School Resources
Knowledge is power.
T.O.T.S is dedicated to ensuring faculty, staff and parents have the most up-to-date knowledge and information on child development and learning readiness. We are happy to customize any of these topics to the needs of your school.
Faculty/Teacher Seminars
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Learning readiness is distinctly different from school readiness.
A child is ready to learn when they are cognitively organized, physically calm, and socially connected. Heidi will explain the neurology behind learning readiness and she will provide easy-to-implement, age-appropriate strategies to ready your students for learning. She will clarify the difference between learning readiness challenges and the increase in diagnoses of ADHD, learning differences, and ASD. You will walk away with strategies for your classroom and talking points for your students and their parents.
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Are you interested in adding Occupational Therapy Services into your independent school, but are uncertain about how to do so, what that support might look like, what the billing structure might be, and where to start. This seminar tackles the many challenges of initiating the provision of Occupational Therapy services to your students, as well as, how to customize the OT services and support to meet your school’s unique needs.
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Talking to parents about a learning concern, like math or reading, can sometimes be easier than bringing up topics like social skills, learning readiness, the performance/potential gap, physical abilities, or sleep/diet concerns. This seminar gives you straightforward, transparent techniques and strategies to use when talking about non-academic classroom concerns.
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The following statements are all true:
each child’s motor skills development is unique to them
there are developmental norms for every motor skill
the CDC recently revised the developmental milestone norms
in the US, we push the developmental limits of most motor skills
In this session, Heidi provides guidance and parameters on how to manage fine motor development that will help ensure optimum motor development in your students.
Every school chooses a handwriting curriculum to best meet the needs of their children. Heidi discusses the pros and cons of commonly used curricula and explores the relevance of print, cursive, and keyboarding.
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In this presentation, we discuss the 3 areas teachers have the most impact on: themselves, their space, and their students. We then focus on space and explore the history of the classroom environment and the impact of the environment on learning. We review current research on the impact of light, sound, and clutter on learning. Heidi provides simple, easy-to-implement changes that can powerfully impact the academic experience for today’s student.
Parent Seminars
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As parents, we all desire the best for our children. In today’s world, there are so many definitions of success that we can become overwhelmed or even immobilized by trying to find the best parenting tools and strategies.
As a pediatric occupational therapist, Heidi walks the challenging journey of parenthood with families every day. In this session, Heidi will help you identify developmentally appropriate goals for your young children. You will leave this session with tools that will ensure classroom success and give your child a solid foundation for achievement in their future endeavors. You will clearly understand the difference between school readiness and learning readiness. And, you will be equipped with the 3 basic skills that will single-handedly enhance your child’s classroom performance.
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Handwriting is a critically necessary, but sometimes challenging aspect of learning. In this presentation, parents learn what is developmentally appropriate in regards to pencil grip, writing endurance, letter formation, the print/cursive/keyboard choice, dysgraphia, disorders of written expression, fine motor skills, writing expectations, and much more. You will leave the seminar with the knowledge and tools to appropriately support your child’s writing development, written expression, and writing endeavors.
