Hettie Johnson Institute
The Hettie Johnson Institute at Spring Valley
TRANSFORM TEACHING. TRANSFORM LEARNING. TRANSFORM LIVES.
By offering the finest in dyslexia and learning disability education, teacher training, as well as parent and student support services, The Hettie Johnson Institute at Spring Valley aspires to make a difference to learning and teaching in the state of Alabama. Look into online resources and upcoming community events by following the links below.
Dyslexia Therapy with HJI
At The Hettie Johnson Institute, we use Basic Language Skills from The Neuhaus Education Center for dyslexia therapy. In the sessions, we focus on multiple skills to build the necessary foundation for reading. Both virtual and in-person formats are available.
Basic Language Skills is a structured literacy course exploring the Science of Reading with explicit, systematic, sequential, intensive, and comprehensive instruction. The Hettie Johnson Institute utilizes The Neuhaus Education Center’s’ Tier III program in all of our Dyslexia Therapy lessons. This multisensory, Orton-Gillingham-based curriculum is recognized by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) and accredited by the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC). All students receive intensive instruction in phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, oral language, comprehension, grammar, and written composition specifically designed for students with dyslexia and related learning differences.
All of our dyslexia specialists are CALTs (Certified Academic Language Therapist), CALPs (Certified Academic Language Practitioner), or are in the process of obtaining one of those distinctions. To become a therapist, one has completed 200 hours of intensive instruction and has accumulated 700 hours of teaching these specific skills, among other requirements.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR:
Rachel Shank
Certified Academic Language Therapist
PROGRAM LOCATION:
Spring Valley School
2701 Sydney Drive
Birmingham, AL 35211
Hettie Johnson's Blog
"You may have read a recent article about Mississippi schools’ success, however, the current article from Harvard is light-years more complete and powerful to teach overall literacy skills.
Now that I realize that the Mississippi program, while it has been very successful, focuses on phonics, which is huge and necessary, it doesn’t include morphology, syntactic, vocabulary, and background knowledge.
An excellent teacher would incorporate these pieces naturally but those who strictly follow the phonics piece of the MS article would miss the boat because even if you can decode words perfectly, you won’t comprehend if you lack the vocabulary & sufficient background knowledge." - Hettie Johnson, MA, CCC-SLP
This game is to improve your child’s phonological awareness (PA) skills as they play with sounds. PA is the ability to play with sounds in your head and is foundational for spelling and reading.
These barrier games are all about having fun reading and writing in a game situation. The more you enjoy doing these with your child, the more you will see your child enjoy reading and writing more and more.