Orton-Gillingham is a powerful approach to teaching reading and spelling.
Trained Orton-Gillingham practitioners have had remarkable success with the program’s multisensory approach for over 70 years.
Although the program is best known for its effectiveness in teaching those with dyslexia, Orton-Gillingham methods can be adapted to benefit all developing readers.
Orton-Gillingham is an approach that teaches children and/or adults with dyslexia or reading disorders how to read.
Orton-Gillingham offers systematic, structured, and multisensory reading instruction that is highly successful and geared to the specific reading needs of individuals.
Since 80% of students classified as “Learning Disabled” are Dyslexic, this approach allows a school division to provide meaningful instruction to those students who have been unsuccessful with previous programs and provides alternatives to support their language needs and learning style.
The course allows teachers to understand the needs of a Dyslexic student and how to support their language development during the school day.
OG Main Components
The Orton-Gillingham Approach has been rightfully described as language-based, multisensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive, and flexible. These characteristics can be easily amplified and extended as they are in the following attributes.
The basic purpose of everything that is done in the Orton-Gillingham Approach, from recognizing words to composing a poem, is assisting the student to become a competent reader, writer and independent learner.
Personalized
Teaching begins with recognizing the differing needs of learners. While those with dyslexia share similarities, there are differences in their language needs. In addition individuals with dyslexia may possess additional problems that complicate learning. Most common among these are attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADHD).
Multisensory
It uses all the learning pathways: seeing, hearing, feeling, and awareness of motion, brought together by the thinking brain. The instructor engages in multisensory teaching to convey curricular content in the most understandable way to the student. The teacher also models how the student, by using these multiple pathways, can engage in multisensory learning that results in greater ease and success in learning.
Diagnostic and Prescriptive
An Orton-Gillingham lesson is both diagnostic and prescriptive. It is diagnostic in the sense that the instructor continuously monitors the verbal, nonverbal, and written responses of the student to identify and analyze both the student’s problems and progress. This information is the basis of planning the next lesson. That lesson is prescriptive in the sense that will contain instructional elements that focus upon the resolution of the student’s difficulties and that build upon the student’s progress noted in the previous lesson.
Direct Instruction
The teacher presentations employ lesson formats which ensure that the student approaches the learning experience understanding what is to be learned, why it is to be learned, and how it is to be learned.
Systematic Phonics
It uses systematic phonics, stressing the alphabetic principle in the initial stages of reading development. It takes advantage of the sound/symbol relationships inherent in the alphabetic system of writing. Spoken words are made up of individual speech sounds, and the letters of written words graphically represent those speech sounds.
Applied Linguistics
It draws upon applied linguistics not only in the initial decoding and encoding stages of reading and writing but in more advanced stages dealing with syllabic, morphemic, syntactic, semantic, and grammatic structures of language and our writing system. At all times the Orton-Gillingham Approach involves the student in integrative practices that involve reading, spelling, and writing together.
Linguistic Competence
It increases linguistic competence by stressing language patterns that determine word order and sentence structure and the meaning of words and phrases. It moves beyond this to recognizing the various forms that characterize the common literary forms employed by writers.
Systematic and Structured
The teacher presents information in an ordered way that indicates the relationship between the material taught and past material taught. Curricular content unfolds in linguistically logical ways which facilitates student learning and progress.
Sequential, Incremental, and Cumulative
Step by step learners move from the simple, well-learned material to that which is more and more complex. They move from one step to the next as they master each level of language skills.
Continuous Feedback and Positive Reinforcement
The approach provides for a close teacher-student relationship that builds self-confidence based on success.
Cognitive Approach
Students understand the reasons for what they are learning and for the learning strategies they are employing. Confidence is gained as they gain in their ability to apply newly gained knowledge about and knowledge how to develop their skills with reading, spelling, and writing.
Emotionally Sound
Students’ feelings about themselves and about learning are vital. Teaching is directed toward providing the experience of success. With success comes increased self-confidence and motivation.
