How We Teach

Everything that we do at Lawrence is rooted in Orton-Gillingham-based multisensory teaching. Our highly structured approach uses sight, hearing, touch, and movement to help students understand and make the connection between what numbers or letters/sounds represent.

Reading & Spelling

Our signature language arts curriculum CodeBreakers, was developed more than 25 years ago by Lawrence School faculty. It is based on Orton-Gillingham principles and uses multisensory techniques to teach the rules of the English language and phonics in a step-by-step, explicit process. Each concept systematically builds upon another. Phonetic segmentation is stressed throughout each lesson giving students exposure to a “part to whole” strategy. Using the curriculum, teachers are able to take students through all the speech sounds and syllable types one by one. Our goal is to get students away from the guessing game.

We also utilize the Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing curricula K–12 to teach reading comprehension. This program helps students to develop concept imagery—the ability to create a “movie” in their mind’s eye as they read—this is the foundation for comprehension and higher order thinking.

Writing

Framing Your Thoughts and Step Up to Writing are curricula utilized schoolwide at Lawrence. Framing Your Thoughts® Sentence Structure is a sequential and systematic method of instruction that teaches sentence structure from simple to complex. Step Up to Writing is a multisensory, explicit, and systematic approach designed to provide clear strategies, methods, and supports throughout the writing process.

Mathematics

At Lawrence we teach math using a multisensory approach and the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) sequence, which is advocated by the National Math Panel and the NCTM. Concepts and skills are taught systematically from simple to complex with review and reinforcement to develop mastery. Just like our language arts teaching, new information is always introduced through visual, auditory, and tactile modalities to ensure students form a deep conceptual understanding of mathematical operations and language.

Course material in all classes is mastered in a phased process — introduction, practice, review, and application. The mastered material then becomes a foundation for future learning. Our careful approach to assessment provides opportunities for teachers to adjust their teaching strategies, integrate support, and otherwise personalize the delivery of the above curriculum.