LEAP – Learning Enrichment and Achievement Program
LEAP- Learning Enrichment and Achievement Program provides a stress-free and conducive environment to learn and grow for students with learning challenges. In line with Bethany’s vision that no child must be left behind.
LEAP was launched on the 9th of January 2016. In the “Year of Rightful Choices”, the school management chose to make a difference for children who learn differently.
At the Bethany firmly believe that equal opportunity is not giving everyone the same thing but giving the children what they need, to be able to learn. LEAP is thus lead by the vision:
“When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”- Alexander Den Heijer
LEAP boasts of an excellent teacher-student ratio which enables educators to optimize learning and achievement in students through individual attention, differential teaching and evaluation methods and hands-on activities. The pedagogy at LEAP thus almost guarantees student engagement and learning.
Pedagogy at LEAP:
Our spirited team of special educators, hand-picked to ensure that the best is given to our students, enables students at LEAP to be self-driven, involved and perform to the best of their potential. By reinforcing the efforts and not the results, by celebrating small wins, and by recognising the students by their talents and not their grades, the special educators at LEAP are successful in bringing out the best version of the students year after year!
<- – – – Our team of trained Special Educators.
Multi-sensory Teaching Methods – Each lesson is taught keeping in mind Gardener’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. The concepts are supported and reinforced with various hands-on activities crafted creatively by our special educators. Songs and making sandwiches are effortlessly woven into the classroom work to teach topics like photosynthesis and animal cells!
- Sandwich activity – Activity to learn organelles of a plant cell using edible items on a slice of bread.
- Kabuliwala activity – Students brought alive Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Kabuliwala’ in the classroom.
- Geo planet activity – Learning about universe and solar system with Earth’s rotation and revolution.
Curriculum Adaptations – Reading sheets are prepared for students to overcome the learning lag in academic skills like reading and comprehension. Various skill-based worksheets are curated to suit unique needs of the students. Comprehension activities based on Bloom’s Taxonomy are designed to aid students’ comprehension skills.
<—- Periodic table activity – Solving a puzzle on the periodic table – kinesthetic activity in learning chemistry.
Cumulative Evaluations – Students are offered an opportunity to showcase their learning using various methods other than paper-pencil assessments. Strength-based evaluation procedures are used in LEAP, so students’ achievement is enhanced, and their self-esteem gets a much-needed boost!
Experiential Learning – As Benjamin Franklin says, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn,” We at LEAP believe in teaching by experience. When the students perform or experience the concept being learnt, they are better equipped to apply those in life. Be it a visit to the esteemed ISRO or making a compost bin or making cleaning agents from kitchen-waste, our students are bang on!
Life Skills Training
Students who have academic challenges often come into LEAP with socio-emotional challenges. These challenges may be offshoots of social pressure to perform, underachievement, peer isolation, etc. They may have poor self-regulation skills and low esteem. Life skills is done at LEAP to equip our students with coping skills. This is a great foundation to their socio-emotional learning.