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The Orton-Gillingham Approach
Research shows that the best way to teach children with dyslexia to read is using the Orton-Gillingham approach, a customized plan for each child that focuses on breaking down language into its constituent parts and reassembling them via repetition. Teachers at Trident Academy build trust with students, guiding them to one small success at a time until the children develop the confidence to succeed on a larger scale.
Why Charleston?
Families from across the United States have moved to the South Carolina Lowcountry in order for their children to attend Trident Academy. For the two most recent school years, nearly 25% of Trident students were new to the Charleston area. The Lowcountry is a highly desirable place to live, featuring a vibrant mix of history, natural beauty, culture, and hospitality.
Transition from Trident
Many students who enroll at Trident are able to transition back to a more traditional educational environment. We committed to preparing our students at all levels of the school for transition to the next phase of their lives, whether that is to the next level of our school, to a more traditional school, to college, or to a career path.
We strive to provide each student with opportunities for successful learning at their pace and at their level.
We strive to empower students to become self-advocates who understand their strengths, learning styles, and the value of continual improvement.
In an environment of mutual cooperation and respect, students begin to embrace past challenges and learn to enjoy school again.
By addressing deficits, teaching strategies, and strengthening stamina, we strive to prepare students for successful transitions to alternative learning environments.
Trident Academy transforms the lives of cognitively capable K-12 children diagnosed with language-based learning differences through individualized, multi-sensory, and research-based teaching approaches.
To see how our son has progressed and where he is today --
I truly don’t know how we would have been able to do it without a school like Trident.Ellen Wilson, Former Trident Parent
News & Events
News
If your child has difficulty translating their thoughts into written language, they may
have dysgraphia, a relatively common learning disability. The bad news is that it is a lifelong condition whose cause is unknown. The good news is that dysgraphia is manageable; children can learn writing strategies and produce writing that is
indistinguishable from others.
Performing even a simple arithmetic function is a complicated process that requires short and long-term memory, language, visual processing and the ability to translate a number on a page into a physical quantity. If a child’s brain is unable to handle any of these tasks, he or she will struggle to do math. This inability, at the clinical level, is called dyscalculia.
The Orton-Gillingham approach has long been considered the gold standard of education for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. Years of data have demonstrated that Orton-Gillingham is the best prism through which children can learn to read, write, spell, do math and develop other skills.
Orton-Gillingham overcomes language-based challenges via a structed, sequential,
multi-sensory approach, based on the understanding that children learn in a variety of ways and that no one way of teaching works for everyone.