This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2017) |
Charles Armstrong School, located in Belmont, California, is an independent, non-profit, co-educational lower and middle day school specializing in teaching students with language-based learning differences, such as dyslexia. Armstrong helps its students re-enter traditional public and private schools with the learning tools necessary to be language proficient. Tuition, grants and donations support Charles Armstrong School, which is the only school of its kind in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The school provides a full academic program, along with elective classes for middle school students, and extracurricular sports and drama activities.
Charles Armstrong School is certified by the California State Board of Education and has received the highest rating from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
Charles Armstrong School first opened its doors in 1968 to eighteen dyslexic children in the second, third and fourth grades. The school was housed in a renovated single dwelling home on University Drive in the downtown area of Menlo Park, and consisted of three classrooms and a business office.
While the Charles Armstrong School opened in 1968, its roots may be traced to two occurrences some years before. In 1960, a group of concerned Bay Area parents first gathered to discuss a puzzling phenomenon – the fact that their intelligent, motivated, and healthy children were unable to learn how to read. This group of parents began to meet in an attempt to find solutions to their children's learning problems. They found that pediatricians were often helpful in diagnosing the condition, but were unable to suggest how the learning difficulties might be overcome.
In an otherwise unrelated event, Charles D. Armstrong, physician and founder of the Menlo Medical Clinic died in 1962 at the age of 44. Eager to perpetuate the memory of a community leader whose brilliant career was suddenly cut short, friends and patients of Dr. Armstrong established The Charles Armstrong Memorial Foundation dedicated to “improving the well being of the community by applying today’s knowledge to today’s problems.”
The plight of children with dyslexia was brought to the attention of the Foundation by the group of concerned and active Bay Area parents. The directors of The Armstrong Foundation were impressed by the importance and prevalence of the problem, and formed a committee led by director Wilbur E. Mattison, Jr., M.D., a colleague of Dr. Armstrong's at the Menlo Medical Clinic, to survey the needs of Bay Area children with specific language disability. The Armstrong Foundation sponsored several symposia inviting medical and educational experts from around the nation to examine the nature of dyslexia, how it could be recognized, and most revolutionary at the time – what could be done about it. One symposium in 1966 drew over one thousand parents, teachers, school administrators, physicians, and psychologists to listen to a panel discussion about this invisible disability and new teaching techniques that would enable the dyslexic learner to read.
Initially the Charles Armstrong School's academic program focused only on improving language skills, with the intent that after two or three years in the school, students would be equipped to re-enter a public or private school successfully. Later, the school added a full academic program and extracurricular activities.
The school moved several times before purchasing the former McDougal Elementary School in Belmont, California, moving there in 1984. At one time Charles Armstrong School included a high school, but later returned to offering only the elementary and middle school. Charles Armstrong School has schooled over 3,000 students during its history.
Dyslexia, previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary, and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorders, and difficulties with numbers.
Belmont is a city in San Mateo County in the U.S. state of California. It is in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the San Francisco Peninsula about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. Known for its wooded hills, views of the San Francisco Bay and stretches of open space, Belmont is a quiet residential community in the midst of the culturally and technologically rich Bay Area. It was originally part of Rancho de las Pulgas, for which one of its main roads, the Alameda de las Pulgas, is named. The city was incorporated in 1926. Its population was 28,335 at the 2020 census.
Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, which affects the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. It is a specific learning disability (SLD) as well as a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding and finger sequencing. It often overlaps with other learning disabilities and neurodevelopmental disorders such as speech impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental coordination disorder (DCD).
Landmark School in Beverly, Massachusetts is a coed American boarding and day school offering a college preparatory program for students in grades 2–12 with language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia and executive function disorder. Landmark School offers a day and boarding program, as well as a summer program.
A reading disability is a condition in which a person displays difficulty reading. Examples of reading disabilities include: developmental dyslexia, And alexia,
Samuel Torrey Orton was an American physician who pioneered the study of learning disabilities. He examined the causes and treatment of dyslexia.
Fraser Academy, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is a private, non-profit, co-educational, non-faith, non-residential school that serves children from grades 1 to 12 with language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Its teaching methods are based on those found at the Kildonan School in New York, using the Orton-Gillingham approach. Besides daily individual tutoring for language, students take the same courses as other students in the province, in which courses a multisensory approach is also used.
Learning disability, learning disorder, or learning difficulty is a condition in the brain that causes difficulties comprehending or processing information and can be caused by several different factors. Given the "difficulty learning in a typical manner", this does not exclude the ability to learn in a different manner. Therefore, some people can be more accurately described as having a "learning difference", thus avoiding any misconception of being disabled with a possible lack of an ability to learn and possible negative stereotyping. In the United Kingdom, the term "learning disability" generally refers to an intellectual disability, while conditions such as dyslexia and dyspraxia are usually referred to as "learning difficulties".
Management of dyslexia depends on a multiple of variables; there is no one specific strategy or set of strategies that will work for all who have dyslexia.
Trident Academy is a school for children with diagnosed learning differences in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Language-based learning disabilities or LBLD are "heterogeneous" neurological differences that can affect skills such as listening, reasoning, speaking, reading, writing, and math calculations. It is also associated with movement, coordination, and direct attention. LBLD is not usually identified until the child reaches school age. Most people with this disability find it hard to communicate, to express ideas efficiently and what they say may be ambiguous and hard to understand It is a neurological difference. It is often hereditary, and is frequently associated to specific language problems.
The history of dyslexia research spans from the late 1800s to the present.
Dyslexia is a reading disorder wherein an individual experiences trouble with reading. Individuals with dyslexia have normal levels of intelligence but can exhibit difficulties with spelling, reading fluency, pronunciation, "sounding out" words, writing out words, and reading comprehension. The neurological nature and underlying causes of dyslexia are an active area of research. However, some experts believe that the distinction of dyslexia as a separate reading disorder and therefore recognized disability is a topic of some controversy.
Dyslexia is a disorder characterized by problems with the visual notation of speech, which in most languages of European origin are problems with alphabet writing systems which have a phonetic construction. Examples of these issues can be problems speaking in full sentences, problems correctly articulating Rs and Ls as well as Ms and Ns, mixing up sounds in multi-syllabic words, problems of immature speech such as "wed and gween" instead of "red and green".
Dr Hollis Scarborough is an American psychologist and literacy expert who is a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. She has been a leading researcher in the area of reading acquisition since 1981, and has been involved with efforts to improve US national policy on the teaching of reading.
Learning Ally, previously named Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), is a non-profit volunteer organization operating nationwide in the United States. It produces and maintains a library of educational accessible audiobooks for people who cannot effectively read standard print because of visual impairment, dyslexia, or other disabilities.
The Kildonan School was a private coeducational boarding and day school in Amenia, New York for students with dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities. It offered daily one-to-one Orton-Gillingham language remediation and a college preparatory curriculum for students in grades 2-12 and PG (post-graduate).
Oswald Labs is a Dutch-Indian based accessibility technology company that builds products for individuals with disabilities. It specializes in enterprise web accessibility, offers smartphone apps, and also runs a startup accelerator. It was established in 2016 by Anand Chowdhary, Nishant Gadihoke and Mahendra Raghuwanshi after their product, Oswald Extension, won an event at the AngelHack hackathon in New Delhi.
Beth Slingerland was an educator who developed a classroom adaptation of the Orton-Gillingham system for teaching dyslexic children.
Margaret Byrd Rawson was an American educator, researcher and writer. She was an early leader in the field of dyslexia, conducting one of the longest-running studies of language disorders ever undertaken and publishing nine books on dyslexia.