Structured Flexibility

5.22.19

Orton-Gillingham Philosophy

The Orton-Gillingham approach is a “philosophy not a system”, which considers language to be a science (p.41). The most complete programs “cover all aspects of total written language,” counting reading, handwriting, spelling and writing as one body of knowledge. Orton-Gillingham teachers must understand the reasons behind their teaching methods and connect all new learning to earlier learning. The Orton-Gillingham philosophy takes all three learning channels into account and invites students to learn by simultaneously engaging their visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile senses.

Why multi-sensory teaching?

It is important to engage students' visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile channels. While many students rely heavily upon visual cues, it is not feasible to memorize every single word in the English language by taking a mental pictures of each word. Rather, learning reliable sounds of individual letters and letter combinations, students can focus on finding patterns. Furthermore, dissecting mouth placement for frequently confused phonemes can build confidence by giving students a deeper understanding of the language. Arguably the most essential learning channel to Orton and Gillingham is kinesthetic-tactile. Allowing students to learn writing in conjunction with reading often strengthens their reading skills. In fact, in opposition to many modern-day programs, some students learn to read best by learning to write first.

Orton & Gillingham Differences

Dr. Orton and his wife are often clumped together with Anna Gillingham and her comrade, Bessie Stillman. Nevertheless, there are distinct differences in some of what they held to be best practice. In the chart below I contrast some of their views.

While these differences exist, Orton and Gillingham’s approaches are more similar than different with their strong arguments for multi-sensory teaching and emphasis on the importance of building automatically firing “memory chains” (p. 50)