Bridging the Gap’s academic curriculum is multi-leveled. Every child’s ability is measured at intake using a research-backed assessment. An individual education plan is then developed based on the strengths and needs of the child. Teaching happens on a 1 teacher to 1 child, or at most 1:2 (to promote peer interaction), ratio. The child’s progress is carefully monitored through weekly review as well as ongoing assessments at key time points.
Level I – Preparing for Literacy and Numeracy
We start by building the children’s pre-learning skills through training their auditory (listening), visual (seeing), fine motor and vocal skills. All activities involve hands-on kinaesthetic learning with the use of colourful and fun manipulatives. Instructions are broken down, modelled and visually-supported. Considerations have been made for children who are non-verbal.
Level II – Early Literacy and Numeracy
Here, we begin to teach the children to recognize and recall the letters of the English alphabet as well as numbers. We train the children’s phonological and phonemic awareness through listening activities that are visually-supported. Letters and their sounds as well as numbers and the quantities they represent are learnt at the children’s pace, using a mix of tactile activities, games and interactive worksheets. Drawing and handwriting are introduced gradually with different writing tools, as the fine motor and visual-motor coordination abilities of the child.
Level III – Intermediate Literacy and Numeracy
The child starts to practice putting letter sounds together to read at this point. High frequency sight words are also introduced. Levelled readers are used weekly, selected for the child’s reading ability. Story comprehension is also reviewed. In Numeracy, we introduce arithmetic – simple addition and subtraction, progressing to carry overs as the child becomes more proficient.
Level IV- Advanced Literacy and Numeracy
The focus at this level is to build fluent reading ability, enhance comprehension and add-on to the child’s repertoire of phonics skills. In Numeracy, the child will start to learn the concepts of multiplication, division and fractions.