Academic Support - AEP/Tutorial Services

Tutorial Service

Tutorial services at South Kent School are designed to support students within a specific academic area. Students who either struggle with an individual course or are stretching to achieve an advanced level, are most common in the tutorial program. Students receive direct assistance with their academic content and the skills required to meet the demands of their academic courses. Those who are challenged by organizational issues and time management may also be assisted by a tutor. Tutors meet one-to-one with students during academic hours; either the academic class day or evening study hall. Most commonly tutorial sessions meet three times a week for a 45-minute period. It is South Kent's goal for students to achieve a level of independence and not be tutored for more than one year.

Tutors provide reports to parents and parents are free to communicate directly with tutors. The student's advisor and teachers are routinely in communication with tutors to best support the student. There is an additional cost incurred for tutoring on a per-hour basis.

Academic Enhancement Program

For students in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Forms in need of academic assistance, South Kent School offers the Academic Enhancement Program (AEP) as a course to support the students in their learning process. It is open to any Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Form student who needs the program. The course will make full use of three different software packages – Kurtzweil, Fast ForWord and Inspiration.

At the beginning of the AEP program, a self-assessment test, developed by Dr. Mel Levine called the Survey of Teenage Readiness and Neuro-Development Status (STRANDS) will be administered. It is designed to help the faculty understand how each student learns, and to develop a list of strategies to better educate each student. The STRANDS interview covers eight sections focusing on attention, memory, sequencing, language, visual processing, motor functions, organization-strategies and higher-order cognition. Upon completion, parents will receive a copy of the report generated by this test.

The classroom experience involves interacting through a computer with the different software packages – Kurtzweil, Fast ForWord and Inspiration. These programs have been developed to accomplish three general goals. Inspiration is a mechanism for coordination of organizational skills in a schematic fashion that can be applied to any regular academic course. Kurtzweil involves reading on a screen while also processing aurally, the text of any material that has been scanned into the machine. Novels, articles, and virtually any written materials c an be present in this manner. Fast ForWord is a series of mental exercises that re-direct the brain to develop more efficient processing patterns.

The overall goal is to make the boy a better reader for comprehension, a faster processor of the written words themselves, and an organizations frame of reference that can lead to well developed papers and tests in regular classes.

A more comprehensive explanation of the workings of the computer programs will be sent to all candidates for the course by the Admissions Office. The purposes of the course are usually accomplished in one year. Occasionally, it is better to do the program over two years.