Our programs and curriculum
Welcome to Avalon Academy. Intro text TBD.
OUR PROGRAMS AND CURRICULUM
Core Program: The Avalon Academy is a full-time educational option. The school year begins in late August and ends in June. The school day runs from 9AM to 3PM, Monday through Friday.
Summer Program: runs Monday through Friday for 6 weeks in July and August. It follows a similar format to the core program but with additional recreational activities including swimming, dance, and outings.
Academics: The Avalon Academy prides itself on providing its students with experiential learning opportunities. Our curriculum is interactive, individualized, and incorporates multi-sensory supports to promote concept development and engagement. Avalon’s teaching team is committed to utilizing research-based curricula.
Reverse Mainstreaming: The Avalon Academy has maintained a vibrant reverse mainstreaming program with a variety of local high schools including Nueva, Crystal Springs, San Mateo Union, St. Ignatius College Prep, Hillsdale, Mercy and Design Tech and area elementary schools including Roosevelt, Washington, West Portal and Martin. for the last decade.
Collective Wellness: Through the use of our multisensory curriculum and mindfulness tools, students are guided to explore the environment, curricular themes, emotions, and sensations. We lead daily mid-day chair yoga, aiming to increase body awareness and the opportunity to demonstrate bodily autonomy by selecting the body parts they want to move and the poses they want to explore. Yoga also provides students the opportunity to explore the breath and the sensations and temperature of the inhalation and exhalation.
Experiential Learning
We use a multisensory approach to engage our students in a more holistic manner. Lessons and materials are adapted to be appropriate for our students’ unique sensory needs and preferences.
Movement
Unique to the Avalon Academy is the integration of movement education into all classroom activities, which enhances motor-abilities in the real-world. A floor-based, group movement program is provided daily to facilitate motor-skill development. Whenever appropriate, students are provided with adapted seating during classroom activities. They are given numerous opportunities to be out of their wheelchair, with transitions that include using canes, walkers, standers, power wheelchairs, body scooters, and rolling techniques. Additionally, students routinely benefit from assisted bike rides along the neighboring Bayshore Trail on adapted tricycles. The ultimate goal is for students to reach their full potential in moving as independently and safely as possible.
Meal-time Support
While motor-skill development is central to improved education, health and quality of life, socialization and recreation are also considered essential components for our students to thrive. In particular, meal-times are social occasions during which staff and students eat together as a community. Many of the students have had challenges with eating and drinking, and Avalon staff are extremely adept at oral-motor and positioning techniques which ensures that meal-times are relaxed and fun. This in turn leads to healthy nutrition and promotes well-being.
Speech-language and AAC
The speech-language and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) department specializes in supporting the use of multimodal tools and strategies to enhance participation, learning, and communication. We collaborate with families, caregivers, and members of the school team to create the most effective communication systems for each student.
Through comprehensive AAC assessments and Speech Generating Device (SGD) evaluations, our team creates a tailored plan for equipment, services and goals to suit each student’s individual needs and foster meaningful choice-making, access and social and functional communication. We design highly customized AAC systems and thoughtfully organize the messages to promote efficient use. We encourage a combination of both unaided and aided communication modes, allowing students to most effectively express their thoughts.
Physical Therapy
We evaluate and treat each student’s unique needs, focusing on the musculoskeletal, neuromotor, and somatosensory system to improve skilled motor control and movement function.
During our individualized therapy sessions, we use a variety of techniques including:
· Neuro-developmental treatment (NDT/Bobath)
· Reflex integration (MNRI)
· Soft tissue/Myofascial release
· Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF)
· Manual therapy
· Therapeutic exercise
· Neuromuscular electrical stimulation
(NMES)
Because movement matters at the Avalon Academy, our physical therapists consult within the classrooms to ensure students are participating and accessing their education with the least restriction. We integrate opportunities to participate and move using specialized adapted equipment with skilled supervision by our trained staff throughout the day.
We know our student’s needs can shift as they grow. We closely track and reassess as students move through our elementary, middle, and high school program. By focusing on a student’s continuum of care, we anticipate future needs and help students seamlessly transition to equipment such as adapted seating, gait trainers/walkers, standers, adapted tricycles, orthotics, bracing and splinting.
Vision (this section might go away)
Studies show that 70% of what a child learns is from visually observing what is happening in their surroundings*. But if a child has a vision impairment, that “incidental learning” is diminished. The vision department works to fill in those visual gaps in a child’s knowledge so they can thrive and learn. Through hands on experiences and direct instruction of concepts, students explore their world in meaningful ways that directly impact their comprehension in the classroom.
Beyond direct instruction of students, The Vision Department works with staff and teachers to maximize a student’s functional vision, adapting materials and consulting with other specialists to increase the overall effectiveness of teaching strategies.
Instruction in the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC), the body of knowledge and skills required by students with visual impairments due to their unique disability-specific needs include:
Assistive Technology
Career Education
Compensatory Skills
Independent Living Skills
Orientation and Mobility
Recreation and Leisure
Self-Determination
Sensory Efficiency
Social Interaction Skills
Orientation and mobility (I think this could be cut bc it’s in the list above)
Teaches systematic techniques to students who are visually impaired or blind to enable them to better orient themselves to their environments and empower them to move about more independently. This area of the expanded core curriculum (ECC) focuses on two broad interrelated components: orientation (knowing one’s position in relation to their environment and keeping track of their relation/position while moving through the environment) and mobility (movement from one place to another). Services are provided by O&M instructors (O&Ms) who are trained to work with students with visual impairments, including those with additional coexisting disabilities.
Transition to Adulthood (listed under programs instead of its own subhead)
We care for our students from the moment they enter and never stop. From day one, our program seeks to prepare our students for life after graduation. Our transition-age students participate in meaningful vocational, social, recreational, and academic activities based on their personal interests. All routines seek to build upon functional, social, self-determination and daily living skills that can eventually transfer into serving the greater community.
Avalon Therapies – I think a one sentence description could be here under programming and be its own subhead to increase discoverability.
Click below to read more about the complete lorem ipsum program:
Program & Curriculum
A Day in the Life of an Avalon student (needs more detail)
Calendar
Avalon Therapies (with inquiry link)
CALENDAR – use existing school year calendars
AVALON THERAPIES – this is placeholder text. We need to edit to ensure we don’t risk GGRC funding.
one sentence overview needed to make it clear these are options for non-enrolled students
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
We provide group-based therapy for individuals with complex communication needs who require AAC. Our intervention is multimodal and aims to build communicative competence so AAC learners can most effectively and efficiently express their needs, wants, thoughts, and preferences. We collaborate with families and caregivers to design and implement AAC systems that work for a variety of settings.
Yoga
35-minute yoga class includes a landing practice, body awareness, gentle warmup, breath practice, and savasana.
Art class
The Avalon Academy’s thematic units provide the inspiration for Avalon Therapies clients to explore their own creativity, as well as practice tactile and other compensatory skills while socializing with peers.
Movement
PT supervised class for students/clients to explore passive range of motion and mobility throughout their bodies encouraging body awareness and sensory integration.
It all started when…
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