LD Blog

I’m feeling a little discouraged. Why? Well, I keep on learning about what people are doing in hopes of helping students achieve better.

In the Kenora Catholic District School (Ontario, CA), according to Shelley Bujold of the Kenora Miner & News, the school agency is investing in an FM sound system, apparently to amplify teachers’ speech so that students will hear it better and, therefore, learn to read and compute better. The only part of this I am making up is the part about how the local education agency expects the sound system to work. The parts about the sound system and the hopes of improved outcomes come from the story itself.

As part of a trial program at schools in the Kenora Catholic District School Board, special education students were given extra support to help them achieve.

The program started in January and runs through to June and implements a contact teacher in each school to help teachers and students with support.

“This was to enhance literacy and numeracy in the classroom for students with special needs,” said special needs co-ordinator Estelle Cantera during the regular board meeting.

She said a lot of background research went into the program in order to track progress of each student participating. They focused on Grade 4 and Grade 7 students because of their year’s previous data from the Education Quality and Accountability Office test scores. Cantera said the goal was to have 25 per cent of the students participating move up one level by June — starting from level one on a scale to four.

At least it’s a trail program. Ms. Cantera also is quoted as saying that the test will be whether the students make progress. Hooray for that part.

Link to Ms. Bujold’s story.