Page 73 - South Mississippi Living - April, 2022

RIGHT: Lighthouse Academy serves 42 students in grades two through six.
LEFT: Makya Odoms has made great progress at Lighthouse
Academy.
nothing helped. Lighthouse Academy heard her concerns and worked with her to get Makya the help she needed. “My child no longer has melt downs. She loves going to school. But, most of all when I ask Makya what she learned at school, she’s able to tell me everything,” she said. “She has confidence in herself and I love it. She loves learning about the Bible. She helps with reading to her little sister. Lighthouse Academy will forever be our family.”
A stated goal of Lighthouse Academy is to return students to the general ed classroom. “Most of our students finish the program in three to four years. The highly trained staff at Lighthouse works with the parents to determine the
best course of action,” Hill said. “Since our instruction is highly individualized, we meet students where they are to determine how to best guide their instruction to tailor to their needs.”
The school doesn’t base any of the students’ progress off standardized test scores. They do track their growth through quarterly mastery checks, and hope to follow students beyond their time at Lighthouse.
The Orton-Gillingham method of teaching, used since the early 1930s to help struggling readers, is used. It’s a highly structured, systematic reading instruction that is multi-sensory in nature to teach students to read. It follows the Science of Reading that says students should be directly taught phonics instruction through a sequential method of
teaching, and is most often used in small groups focusing on reading, writing, and spelling.
The mission of Lighthouse Academy for Dyslexia is to foster community-wide awareness of dyslexia, to identify children with the characteristics of dyslexia, and to provide an academic rich, research-based, multi-sensory, educational environment to include positive experiences that challenge students while building necessary skills for academic and personal success.
610 Ward Ave., Ocean Springs 228.447.4941 www.lighthousedyslexia.org
Proud supporter of Lighthouse Academy
SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living | www.smliving.net April 2022 | 73