Family

Learning Support Programs

Special Needs

The majority of students choose to come to Archbishop Hanna High School to address academic program/learning difficulties. The educational opportunities and structure are ideal for the success of these students. As a student works through the program, a majority of the time, “success breeds success”, meaning that as students experience positive feedback for their efforts and academic work, this encourages them to keep up their good attitudes and work habits. Students are told when they enter Archbishop Hanna High School that “this is the only school you will ever attend where your best is good enough”. The principal explains to them that they need to walk into every classroom every day and work hard ~ giving school their best effort! Every student who follows this advice experiences success! Many students earn Honor Roll status and go home with report cards their parents have never seen before. The self-esteem and pride generated from their success in school carries over to all aspects of their lives.

With such a wide diversity in the academic abilities of the student population, the staff at Archbishop Hanna High School is aware of the need to continually assess and evaluate the students’ progress on a more formal basis. Before a student begins school at Hanna, they are assessed by the WRAT4 test. This testing provides a quick and effective evaluation of a student’s skills in reading and math. This testing will continue annually.

The teaching staff at Archbishop Hanna High School is extremely proficient in the analysis and evaluation of student progress on a consistent and ongoing basis. The staff does a skillful job of measuring student growth through various techniques. These techniques prove valuable for the success and development of the students’ social and educational advancements. Students are constantly aware of how they are doing in a given class. Teachers must record students’ current grades and behavior status each and every Thursday in the Omnis program. The students are then given this progress report that tells the student the grade that they are currently earning in each class and a behavior score for that class.

Archbishop Hanna High School strives to maintain the best analysis and assessment for each student in the program. Knowing the importance of this issue, Hanna hires professional educational consultants who, on a regular basis, perform testing for every student who attends our school. The faculty meets regularly in Student Success Team meetings to discuss how to meet the educational needs of specific students. Staff review IEP’s, past educational records and testing, as well as current performance, educational testing, successes and challenges in learning. Academics

Read to Succeed

The Read to Succeed reading program was implemented in the 2005 summer session. The emphasis is on vocabulary development, as well as improved reading comprehension and fluency. The boys are tested and identified as Level I (K-3 grade), Level II (3-5 grade), Level III (5-7 grade) and Level IV (grade 8 and above) readers, based on the CBM reading fluency test. Besides their regular English course, students at the Level I (K-3 grade) reading level take an additional English Skills course to focus on their decoding and fluency skills. Teachers attended workshops at SCOE (Sonoma County Office of Education) on reading/literacy skills during the 2004-2005 school year. Several reading programs such as Read Naturally, Corrective Reading (SRA), Rewards, Rewards Plus and the Lexia program have been purchased for teacher use. For more details see the Appendix for the Read to Succeed program goals and details.

Write On

The establishment of the Write On writing program has improved the writing skills of the students.

The AHHS Write On writing program which outlines the writing standards at each grade level (7-12) was created in the 2007-08 school year. The three parts of the program are:

  1. AHHS Writing Outcomes
  2. Four Strands of Writing Program ~ Writing Process, Writing Components, Writing Mechanics/Grammar and Writing Applications.
  3. Paragraph Grading Rubric ~ used to evaluate writing.

During the 2007-08 school year, as well as the fall semester of the 2008-09 school year, all students were asked to write a paragraph on a selected topic. The entire faculty and staff graded the writing samples using the school-grading rubric. Feedback from the rubric was given to each student, noting the strengths and areas of improvement in their writing. This activity not only helped students with their writing skills, but made the entire faculty familiar with the grading rubric so it can be used across the curriculum in all courses for continuity. For more details, see the Appendix for the Write On program goals and details.