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Support for Learning

 

Every student learns differently and has unique strengths and challenges. We want every learner to feel respected, confident, and safe. We have many strategies and supports to ensure every student can participate with peers in the common learning environment, and learns and develops to their full potential.

Common Supports

Extra supports provided to learners include classroom interventions; differentiated instruction; physical accommodations; assistive technology; development of personalized plans; teacher assistants and behaviour mentors, and more. Some common supports include

Measures that allow an individual experiencing an obstacle to learning to gain access to and achieve success in regular classroom learning activities. This may involve removing barriers, ensuring accessibility, using adjustments to instructional strategies, providing one-on-one assistance or allowing some extra time to complete a task. These, and similar strategies, help each student to reach their potential, both academically and socially.

A plan for a student who requires specific and individual identification of practical strategies, goals, outcomes, targets and educational supports that ensure the student experiences success in learning that is meaningful and appropriate, considering the student’s individual needs.

Planning that supports student’s skill development and does not follow the prescribed curriculum.

A course is adjusted when grade level curriculum outcomes of a subject have been changed or deleted in order to address the specific needs of the learner. The integrity (general intent) of the course is maintained while the depth of treatment of the outcomes has been altered or deleted.

Accessing Support

Each school has an Education Support Services Team (ESST) to assist classroom teachers develop and implement instructional and behaviour management strategies, and to coordinate support resources for students.

If your student has additional educational needs—whether they are medical, mental health, or learning needs—your school’s Education Support Services Team is there to ensure those needs are met. 

To begin the conversation about your child’s additional educational needs, please contact your child’s teacher, resource teacher, school counsellor, or principal.

Learn more about our Education Support Services Teams (ESST).

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a child who is struggling in school, there is help available. We encourage you to discuss these issues with your child’s teacher or guidance counsellor for more information.

Although psychological assessments can be helpful when students have complex learning needs, most students can be well supported by their schools without one.

In many cases, a psychological assessment does not provide information that the teacher does not already have through working with the student. For example, a learning plan for a student may be the same whether it is based on the teacher knowing the student is a “struggling reader” or if it based on a psychologist diagnosing the student with a specific learning disorder with “impairment in reading.” Teachers will always use best practices to address learning challenges, with or without a psychological assessment.

In the past, certain students would receive alternate teaching strategies, such as extra time to read a text or a short break during a test. These are now considered universal accommodations, meaning they are not special strategies a teacher has to put in place, but just good teaching practices.

Schools can provide some educational assessments to help develop the learning plan for a student without making a referral to a psychologist. Resource teachers can do educational assessments of reading and math skills, for example, without seeking more intensive assessment from a psychologist.

Even with all the support that can be provided at the school level, schools will sometimes decide that a student will benefit from a more comprehensive psychological assessment. In those cases, after the school and the family have discussed this option, the school can make a request for service to the Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) Child & Youth Team to assess next steps.

Although there was a time when retaining students (or “failing the year”) was common, years of educational research has determined that this is an ineffective and potentially harmful approach that does little to support students.

Likewise, “social promotion”, which would occur when students were advanced to the next grade level with their peers without consideration to their specific learning needs, also did not support student success.

The best practice approach for supporting students is neither retention nor social promotion. Instead, research tells us that the most effective, best outcomes for students happen when they advance to the next grade with their peers and have supports in place to help them in the areas in which they were struggling. This is the best practice supported by research and it is the practice promoted in ASD-S.

Parents and guardians who are concerned about the best way to support a student who is struggling should begin the conversation with their child’s classroom teacher or resource teacher.

More information can be found in the following policies:

  • Education and Early Childhood Development Policy 322 “Inclusive Education”
  • Anglophone South School District Policy 357: Student Placement and Promotion

In New Brunswick, all schools take an inclusive approach to education.  This is a philosophy that all students attend their neighbourhood schools with their peers. This philosophy is based on the values that all students have a right to belong, a right to be respected, a right to develop to their potential, a right to attend their neighbourhood school, and a right to be part of their community.

Inclusion is also a set of teaching practices, such as Universal Design for Learning, which allows students to participate in a common learning environment.  Inclusion also extends beyond the classroom setting to school activities and allowing students to be a part of their school community.

This philosophy and approach may be different than some other educational jurisdictions in that all students are included in the school and classroom as much as possible and students with extra needs spend far less time in separate learning environments.  There are no segregated programs, classes or schools in our system, with the exception of alternate education programs available to  high school students.

If you have a concern about how your student is being included in school, you should bring your concern to your student’s teacher or resource teacher.

Further information about inclusion and Universal Design for Learning can be found at the following links: