By Dr. Tiffany Arrington, School Psychologist, Horizon Academy The holiday season can be a time of joy and celebration, but for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities, it can be a time of heightened stress and anxiety. At Horizon Academy, we understand that our students are infinitely brave, yet frequently tender, and the holidays can be overwhelming due to unfamiliar routines, extended family dynamics, and social pressures. But with some thoughtful preparation, we can help reduce the stress these special students face and create an environment where they feel empowered, supported, and understood. 1. Prime Them for Social…

Everybody is giving thanks this time of year and it’s wonderful! Many of us spend time in contemplation of what makes us truly grateful and then share those feelings with the people in our lives. This year, let’s set an intention to continue the practice into the new year and beyond. Gratitude when practiced regularly, becomes a mindset that can significantly enhance your well-being. Whether you're reflecting on the small moments in your day or the larger milestones in your life, gratitude has a profound impact on both your mental and physical health. Research shows that cultivating a regular practice…

Horizon Academy is conducting free screenings for parents of children 4-6 years of age who are at risk for dyslexia. The screenings are available during October and November 2024.  Step One. Fill out the form online. https://shorturl.at/W9osa  Step Two. Horizon Academy reaches out to do the informal screening with the parent, who answers questions about the child over the phone.  Step Three. Horizon Academy shares information and recommendations that may be of value based on the screening results.  More information about the screening: Horizon Academy provides free dyslexia screenings through a brief 10-minute phone interview with parents. The phone screening…

At first glance, it may seem like dyslexia and poetry just don’t mix! But if we pull back the curtain, we reveal that poetry offers many gifts to a dyslexic reader-to-be. Poetry, shall I compare thee to a summer’s day prose? Before history (or the stories about what happened in a community) was recorded in writing, it was preserved orally. Oral history is done best through poems! Why? The devices poetry employs lend to memorization, and before writing, storytellers had to remember stories somehow. The Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as other ancient civilizations’ oldest stories, were spoken and…

Horizon Academy is currently enrolling kindergarten students who are at risk for dyslexia for the 2024-2025 school year. Ours is the first early intervention program of this kind in the region. Horizon Academy is the only school accredited by the Orton-Gillingham Academy in the western half of the United States. The Orton-Gillingham Approach is the gold standard for educating individuals with dyslexia. Established in 1999, Horizon Academy has a 25-year history of working with students with learning disabilities and has been further focused exclusively on students with a primary diagnosis of dyslexia for the last decade. “This program is the…

At Horizon Academy, we want to help you and your family reduce stress and increase the likelihood of success during what is a traditionally hectic time of year known as “back to school”. Here are some Executive Functioning Best Practices to give your child the smoothest transition possible this year! MEET Have a family meeting with your kids. How are they feeling about returning to school? What are they looking forward to? What is worrying them? What needs to happen to be ready by the first day? For some students having a countdown until school starts is a wonderful idea;…

“Prepare the child for the path instead of the path for the child.” - T. Elmore As a teacher and as a parent, I can think of nothing more valuable than having children feel comfortable in their own skin, confident about themselves, and able to communicate their needs with others. Here at Horizon Academy, we began incorporating explicit instruction of Executive Functioning skills because we thought this would be beneficial for our students’ academics (especially for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities). However, it is becoming so much more than that. Executive Functioning (EF) skills are the ten…

The mission of Horizon Academy is to empower students diagnosed with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities to become effective learners and confident self-advocates. One of the ways in which we empower our students is through effective literacy instruction using Orton-Gillingham principles. In our daily Therapeutic Language and Literacy Classes (TLC), students learn skills including phonological awareness (recognition of sounds), phonics (mapping sounds to letters), decoding (reading phonics-based words), and encoding (spelling phonics-based words) to support progress with reading fluency.  However, skilled reading does not result solely from accurate decoding of words; comprehension of what is being read is also…

Before my time at Horizon Academy, my relationship with school was anything but positive; in fact, it was quite intimidating. Reading posed a challenge for me, I vividly recall the frustration of being pulled out of class during reading sessions. In the third grade, I reached a breaking point when I pretended to read, feeling like a failure. Thankfully, I gathered the courage to admit my difficulties to my teacher, leading to a life-changing dyslexia diagnosis following an evaluation. Despite receiving a dyslexia diagnosis, the school's additional support didn't tackle my core challenges. My fear of school persisted, worsened by…

Does your child: Have difficulty sitting still in class for a 30-minute lesson? Have meltdowns when having to go to an assembly in a loud gym? Refuse to wear certain clothes? Bump into things or people when walking the halls? Get upset during lunch with the smell of a peer’s lunch? Get distracted by a visually stimulating classroom? Have difficulty with bladder control? If you answered yes to some of these questions then your child may have a sensory processing disorder (SPD).  Sensory processing is the ability of the brain to take in, organize, and interpret information from our senses.…