Your Questions Answered: Does Seton Offer Dyslexia Evaluations?

What if my child needs more time for high school-level coursework?

Homeschooling allows parents to make several accommodations more flexibly than in a classroom setting.

For example, you can give your student extended time to complete assignments, use visual/audio aids and learning tools such as calculators and speech-to-text, and arrange your child’s workspace and schedule to fit his needs and abilities.

Our Special Services Department can further assist you by offering curriculum modifications. No matter the age or level of your student, our goal is to tailor the curriculum as much as possible to your student’s needs, ability, and academic level.

We have several options for adapting and modifying high school classes that vary case by case. Please get in touch with us to discuss your specific situation and find out if a Special Services curriculum plan is the right fit for your student.

Does Seton offer dyslexia evaluations?

Seton offers the Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment (DORA) by Let’s Go Learn. The DORA test is a K-12 test designed to test a student’s word recognition, phonics, phonemic awareness, and spelling, common in dyslexia screeners, especially in the primary grades.

This test goes further and tests oral vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency. This fully adaptive test responds to your student’s answer to each question by adapting the next question to an easier or more difficult question.

While this test cannot diagnose dyslexia, it gives a comprehensive picture of the student’s reading skill level and identifies areas the student may struggle with. You can read more about DORA by Let’s Go Learn and order it through Seton Testing Services here.

My son’s lesson plans have extra assignments. Do we complete all of them?

In the Special Services Department, we design a curriculum for each student. Often, this requires an approach that is unique to your child.

We have standard and adapted lesson plans, but not all curriculum designs are the same, and your child may have different assignments than you see in the lesson plan.

Your student must only complete the assignments discussed during your curriculum call with Special Services. When meeting with your counselor, it is a good idea to note which classes will have modifications and what those modifications will be.

To confirm the assignments your student needs to complete, you can always refer to the SS Quarter Report Forms or your MySeton page for an outline of assignments that need to be completed.

– Special Services Staff

Our 7th-grade daughter’s lesson plans reference Voyages in English. Do we need to buy this book?

You do not need to purchase the Voyages in English book. Everything you need from Voyages in English to complete English 7 can be found in your lesson plans.

Whenever an English assignment includes a quote from Voyages in English, the student should read the quote in the lesson plan and then do the work assigned in the lesson plan.

Voyages in English was part of an older series of Catholic English grammar books. These were used successfully for many years in Catholic schools and are used by many Catholic homeschoolers today. We occasionally include excerpts from the Voyages books in our lesson plans to explain specific grammar and composition topics further. Seton gives credit to these ideas by listing the page number and the title of the Voyages book whenever we quote from it – citing the source.

– Christina Nutt, Academic Counselor

What high school electives can we choose as we prepare for next year?

In the Seton high school course schedule, students must take certain courses in specific subject areas to graduate.

There are also “free spaces” in the student’s list of HS credits that need to be filled with courses of the student’s choosing, which can be from any subject category. These “free spaces” are elective courses.

Electives enable students to earn academic credit towards their diploma while studying subjects that interest them.

Students taking the Academic Diploma need three elective credits to graduate. Seton does not have a set list of electives. Students may choose their electives from any of Seton’s courses that are not already required for the diploma.

Independent Study courses that have received approval from Seton can also count for elective credit. If you or your students have any questions, feel free to contact our HS Counselors: counselors@setonhome.org

– Amy Nutt, Admissions Consultant

Why I Love Seton’s Online Printable Lesson Plans

Seton’s Online Printable Lesson Plan Creator can make your homeschool day run so much more smoothly and help students with independence and accountability.

Over the course of 28 years, we have enrolled our nine children with Seton Home Study School, with five graduates. That tells you we are big fans of the excellent curriculum Seton provides. If you are not using this feature, I would encourage you to do so.

To Use the Online Printable Lesson Plan Creator:

• Go to your MySeton page, click on the Courses tab, and then on the Print Lesson Plans tab.
• On the Daily Lesson Plan Creator, you can choose to print either weekly plans or daily — just click on the tab you would prefer
• Select the courses to be printed (and the week you would like), then select ‘Create Lesson Plans.
• Edit and customize the plans for each student before you print them if desired.

Cheryl Hernández, Dade City, FL