We have made the most dramatic changes in our early grades because it is so important to make those foundational changes in kindergarten and first grade especially,” Vanderpuije said. “I am really looking forward to seeing how those changes move up with the students and how we change the upper grades as we broaden the scope of our work.”

They had been using a way of structuring and organizing books based on levels. It was called level readers, which was when they were using more balanced literacy.

“It was a whole language approach to reading,” Vanderpuije said. “We found that approach had not been equally effective for all of our populations, so we are switching to this new design to reading approach, which has a larger emphasis on things like phonemic awareness and phonics.

The books that support their new approach with the new emphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics are decodable readers. They are tailored to look at the skills, sounds and letters that they intentionally taught the students instead of asking them to guess the words.

According to the principal, the new approach allows them to practice taught reading skills whereas in the previous literacy approach, they had to figure tours but were not able to due to Covid, so she brought the colleges to the school and the students liked it, which led her to do it again. things out.

Summit’s middle school students were also involved in the college fair. They had a scavenger hunt card to fill out, which was organized by the middle school guidance counselor Helen Pepperman.

They organized this activity with the middle schoolers to show that it’s never too early to plan ahead and think about what is important.

“Especially for our eighth graders, we want to tell them your grades and what you do in high school prepares you for college, so it gives them motivation,” Pepperman said.

“This is the big event to really expose as many of our students as possible,” Cincotta said.

“It is good to learn how to figure things out using logic, but when you do that you are not necessarily practicing the decoding skills, the actual work of figuring out what letters make what sound,” Vanderpuije said.

This pilot program is a shift from their balanced literacy approach to this more systematic approach that focuses heavily on phonemic awareness and phonics.

They knew years ago that change needed to happen but they were not sure who would give them the funding to make it happen.

They were pleased when this opportunity happened with Assembly Member Robert Carroll.

Carroll, who was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade, is proud that this is happening.

“I know how important early identification and intervention are to remediating dyslexia and making all children academically successful,” Carroll said. “These funds will provide the teacher training in literacy that is required to teach all of our children to read and I am so proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with this Mayor and Chancellor to support this vital pilot program.”

According to Nicole Brownstein, director of media relations at NYC Public Schools, PS 295 was chosen for this investment because it is a Title One school in assembly member Carroll’s district.