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New for 2009: Occupational Therapy and Vision Testing and Therapy. We are a multidisciplinary educational institution in San Diego, California serving the North County cities of Encinitas, Carlsbad, San Marcos, Escondido and Vista. We offer tutoring for most subjects and all grades and specialize in serving children with learning disabilities.
How do we differ from other tutoring facilities? We look at the root causes of learning difficulties in order to understand the best ways to facilitate learning.
For children to be able to learn how to read and write without problems a certain maturity of their brain and their sensory and motor abilities is necessary. Both vision, hearing, fine and gross motor abilities must have matured sufficiently. No sensible pedagogue tries to teach a newborn baby how to read and write.In children who have problems to learn how to read and write there are defects of vision, hearing and/or motor abilities. But there is also insufficient maturity of the brain.Vision Almost half the children with reading disabilities have visual problems. These may be problems of focusing the eyes on one point (convergence) or following the text (tracking). Some children have not developed eye dominance and involuntary change of dominant eye while reading causes the text to jump. These children are usually farsighted. They often get tired and loose concentration after having read for a while and their eyes may smart and itch. Since the reading process is not automatic it demands their full attention, preventing them from understanding what they have read. Dr. Koe Johnson is our resident Optometrist.
Dr Koe H Johnson is a behavioral optometrist with over twenty-five years of services to her patients. Dr. Johnson is the Director of Student Services for the Optometric Extension Program (OEP) Foundation a leading organization in behavioral optometry and program development for behavioral optometrists. Dr. Johnson also shares her optometric skills as a member of two peer review boards for professional journals and as an editor of books relating to behavioral optometry. Dr. Johnson hails from the University of California Berkeley School of Optometry and continues her commitment to education by averaging over forty continuing education hours per year. PTA STATEMENT 2006 With Regards to Vision Elements of Comprehensive Health Programs, 2006
"National PTA recognizes:
Early diagnosis and treatment of children's vision problems is a necessary component to school readiness and academic learning; and that vision screening is not a substitute for a complete eye and vision evaluation by an eye doctor. Comprehensive eye and vision examinations by an optometrist or ophthalmologist are important for all children first entering school and regularly throughout their school-aged years to ensure healthy eyes and adequate vision skills essential for successful academic achievement;"
Writing In order to write without problems the child must have developed the fine motor ability of his hand and be able to hold the pen in a correct grasp and easily cross the midline of his body. In order to fashion the letters automatically the child must have developed his kinaesthetic sense of arms and hands. Otherwise the fashioning of the letters will demand his whole attention and the child will have problems to think of what to write
Gross motor ability is important for the development of speech and language. Children with severe motor handicaps, i. e. cerebral palsy, in many cases never learn to speak.
Occupational therapy is provided at our Center. Occupational Therapy is an education service provided to students in the areas of neuromuscular development, fine motor/self-help skill development, sensory processing, and assistive technology. Our resident OT is Karin Hessellund Warner. Karin has Master of Occupational Therapy from Merritt College. She has worked as an OT in San Diego City Schools, the Carlsbad Unified School District and Rady Children's Hospital. Primitive Reflexes
Primitive reflexes are automatic stereotyped movement patterns that are outside voluntary control and direct the movements of the foetus and of the infant during the first months of life. Before an infant learns to walk it spends a lot of its time making rhythmical baby movements according to inborn directions. These movements help the infant to integrate its primitive reflexes and the baby must learn to master a considerable amount of movement patterns before it is ready to crawl or walk. At the age of three the primitive reflexes should be fully integrated and no longer interfere with movements. In some children , a greater or smaller amount of primitive reflexes remain active, which can be caused by the children having omitted some of these rhythmic baby movements or not having done them sufficiently. Non integrated primitive reflexes can cause problems with fine and gross motor skill, with vision, hearing and/or articulation and language. Several primitive reflexes are important for reading and writing, among others the asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR), the symmetric tonic neck reflex (STNR), the grasp reflex and the palmomental reflex.Our Plan of Action Based on our assessment tools, feedback from the student, parent(s), teachers, and other professionals, we create an individualized education plan for each student. Furthermore, all teachers are trained at It's Academic and work only on a one to one basis with students. Given that our specialty area is school performance issues, public and private schools avail themselves of our consultation services. We are an Eagles Peak Charter School certified vendor. Another critical component of It's Academic is the Director. He has his Ph.D. in special education and is on the faculty at San Diego State University in the Department of Special Education. He directly supervises all programs served by dedicated and credentialed teachers. Here are the elements that make us unique and set us apart from other tutoring facilities.
Instructing on a one student to one teacher basis! The diagnostic and analytical tools, i.e. the Visagraph; When working with students who are behind in language arts and mathematics, we investigate visual and auditory perception as well as primitive reflex development before designing an academic program. Many years of professional private and public educational experiences at all grade levels. All teachers at It's Academic have diverse teaching experience and receive specialized training at the Center. The finest research based programs in education to date: My Reading Coach Gold, Reading Plus, Lexia, Anywhere Learning Systems; and Sherwood Test Prep for all university and graduate examinations.
SAT PREPARATION COURSES: Sherwood Test Preparations - The Best In The West!
Please visit all of our web pages and especially the reference page. They will provide you with useful information whether you are a student, a parent, a teacher, or an administrator. Check back frequently as information is added daily.
We do not wish to see the forest We wish to see the trees, the tree. The child, not the human race. -----Y. Amichai Sincerely, The It's Academic Staff
1615 South Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite A San Marcos, California 92078 Phone : 760-761-3692 Fax: 760-481-7440
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