Sanford Shapiro looks at Camperdown Academy
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
Sanford Shapiro looks at Camperdown Academy
© 2007 Sanford Shapiro
I have heard about Camperdown Academy for many years but this was my first visit to this school in Greenville, South Carolina. This is small day school for kids with learning disabilities in grades one through eight. The primary school kids are generally six and seven years olds and they organize them into two groups based on skills and needs. The upper grades are similarly organized into six groups, each designated by a letter from the word ACADEMY.
The school is an Orton Giilingham School and when I was visiting, they counted three Orton Fellows as Camperdown faculty. Orton Fellows are advanced practitioners. The Orton Gillingham approach is the cornerstone of Camperdown and additionally they feel it’s important to engage as much as possible in a Multiple Intelligence framework. Each student in grades three through eight receive either one to one or two to one O.G. language training tutorials each day. Each teacher at the school is Orton trained with at least sixty hours of instruction. In the tutoring session I sat in on the tutor engaged this obviously intelligent dyslexic boy in pretty high level and complex word analysis. There was work on decoding, encoding (spelling) and examination of Latin roots. All of this was designed to build fluency and in some ways, comprehension as well. Camperdown also uses Diana Hanbury King’s Writing Skills Program as a curriculum and instructional guide. There were four outside ad contracted speech and language specialists available for consultation and/or direct services to kids.
The classes ranged from about six kids up to fifteen. I sat in on a pretty lively geography class of fifth graders and their enthusiasm was palpable. There was some use of the computer evident in the classes but more so I saw engaged teachers. In addition to the arts and keyboarding classes they also have a drama and speech class. They run a low ropes course for the kids and there’s plenty of after school activities as well.
Related at this site: Camperdown Academy