Dates:
Transition Program For College-Bound High School Graduates:
July 20 to August 2, 2008


Tuition, room & board: $3,000
Financial Aid IS Available!

For College-Bound 2008 Graduates, July 20-August 2

Has your son or daughter already been admitted to a college or university? High-achieving students with learning differences -especially those that stem from AD/HD - often face unanticipated difficulties in their first semester of college and may be at risk for failure. Their problems arise not from a lack of academic skills, but because of the challenges involved in adjusting to a profoundly different educational context.

In Landmark College's Transition program, students are immersed in a living/learning college experience. Students take four linked courses taught by senior faculty members at Landmark College.. They’ll also make use of campus resources — such as the acadmic support center, advising center, and college placement services — to work on individual learning needs as well as academic planning. Extracurricular activities and evening events supplement the residential component of the program, overseen by trained professional Resident Deans and a Resident Assistant staff.

The Transitions program helps prepare students for the profound transition from high school to college, and from home to the residence hall. Your son or daughter will be introduced to college level work and academic strategies. They’ll develop an understanding of their personal learning strengths and needs, and discover what kinds of resources and self-advocacy will support their success in college.

To support a smooth transition to their next college or university, students will be guided to review the support services offered at the institution they plan to attend in the fall. They’ll also develop a comprehensive plan of action with a member of Landmark College’s professional staff.

Curriculum

Students in the Transitions program take the same four courses, which are intended to introduce them to college-level work and to the learning strategies required to meet college-level expectations. Together, these courses are designed to help students:

• Discover strategies for working with the different types of teaching styles and formats they’ll experience in college
• Review the requirements for academic writing, including structure and organization, diction and mechanics
• Practice process strategies for approaching academic writing tasks
• Review and practice the study skills essential for success in introductory college courses, including note-taking, active reading, test-preparation and time-management
• Explore the nature of learning disabilities in general, including the neurological basis of learning disabilities and AD/HD, and the public laws that cover learning disabilities at the postsecondary level
• Discover personal learning strengths and difficulties as the basis for strategy development, self-advocacy and the use of college resources
• Create an individual learning portfolio and transition plan to support the transition to college in the following weeks

Required Courses

I. College Lectures in an Academic Discipline (Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences)
This course will cover the first two weeks of a typical introductory college course in a specific academic discipline. Students will be introduced to the challenges of a primarily lecture teaching style, and to issues involved in handling a college-level reading load and preparing for a unit exam. Students will have the opportunity to prepare for and take a unit exam, and then analyze their performance in order to identify areas of strength and relative weakness.. This course is linked directly to the workshop in reading and study skills.

II. Workshop in Reading and Study Skills
This workshop focuses on the study skills and active reading strategies that college-level content work requires, and on helping students develop individual strategies for mastering the material in college-level courses. Particular attention is paid to materials organization using Landmark’s Master Notebook system, active-reading strategies, note-taking strategies and test preparation. The workshop incorporates a post-test analysis of performance on the College content course unit test designed to help students identify essential strategies for the future.

III. Lectures in Cognition and Learning Differences
This course will introduce key content and activities from Landmark College’s required first-semester course in cognition and learning. It will cover definitions of various learning disabilities (including AD/HD), the neurological basis of different learning differences and the laws related to LD and AD/HD in college settings. It will feature an overall focus on the development of self-understanding and self-advocacy. Students in this course will acquire the information required to write a paper that focuses on their future self-understanding and self-advocacy. This unit is linked directly to the workshop in writing.

IV. Workshop in College Writing
This workshop will use the information and learning in the cognition and learning unit to support students in developing a multi-page academic essay. The workshop focuses on college-level writing as structure and as process. Students will learn standard ways to organize a college-level academic paper. In addition, they will practice writing-process strategies in the areas of generating, organizing, summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing, drafting and editing. A major focus of the workshop is for students to develop an individual sense of their strengths and difficulties as a writer, and to use this as a basis for developing a personal approach to writing as a process.

For more information about the 2008 program, please contact the admissions office at 802.387.6718, or email admissions@landmark.edu.