Personalized Targeted Teaching Program

The neuropsychological and educational assessment provides standardized test results as well as a unique perspective that is used to design a personalized program that fits like a glove to address each student’s unique learning needs.  This targeted program is the hallmark of the service provided by the Vancouver Learning Centre.  For more than 25 years our experience in program design and use of specialized teaching resources has consistently led to remarkable achievements in our students.

The program identifies three components for success:

1. The concerns to be addressed.  Each program details the area or content that provides a focus for the learner.  For example, concerns may include: a learning disability in complex auditory processing, vocabulary skill development, written expression development, reading (decoding), or comprehension, etc.  For each concern the specially targeted program will contain a remedial strategy, which includes the resource material to be used and instructions for the teachers on how to proceed.

2. The student’s strengths, which provide the platform for new and innovative ways to deliver the necessary teaching. For example, the student may be identified as a strong visual learner, with good skills in visually based abstract reasoning; or with special strengths in language or math. These strengths will be enhanced to provide overall performance strength and to improve self-esteem.  They may also be used as an entry point in a method of presentation for each learner.

3. The principles or ways to teach the individual student that will most likely produce success.  For example, if the student is a visual learner, the teachers will be asked to feature visual displays in their presentation of material; or they may be asked to train the student in effective listening; or to use a structured or coaching method; or to feature vocabulary harvest to teach word meaning as a first step in every lesson; etc.  In other words, since all lessons are one-to-one the teaching principles guide the teacher to take advantage of the student’s strengths to produce a personal best outcome for each student.

With these foundational features in place the program details can be set out. This is the part of the program that links the resources (materials in the VLC Resource Library) with teaching instructions about the level and manner the material is to be delivered in one-to-one teaching. In keeping with the VLC’s commitment to transparency and partnership, the program is always included for the parents’ information with the assessment report, so they can see the direct connection between the findings from the assessment and the program design.