Welcome to GAMS Special Education Department
Our goal is to help all students see beyond the stereotypes and myths about learning differences and understand that with perseverance, a positive attitude and appropriate help, people with learning differences can soar. Everyone faces challenges and problems. Success lies in how you deal with them.
Program Overview
Three main components make up our program. First, our department offers replacement math and/or language arts. To meet each individual’s learning needs, highly qualified learning support teachers work with students in small group settings which allows more individualized instruction.
Second, learning support teachers co-teach with other GAMS teachers. This instructional delivery design reduces student-to-teacher ratio and provides more one-on-one instruction within a regular class setting, and since both teachers work with all students, everyone benefits.
Finally, the third component of the program is support services. Our support periods provide ongoing assistance in a structured small group setting in which students receive additional help with concepts taught in all their classes.
The middle school also offers two special reading programs for learning support students. For students who learn best from a phonemic-based program, we use the Wilson Reading System, a program designed to give students a system for sounding out words and for spelling words. Students learn different increasingly difficult syllable types as they move through the program.
The second special reading program, Read Naturally is taught in the sixth grade and then offered as a supplementary reading program in seventh and eighth grades to those students who desire to continue with this program. Read Naturally is designed specifically to improve reading fluency, comprehension and writing skills.
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation. - John F. Kennedy
Human Service Agencies
Franklin/Fulton County ARC
(717) 264-4390
Franklin/Fulton County
Developmental Disabilities Office
(717) 709-4321
Franklin County Children & Youth
(717) 263-1900
Franklin County Information & Referral
(717) 261-2561
Parent Education Network
SAM Service Access and Management, Inc.
(717) 261-1555
Bureau of Special Education Consult Line
(800) 879-2301
Special Kids Network
(800) 986-4550