Academic Support
Academic Support
At GMS, we support every student in coming to understand themselves as learners and advocating for their needs both in and outside of the classroom. Our teachers work daily with students to identify and practice strategies to improve understanding, planning and organization, collaboration, and self-advocacy. All students are offered and encouraged to explore a variety of tools and strategies to support their learning.
Beyond the regular classroom, students have access to all teachers every day during Office Hours for additional support, questions, to go deeper in a topic, and for extra challenge (or just to hang out – our teachers are awesome!). Homework Club (offered every day after school) is another space for all students to receive tutorial support and encouragement.
Learning Specialist
Our Learning Specialist partners closely with parents and teachers to understand and offer accommodations to students with diagnosed learning differences or those with suspected learning differences. In partnership with parents and guardians at the start of the year, our Learning Specialist develops a GMS accommodations plan. Typical accommodations in a GMS classroom include extended time, audiobooks, spell check, speech to text, flexible seating and sensory tools, and the use of a calculator. While our Learning Specialist does not provide direct services or intervention (push-in or pull-out), we coordinate with outside providers (tutors, executive function coaches, therapists, and education specialists) to support students.
GMS has a full-time Learning Specialist who is available to meet with students on an as-needed basis to answer any questions they have about accommodations and support them in advocating with their teachers. The Learning Specialist consults with teachers, reads reports, writes accommodation plans, conducts informal observations, and helps facilitate the educational testing process with the parents. At this time, we do not provide pull-out or push-in support for students; if a student needs this type of support, families provide it outside of school. GMS also has a full-time Guidance Counselor who is a resource for both students and families.
Accommodations are implemented based on the recommendations from the educational testing. Some of the accommodations available include extended time for assessments, shortened assignments with prior teacher discussion, access to a calculator, text-to-speech, and other forms of assistive technology. Accommodations are in place for students with documented needs for standardized testing.
The Learning Specialist will write up a GMS Accommodation Plan, which includes strategies and approaches for working with students with learning differences. The GMS Accommodation Plan includes accommodations for assignments and assessments, and learning strategies. GMS does not provide IEPs, however we do honor educational testing and will incorporate assignment and assessment accommodations into the GMS learning experience. The GMS Accommodation Plan is comparable to a 504 plan in the public school.
Examples of documentation include:
- results from psychoeducational or neuropsychoeducational evaluations,
- results from visual or auditory processing tests,
- if previously in public school, an IEP and/or a 504 Plan,
- if previously in independent school, documentation of accommodations received, or
- any other documentation you feel is relevant.
We encourage you to reach out to our Learning Specialist.
- Fostering the ability to teach students who learn and think differently.
- With the smaller class sizes, the teachers are able to better support a student with a learning difference and accommodate their learning needs.
- GMS encourages and teaches all students to advocate for their learning styles and needs.
- Daily Office Hours, where students have the opportunity to meet with their teachers individually.
- An individualized GMS Accommodation Plan is created based on the findings in the educational testing, with strategies and suggestions for the teachers. The teachers try their best to incorporate the learning strategies into the learning experience.
The Learning Specialist will develop a GMS Accommodation Plan to meet the needs of the student. This plan may not include all of the accommodations listed in the IEP that the student would receive if in a public school setting.
With the small class sizes, the teachers are able to better support a student with learning differences and accommodate their learning needs. GMS embraces learning techniques that naturally lend themselves to the needs of diverse learning styles: providing information through multiple modalities (written, spoken), de-emphasizing timed tests or assignments, etc. It is helpful when families provide as much info as possible about their child and partner with GMS to understand and meet the needs of each child.