Remedial teaching
Our volunteers often come across children with learning disabilities; that is, children who have difficulties in reading and writing, and do not perform at their age level. Our volunteers do not generally have the skills needed to assist these children.
PUSH has undertaken a project to asist these pupils, which is executed in two ways:
Directly - PUSH hires professional teachers, supervised by Dr. Meirav Rabinovitch, an expert in special education, didactic diagnosis and improving learning processes.
Indirectly - PUSH works with the Hadad Center for Research in Dyslexia and Reading Disorders at Bar Ilan University. The Center has developed educational programs based on data gathered through academic research in the field. The Hadad Center is under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, subject to the regional coordinators in the areas where the teachers are employed.
Remedial lessons are held during school hours for small groups of children in the lower grades. The pupils participating are those who, while they have academic difficulties, do not legally qualify for extra help from the school. They are selected by the school staff and Push`s remedial teachers. The project is coordinated with the educational departments of the local authorities and is funded by donations to PUSH.
The project’s goals are to help pupils:
• Improve reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension
• Improve writing skills and expressive capabilities
• Improve linguistic skills — phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic awareness
• Improve cognitive and learning skills — sorting, comparisons, generalization and comprehension of narrative and informative texts.