At Home in the Universe: Academic Growth in a Neurodiverse Classroom

At Supported Pathways Learning Center, we believe every student deserves a space to grow where their unique ways of learning are embraced. Thanks to a carefully designed environment tailored to the needs of autistic and other neurodivergent students, we’re seeing remarkable academic progress across every subject and grade level and discovering confidence, connection, and joy in learning.

Our students aren’t just learning - they’re thriving!

Meeting Students Where They Are - And Watching Them Grow to the Outer Limits

From Kindergarten through fifth grade, students are diving into core subjects with individualized supports and accommodations that honor how they learn best.

For our early readers, this means working on letter sounds and blending to form words—skills that are foundational for unlocking the world of literacy.

Students read 1 on 1 with the instructor to work on sounding out words, reading comprehension, and everything in between. Each student reads independently for at least ten to twenty minutes during their day. We also have spelling words that the students practice daily with different activities such as rainbow writing, word searches, fill-in-the-blank, matching definitions, and sentence building.

For first and second grade readers, students are building phonics knowledge, decoding words, and even discovering the moral lessons behind classic fables. By later grades, they’re crafting persuasive arguments, learning to support their opinions with strong reasons and evidence. These are powerful academic milestones, made possible through direct instruction, visual supports, and social scaffolds that reduce anxiety and increase participation.

Hands-On Learning That Sparks Curiosity and Growth

In math, we see students exploring abstract concepts through concrete, sensory-integrated activities. Each student works at their own pace on the level that is appropriate for them with the help of our instructor, Jordyn. Our classroom has multiple math manipulatives that are always accessible to students to utilize as needed. Those manipulatives include counting chips, counting blocks, weight scales, whiteboards, multiplication charts, and many more! They help make numbers tangible for every task from measuring length to adding and subtracting fractions.

Science and Art: Growing Together

We often tie Science and Art together because both are all about discovery.

Many of our Science and Art lessons have to do with the world around us, and they often reflect how our world changes as the seasons change. At the end of summer, we learned about the life cycle of butterflies and the water cycle. During the fall we learned about how and why leaves change color and about the life cycle and parts of a pumpkin. We cut open a pumpkin, and any student who wanted to dive into the slimy bits were able to help scoop out the seeds.

Holidays also serve as engaging themes for learning. We explored the skeletal system during Halloween, and St. Patrick's Day rainbows brought the opportunity to learn about color. Students learned about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and practiced mixing colors. From there, we focused on how rainbows are formed as we talked about rain and the transition to spring.

As we make observations about the world around us, we often have the chance to talk about our 5 senses. But we don't just talk about what we can perceive with our senses - we dive into how those senses pick up information. For example, we created and decorated cup phones while learning about sound and how it travels.

Our students got into research and completed projects on animals in different habitats. We are developing the mindset of scientists: asking questions, investigating the world around us, and sharing what we learn.

A favorite recent unit centered around the solar system with different hands-on activities: crafting planetary models from paper and assembling flip-books of solar system facts.

A Pathway That Honors Every Learner

At Supported Pathways Learning Center, academic achievement looks different for every child, but the progress is real and deeply meaningful. With the right accommodations and a caring, responsive environment, our students are reaching higher - truly, reaching for the stars.

We’re honored to walk alongside them on their learning journeys, and we can’t wait to see how far they'll go!