Before coming to Horizon Academy, Brenna Watson was a Special Education Resource Teacher in the public school system. In 2019, Horizon Academy visited her school to host a Learning Disability Simulation. “It was so powerful to see my colleagues experience what some of my students were living every day,” Watson said. Naturally, her personal philosophy on how to educate students with learning disabilities aligned with Horizon Academy’s mission and vision.  Watson came to Horizon Academy in 2020 as a homeroom teacher, where she is an active part of educating students and implementing the tools and strategies she knows they need…

By Michael Chamberlain, PE Teacher 10,714.18 miles. This is the distance between all 48 capitals in the mainland of the United States. This year, my challenge for students is to see if we can walk/run this distance collectively. Each Monday and Thursday, classes pace themselves to work towards milestone goals. Students are awarded a sneaker to display on their locker for each milestone met. The first sneaker is awarded at 10 miles, then at 25 miles, and every 25 miles thereafter. Classes are also competing to collect the coveted Silver Sneakers. These Silver Sneakers are earned once the class completes…

“I want to be a positive influence for students, a cheerleader, helping them to reach their full potential,” says Horizon Academy teacher, Gricelda Garcia. Garcia was deeply impacted by her teachers growing up and the care they put into her education. She wants to positively impact her students in a similar way, by helping them develop a love for learning. Garcia began her teaching career at Fort Leavenworth Unified School District, where she taught elementary for 11 years. There, she saw many students with learning disabilities struggle with the curriculum. “I know how hard it can be for students with…

American Sign Language for the Dyslexia Student By Rachel Denning, Horizon Academy Orton-Gillingham Coach and Instructor Did you know that American Sign Language (ASL) is not just a gestured version of English? It is actually a complete language of its own, with unique rules of pronunciation, word order, and grammatical markers. For this reason, many schools, including Horizon Academy, offer ASL as an option for earning foreign language credits. By studying ASL, students not only learn to communicate using a new language, they also learn about a different culture. Students begin to appreciate the unique characteristics of the Deaf community!…

Math + movement = Success Engaging both the mind and body Emily Staten, Lower School Teacher Imagine you’re a teacher who must cover countless math standards within a school year and your math period is the last hour of the day. By the time math class rolls around, students can’t help but feel exhausted. So what’s a teacher to do? The answer is simple, let the students move, and I’ll explain why. Movement breaks are needed in order to wake up the brain, and when you pair both movement and numeracy something magical happens. The directionality found in skip counting,…

What’s That Word?  Alli Caplinger, Speech and Language Pathologist Understanding words around us is essential to meaningful communication, cognitive development, and is one of the critical pieces to reading acquisition (National Reading Pane, 2001). As stated by Rupley, Logan, and Nichols (1998/1999), ”Vocabulary knowledge is the glue that holds stories, ideas, and content together making comprehension accessible.” Visualize students with language impairments, especially those with vocabulary deficits, as tourists in another country. They may be listening to the foreign language spoken around them but are unable to find meaning in what they are hearing. As the trip goes on, they…

Accommodations and Modifications by Lower School Teacher, Ann Kavanaugh When students struggle, it is important and common for schools to utilize needed accommodations and modifications to support these students and help them to be successful in school relative to their same-age peers. Yet, these should not be relied on as the only resource to help students. To be effective, accommodations and modifications are most beneficial when used with an evidence-based teaching approach by experienced teachers. It is essential that students who struggle receive these specialized services, by well-trained teachers, if they are expected to bridge the gap as they get…

by Aly Burnett, Orton-Gillingham Instructor & Tutor Transfer of Learning is the application of skills, knowledge, and/or attitudes that were learned in one situation to another learning situation (Perkins, 1992).The Orton-Gillingham approach provides cumulative and incremental lessons with multisensory instruction, while also providing individual and explicit instruction. These components are helpful to make Transfer of Learning possible. Cumulative lessons are essential. Repetition of previously taught decoding (reading) /encoding (spelling) skills within each lesson aids in generalization of rules and strategies. Adding multisensory activities helps students see concepts visually and kinesthetically, which for many students is essential for learning material. Having…

Written by Jill Hodge In the last few decades, scientists have learned a lot about how we learn to read and why some people have reading challenges. One of the most significant findings is orthographic mapping. Orthographic mapping is the process our brain uses to store words efficiently for permanent retrieval. To be a good orthographic mapper, you need to develop three skills: Automatic letter-sound associationsAutomatic access to the sounds in spoken words (phonemic awareness)Unconscious/conscious connection of sounds (phonemes) in spoken words to written words Before I dive into this concept, I would like to invite you to chew on these…

Written By Michael McConnell, STEM Instructor I am what sociologists call a digital native. Tim Berners-Lee released the first web browser the month after I was born. (I’ll leave it to curious readers to research and calculate when that was.) There is no “pre-internet” part of my life. Computers and the internet are a part of some of my earliest memories.  The internet has changed drastically over the years and not always for the better. What was originally promoted as the ultimate tool to unite the world and freely share all of human knowledge, turned out to be an equally…