Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

The provision of a multi-sensory and highly structured phonetic instruction through the Essential Literacy Approach (ELA) has been incorporated into MLP lessons to promote and facilitate reading and spelling development in our students.

Reading Fluency

MLP lessons emphasise the importance of reading fluency through the deliberate planning of reading tasks that take into account students' reading fluency and accuracy to ensure that reading comprehension is not impaired by effortful and inaccurate reading.

Reading Comprehension

The Reading Comprehension Curriculum includes essential reading comprehension skills that are closely aligned with the mainstream curriculum. It also consists of skills that are taught and delivered according to the PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) stages to:

• facilitate the pre-activity discussions through modelling
• scaffold and guide students in a structured, cumulative and sequential manner to enhance learning
• provide opportunities for students to be independent in applying the concepts/skills learnt

Writing

Writing is taught to students in a structured, cumulative and sequential manner. The process of writing emphasises not only on skills such as planning, drafting, revising and editing, it also stresses upon the importance of linguistic knowledge, such as grammar and text structure, to make writing more focused and meaningful for our students.

Vocabulary

Beyond phonics, MLP explicitly emphasises vocabulary development of morphemes, sight and high frequency words through instructions leveraging on Assistive Technology to improve students' language acquisition skills.

Localisation of Curriculum

The MLP curriculum and resources have been localised to better suit our bilingual learners and more importantly, to make learning more accessible and contextualised for them.

THE MAIN LITERACY PROGRAMME (MLP) IS DELIVERED USING THE ORTON-GILLINGHAM (OG) APPROACH

Lessons are taught in accordance with the Orton-Gillingham principles:

• Emotionally sound - Lessons tailored to students’ abilities

• Structured, sequential and cumulative - Concepts are broken down into smaller parts & taught one at a time, progressively & cumulatively

• Direct and Explicit - Instructions, objectives and activities are explicit

• Simultaneously Multisensory - Ensure multiple pathways to learning (Gillingham & Stillman, 1997)

• Cognitive Approach - Students understand why each concept is taught
  
  

THE MAIN LITERACY PROGRAMME (MLP) HAS BEEN AUDITED BY THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION SINGAPORE

“Services offered under MOE-aided DAS Literacy Programme* are appropriate, and remain highly relevant in providing additional literacy support for students with dyslexia”  - MOE 2015 Audit

DAS Programmes are evaluated and published in the DAS Handbook.  To read these reports click here.

DAS BURSARIES - FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS WITH DYSLEXIA

DAS believes that no child should be left behind because he or she cannot afford the cost of a DAS education. The provision of bursaries is critical as it levels the playing field for children with dyslexia from lower families. DAS and MOE provide financial assistance in the form of bursaries to Singapore students, or to students who have at least one parent who is a Singaporean.

The student must also be attending a MOE mainstream school between Primary One (1) and Secondary Five (5).

What is the DAS Main Literacy Programme?

The DAS Main Literacy Programme provides a comprehensive and quality curriculum to support dyslexic students facing literacy challenges. The curriculum integrates key essential learning components that are crucial in remediating students with learning difficulties. Depending on your child’s needs and progress, the following components may be covered in the curriculum:

• Phonemic Awareness and Phonics. 
• Reading Fluency
• Reading Comprehension
• Vocabulary
• Writing

Why is my child referred to the DAS Main Literacy Programme?

Your child is referred to the DAS Main Literacy Programme because educators working with him/her have identified his/her needs for specialist literacy intervention.

Why must my child be assessed before starting DAS Main Literacy Programme lessons?

The diagnosis of dyslexia is determined through a psycho-educational assessment. During the assessment, information is gathered from interviews with you (parents/caregivers), feedback from teachers, testing of your child’s abilities, and behavioural observations. These will then be integrated and results discussed with you (parents/caregivers). The psycho-educational assessment provides useful information about your child’s strengths and needs and provides greater insight into the nature and extent of the difficulties that your child may have. The assessment also helps to identify the learning needs of your child, so that appropriate intervention that is suitable for your child can be recommended.

MLP fees are also part subsidised by MOE and in order to be eligible for the subsidised rate, a diagnosis of dyslexia is required.

My child is already attending tuition, why should he attend DAS Main Literacy Programme?

MLP classes are exclusively for children diagnosed with dyslexia. Our Educational Therapists are specially trained to cater to the needs of dyslexic students. A dyslexic child is a quick learner and also a quick forgetter and learning by rote memory or practising without using the right strategies will not help and might instead frustrate. 

No two dyslexic learners are alike, hence our lessons are not alike also. Each lesson is planned and delivered based on your child’s needs and aimed at the level of the learner. Our lessons are, therefore:

Structured and sequential: we have a prescribed lesson plan that our Educational Therapists use to plan and conduct lessons. Elements of language is taught in bite-sized pieces to facilitate easy learning and also to ensure students are not overwhelmed with too much information at one go.

Each lesson comprises of phonics/morphology, language and vocabulary instruction, comprehension and/or writing, i.e a comprehensive literacy programme.

• Cumulative: We start with the simple and move on to more complex and we revisit previously taught concepts to reinforce memory.
• Simultaneous multisensory: Dyslexic learners learn best when the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile are employed all at once.
• Emotionally sound: Many dyslexics have struggled with academics and may feel demotivated. We ensure that learning is structured for success so that they begin to feel confident about themselves as learners.

How much does an assessment cost?

Is there any financial assistance available?

Yes, DAS offers bursaries to families to offset the cost of assessments and /or educational therapy. Please speak to the Customer Service Officer at 6444 5700 for more information.