Is your child bright and curious, yet somehow still struggling in school? This is far more common than you would think. In fact, one in five individuals has a language-based learning difference such dyslexia, which is often accompanied by dysgraphia and/or dyscalculia. Many bright children who have dyslexia struggle to keep up in traditional settings. This can result in low self-esteem, falling grades, and increasing frustration during a child’s critical formative years.
If your child is not meeting his or her potential due to struggles with reading, spelling, writing, and sometimes math, Key School’s unique program can offer hope. Key School was established in 1997 to provide a high-quality, innovative education for bright children with language-based learning differences, like dyslexia, dysgraphia, and/or dyscalculia. As a division of Carolina Day School, students and families who join Key School are an integrated and important part of community life at CDS. Not only does the Key School division offer tailored instruction for bright children with language-based learning differences, it also provides a rich academic and social experience via a full day, well-rounded program and the ability to participate in all aspects of student life at Carolina Day School.
Dyslexic students need teachers who understand.
Watch this video to learn how teachers at the Key School truly understand the unique brain profile of dyslexic children.
Click to view the Key School digital brochure.
Our Key School Mission
The Key School provides a personalized and emotionally sound educational program that is scientifically designed to overcome academic challenges experienced by students with a dyslexic learning profile and foster the innate strengths that accompany dyslexic thinking.
“Our child found hope and grew in confidence at the Key School. As parents, it has meant the world to see her grow in her abilities and say for the first time ever, ‘I love school.’” ALISON, PARENT
Key School: Bright Students with Dyslexia (Grades 2–8)
Unlocking Potential With a Unique Educational Solution
Experience a high-quality, innovative education for bright children with language-based learning differences like dyslexia.
Who We Serve
Key School accepts bright students in grades 2-8 with a primary diagnosis of a language-based learning difference such as dyslexia. An applicant's cognitive ability (full scale IQ determined by a psychologist) must fall in the average to superior range. Our program requires that students have the intellectual ability to acquire information and move forward in our curriculum. Key School is not designed to effectively meet the needs of students who have learning difficulties that are the result of primary emotional or behavioral problems, below-average cognitive ability, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Autism Disorder, or Traumatic Brain Injury.
"At Carolina Day, the focus is on learning for a lifetime. Students are always being challenged to take their tools, strategies, and skills to increasingly higher levels and to apply them in new and unique ways to create deeper learning connections.” Dr. Diane Milner, Key School Principal
Key School Curriculum: Learning to Learn
All students need and deserve a solid foundation upon which they will continue to grow as lifelong learners. Early learning begins with ensuring students have a strong base of skills in reading, oral and written communication, and number sense and math concepts. As students master these base skills they must develop strategies for using these skills as tools to unlock meaning, to problem solve, and to begin systematic self-evaluation.
Developing New Pathways for Learning: Raising Achievement to Match Potential
Our unique curriculum is highly individualized and cognitive. Our lessons are anchored in multisensory language and math instruction that stimulates and builds auditory, visual, and tactile/kinesthetic pathways to learning. We teach the structure of language and the tools that improve reading, writing, spelling, and math. By creating an educational environment that removes major obstacles to learning, Key School’s intensive program helps close the gap between students’ achievement and potential, enabling most students to transition after two to three years.
Our Goals
- Close the gap between performance and potential.
- Develop new neural pathways for reading, writing, and spelling.
- Build a deep understanding of math concepts.
- Foster a learning culture that is intellectually engaging and promotes curiosity, perseverance, resiliency, and a growth mindset.
- Provide a comprehensive college preparatory curriculum while preparing students to apply new tools and strategies across learning environments.
- Develop skills needed for critical thinking, independence, self-advocacy, organization, planning, and time management.
- Educate our Carolina Day School faculty and families and the larger regional community about dyslexia and its lifelong impact by providing information, support, and resources.
Our Secret to Success: Small Class Sizes and Exceptionally Trained Teachers
In core areas such as reading, writing, and spelling, Key students benefit from a low student teacher ratio of 3:1 in the youngest grades and 4:1 in the upper grades. Every teacher at Key School fosters and exemplifies continuous improvement and lifelong learning. Each language teacher has completed a rigorous supervised clinical teaching experience to ensure a high level of competency with multisensory structured language instructional principles. Math teachers are likewise trained in the multisensory math principles and approach.
Key School provides its own internationally accredited teacher training program to all faculty under the supervision of a Fellow of the Orton-Gillingham Academy (OGA). Key uses the curriculum standards of OGA and is accredited by the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC). Every teacher at Key School is Orton-Gillingham trained; two-thirds of the faculty have achieved national certification in multisensory language teaching and are credentialed at the Certified Academic Language Practitioner level or the Certified Academic Language Therapist level.
Our partner, Key Learning Center, serves as a community resource for dyslexia education and training in the Western North Carolina region and beyond.
Our Promises
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Your child’s teachers will work hard to know and understand your child well, on an academic and emotional level.
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We will maintain a diagnostic/prescriptive approach in all of our instruction, tailoring our lessons to meet the needs of your child.
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We will provide continuous communication about your child’s progress.
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We will be receptive to your questions and concerns.
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We will offer your child a safe, nurturing, respectful learning environment that provides him/her with opportunities to experience success daily and to explore his/her gifts.
Key School Tour
Accreditation
The Key School language program holds two of the most highly regarded accreditations in the field of dyslexia.
