The Community Learning Progam at the Collegiate is designed to serve students on an individual basis according to their educational needs. Mature students focus on community work training and on functional academic and life skills. New students entering from elementary schools begin a seven-year program focusing on supported integration, academics, athletics and the arts. Each student has an individual timetable and follows the regular two-semester secondary school system. Students may focus on several areas of the curriculum.

In our Communications classes, we use Structured Teaching based on the TEACCH Program. Using TEACCH (Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped Children), the environment and learning activities are designed to help students understand that the world is an organized, predictable place where they can succeed, rather than a series of random events and disconnected objects. Structured teaching provides this organization in all settings which helps make learning clear, interesting and manageable for students. Parents are encouraged to continue the structured programming with their children in the home environment as well, to reinforce the program being used at school. This program addresses the neuropsychological basis of autism. A customized program based on each child's needs, skills, and interests has proven to be most effective. TEACCH does not use any one particular technique; instead it creates a program based on each individual child. This program was founded as a direct outgrowth of a five-year research project funded by National Institutes of Mental Health that changed much of what was known about the nature of autism and how to treat it. For more info, visit www.teacch.com/.

The Collegiate school year is rich with extra activities such as trips to the Civic Carol Sing, beach volleyball games, and the S.N.A.P. activities put on at Brock University by the Brock students.

The teachers and educational assistants try their best to give these students as many tools and stategies as possible to equip them for a life in an ever-changing society. Come check us out! Your son or daughter will thrive in our enriching atmosphere!

Click here to link to BLOOM, the magazine helping Kids with Disabilities to Grow.

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