All students of St. Dominic Savio Academy will receive daily instruction in the following areas:

Morning Meeting 

The students begin each morning with a school-wide "morning meeting" that includes greeting one another, completing calendar, and group songs.  We feel it's important to begin each day with a school-wide activity to build students sense of community and feelings of belonging to a group.  Calendar is an important skill for students of all ages to develop.  It develops, among other things, a sense of past, present, and future events, counting, number identification, and months and days.

Reading

SDSA is proud to offer the Lindamood-Bell reading program.  The Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing program focuses on promoting reading comprehension in students who are able to read proficiently, but show difficulty in comprehending content.  The primer for Visualizing and Verbalizing is the Lindamood-Bell Talkies program.  This is an early reading program for younger learners and promotes oral expression.

Writing

Students work daily on writing skills using the Handwriting Without Tears program.  The program takes a sensory, hands-on approach to teaching handwriting and is particularly beneficial to students with sensory processing difficulties.

Math 

Math instruction takes place each day both in large group, small group, and one-on-one groups.  All students have math goals and objectives written into their IEP based on the Arizona state standards. 

Music and Movement

During this group, students will be led in songs by either a music therapist or a staff member.  This is an opportunity for students to develop fine and gross motor imitation, speech, and vocal imitation. 

Science/Social Studies

All students will receive instruction in either science or social studies daily.  Science will be based on experiential learning and hands-on activities.  Social studies will focus on functional and meaningful goals, while tying to the academic state standards.

Social Group

Using the Integrated Play Groups model, students participate daily in a social group with typical peers.  This type of a group involves a small group (no more than one student with autism ) paired with 1-3 typical students, facilitated by an instructor.

Language Arts

In one-on-one or two-to-one groups, students work on language arts skills as designated in thier IEPs, including but not limited to receptive and expressive language, following directions, prepositions, categories, identifying items by feature, function, and class.

Art

Art is taught daily, allowing students the opportunity to work on goals for fine motor objectives, while completing fun and engaging activities that are linked to the monthly theme.