Our program's goal is to help students integrate crucial skills in order to reach mastery of academic benchmarks.  In contrast to traditional school settings, our curriculum is designed to meet students where they are allowing them to build the necessary skills for success in reading, written expression and mathematics. At North Bridge Academy, we explicitly teach students the logic and structure of language as well as empirically-based methodologies to help our students build automaticity in their learning.

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In content-rich subjects - science, history and the arts - we align with the California Standards, but instead of relying exclusively on textbooks to instruct, project-based learning enriches their experiences and often highlights their exceptional artistic, conceptual, and visual-spatial thinking talents.

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LANGUAGE INTERVENTION

Our primary intervention for all students is the Slingerland® Approach. Slingerland is a classroom adaptation of Orton-Gillingham instruction, which employs multi-sensory teaching specifically designed to support children experiencing difficulty in the language areas of reading, writing, spelling, and oral communication. This methodology provides the foundation for language instruction and other appropriate areas of curriculum at NBA where a significant emphasis is placed on building strategies for developing reading acquisition.

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The Slingerland® Approach begins with the smallest unit of sight, sound, and feel– as English is an alphabetic-phonetic language. As students begin to develop automatic association of letters and sounds, they internalize the processes involved, allowing them to identify increasingly complex layers of English. In the course of our instruction, students move from letters to words, then to phrases, sentences and paragraphs. As these pieces become more automatic, students are ready for novels, essays and reports. Moreover, as our students build crucial skills in reading and writing, we will encourage them to find a connection to literature, as well as to use their creativity to explore ideas and concepts in order to examine the world around them.