Keystone Course
This 30-hour course is an introductory survey course of The New Community School’s structured literacy approach. Students with dyslexia and language-related difficulties require this approach to close the gap between their intellectual potential and reading and spelling achievement.
The course begins with an introduction to dyslexia and characteristics of dyslexia, followed by an overview of the Keystone approach and manual, and includes opportunities to discuss case studies of students, their cognitive profiles, administration and analysis of language testing, and diagnostic and prescriptive instruction.
Course participants will:
- Create a student notebook as they learn to teach reading through a diagnostic and prescriptive instructional approach,
- Learn multi-sensory techniques to improve reading and spelling accuracy,
- Learn to develop materials that provide flexibility for individualizing instruction and for reference and review, and
- Receive guidance for teaching individual students as well as small group instruction.
Each participant will receive a copy of the instructional manual, Keystone: A Guide for Teaching Language Structure. The manual outlines an explicit, systematic, sequential and cumulative system for reading instruction that uses multi-sensory intervention strategies and develops student skills in phonology, sound-symbol correspondences, syllable patterns, and morphology.
