MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is to provide the opportunity for dyslexic students in the 1st-8th grades to reach their potential. We offer a rigorous, interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum designed for bright, multi-sensory learners that engages and focuses on cognitive strengths, effectively remediates literacy skills, and builds lasting confidence.
Our highly-trained staff creates an environment--
Our highly-trained staff creates an environment--
where children thrive, not simply survive.
DAILY CLASSES
•. 1:1 Orton-Gillingham Tutoring
•. Literature & Writing for Dyslexic Learners
• Inter-disciplinary Math, Science, History, & Literature with Arts Integration
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•. Energy-Absorbing & Mind-Centering Exercise Breaks throughout the day
•. Optional After-School Sports & Enrichment
•. Fine & Performing Arts, weekly
•. Foreign Language, weekly
•. Literature & Writing for Dyslexic Learners
• Inter-disciplinary Math, Science, History, & Literature with Arts Integration
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•. Energy-Absorbing & Mind-Centering Exercise Breaks throughout the day
•. Optional After-School Sports & Enrichment
•. Fine & Performing Arts, weekly
•. Foreign Language, weekly
Dyslexia is a learning style, not a disability.
Our students graduate as confident self-advocates, ready to succeed
in whatever school they choose.
in whatever school they choose.
At The Bilgrav School, we recognize students
for their intelligence and strengths
while remediating language deficits.
- In subject matter courses, students are taught to their strong conceptual capacities.
- Literacy skills are effectively remediated in daily, 1:1 OG tutoring sessions and woven into classes at each student’s appropriate challenge level.
- In short, our classes separate content from language mechanics. The content is taught at grade-level through multi-sensory projects, video, field trips, games, experiments, etc.
- Homework and in-class reading and writing requirements are individualized to the student based on teachers’ regular communication with the 1:1 tutors.
The Problem for Dyslexic Children in Traditional Classrooms
Dyslexic minds have incredible strengths, such as three-dimensional problem-solving, big picture thinking, and innovative pattern recognition. These traits are tremendous cognitive assets. They are the kind of thinking skills that enabled Walt Disney to add a whole new dimension to the movie making industry, that led Ted Turner to create a 24-hour news channel and revolutionize the way we consume news, that allowed Steve Jobs to transform our digital lives, and that gave Einstein the power to behold that E = mc^2. All these men are dyslexic— and gifted. Their brilliance was masked in their school years by a difficulty learning to read.
Their brains, that naturally see things in three dimensions, automatically picked up two dimensional letters and started spinning them around in their mind’s eye. Though an asset in most cases, this cognitive trait, when learning to read, is quite the opposite. Letters and words need to stay two dimensional and in the order they are given on the page. A dyslexic mind picks up letters and words and starts spinning them around. So, b becomes d becomes p becomes q, and the letters in the words get all out of order.
Their brains, that naturally see things in three dimensions, automatically picked up two dimensional letters and started spinning them around in their mind’s eye. Though an asset in most cases, this cognitive trait, when learning to read, is quite the opposite. Letters and words need to stay two dimensional and in the order they are given on the page. A dyslexic mind picks up letters and words and starts spinning them around. So, b becomes d becomes p becomes q, and the letters in the words get all out of order.
Unfortunately for dyslexics, non-dyslexic brains (about 85%of the population) tend to evolve the higher-order thinking skills, that dyslexics naturally have, later in their development. The mechanics of reading and spelling are a much simpler skill for them. So, it makes sense to teach the mechanics of language in the lower grade levels and then use it as a medium to convey more and more sophisticated levels of information as students mature.
Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines, Virgin Galactic, & South Florida’s own Brightline train, is dyslexic as well.
For the dyslexic student, this order is a disaster. It means that at the earliest grade levels, the dyslexic child’s strengths are ignored and their difficulties highlighted, all day long in front of their peers. Often, their cognitive assets are never recognized because by the time those incredible thinking skills are required by the curriculum, years later, dyslexic students have already experienced enough failure and missed out on so much information that they may not have gotten in to the advanced level classes, for which those strengths are necessary.
At The Bilgrav School, we teach how dyslexic minds actually develop. Our curriculum features their cognitive strengths every day, at every level, and includes the daily, structured, phonetic, multi-sensory, Orton-Gillingham tutoring that enables a dyslexic student to acquire robust literacy skills. Subjects are taught in an interdisciplinary, project-based way that enables students to absorb grade-level concepts (and beyond) without being bogged down by the language mechanics that hold them back in traditional classrooms. Our students become confident learners, knowledgeable of their strengths and sure that they can overcome even the deepest of academic challenges, just like these successful dyslexics:
