ROELAND PARK, Kan. — October is Dyslexia Awareness Month.
Horizon Academy in Roeland Park is offering free dyslexia screenings for children ages four to six. The school is teaching its students to use their learning disabilities as a gift.
Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability with a wide range of symptoms and can make it difficult for people to master specific language skills, particularly reading.
“Kids with dyslexia require a lot more of that sensory integration, and a lot more repetition,” Horizon Academy teacher Katlin Gardner said.
Teachers like Gardner are changing the way students learn.
“They’re reading a story and guessing a word with context clues and things. That’s not going to be helpful when they’re reading things that no longer have pictures in them,” she said.
“We can prevent a lot of the damage that can be done by not being taught correctly in the first place,” Director of Therapeutic Language and Literacy at Horizon Academy Gabi Guillory Welsh said.
She said early intervention is key with dyslexia.
“We can start to build the love for reading before our students begin to develop a negative relationship with reading and learning,” Guillory Welsh said.
Just like the walls of Horizon Academy show, some of the world’s best and brightest scientist, actors, activists and more have dyslexia, too.
“It all becomes this exciting exploration for them instead of just learning strategies for guessing,” Guillory Welsh said.
Horizon Academy encourages you to screen your four-to six-year-old if you think they could be showing signs of dyslexia.
You can begin the screening by filling out this form.