The use of multisensory methods makes links between the visual (what we see), auditory (what we hear), and kinesthetic-tactile (what we feel); this provides students with three pathways for learning sound, letters, and letter formation (Henry, 2000). These pathways are taught together (e.g., learning a new letter or pattern, carefully tracing it with correct and consistent strokes to form the letter, as in the curve of “d” before the stick, and pronouncing the corresponding sound). Henry (2003) found that these techniques, used in special interventions for students with dyslexia, enhance memory and learning; these techniques are not only beneficial for students with dyslexia, but also for all children learning the foundation skills for reading.
Recommended Reading
by Anna Gillingham; Bessie Whitmore Stillman
A Guide to Teaching Phonics By: Judy Lyday Orton
This simple, yet thorough, guide to teaching phonics provides parents and teachers with the reasons why phonetic skills are important to learn, how such concepts should be taught, and lists of organized phonics arranged by lesson. 88 pages, paperback. Spiral-binding. Evolution is mentioned while explaining the history of speech development.
Develop skills for reading and spelling
By: Jean S. Osman and Paula D. Rome
This multisensory, Orton-Gillingham based program teaches reading and spelling to students with language based learning difficulties. The Language Tool Kit and Advanced Language Tool Kit can be used by parents, teachers, and tutors who are unfamiliar with either specific language disability and/or the Orton-Gillingham approach. It is appropriate for use with students of any age who are struggling with reading.
Put Reading First - National Institute for Literacy
In today’s schools, too many children struggle with learning to read. As many teachers and parents will attest, reading failure has exacted a tremendous long-term consequence for children’s developing self-confidence and motivation to learn, as well as for their later school performance. While there are no easy answers or quick solutions for optimizing reading achievement, an extensive knowledge base now exists to show us the skills children must learn in order to read well. These skills provide the basis for sound curriculum decisions and instructional approaches that can help prevent the predictable consequences of early reading failure. The National Reading Panel (NRP) issued a report in 2000 that responded to a Congressional mandate to help parents, teachers, and policymakers identify key skills and methods central to reading achievement. The Panel was charged with reviewing research in reading instruction (focusing on the critical years of kindergarten through third grade) and identifying methods that consistently relate to reading success.
Chall’s Stages of Reading Development Source: Jeanne S. Chall, Stages of Reading Development. N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983.
The Importance of Automaticity and Fluency for Efficient Reading Comprehension - Hook and Jones, 2004
Making Sense of Text: Skills That Support Text Comprehension and Its Development - Cain, 2009
Statistical Learning in printed words - 2017
Multisensory approach to working memory - 2015
My Orton-Gillingham Academy Lineage
Dr. Orton & Anna Gillingham
Diana Hanbury King Founding Fellow of the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners & Educators and a member of the International Dyslexia Association (formerly known as the Orton Dyslexia Society) since 1951. Diana received the New York Branch Annual Award (1985), the Samuel T. Orton Award (1990), and the Margaret Byrd Rawson Lifetime Achievement Award (2013) for her work on the national level. In 2016, she received the National Teachers Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award, only the second time in 25 years that they have bestowed this honour.
Dawn Nieman - Niemanville
Valdine Bjornson
Founding Fellows and History of the Orton-Gillingham Academy
Accredited OGA - IDA STRUCTURED LITERACY (CERI)
The Center for Effective Reading Instruction (CERI), an affiliate of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), is pleased to offer professional certificates and certifications to qualified individuals teaching and supporting reading in public and private general, remedial, and special education settings. These certificates and certifications include:
Structured Literacy Classroom Teacher Knowledge Certificate (C-SLCT) = Classroom Educator OGA
Structured Literacy Dyslexia Interventionist (C-SLDI) = Associate OGA
Structured Literacy Dyslexia Specialist (C-SLDS) = Certified OGA
CERI certificates and certifications reflect the common features of national and international certifying body standards that define the minimum requirements for a professional certification program to be considered valid and reliable. Included among these features are stakeholder involvement and the separation of candidate training activities from certification activities.
CERI certificates and certifications were developed with the input of multiple stakeholder groups, including, but not limited to: general educators and remedial reading interventionists employed in public and private settings; higher education faculty; reading researchers; speech language pathologists; independent educator training organizations and companies reflecting a variety of programs and approaches; public and private school administrators; state department of education representatives. When establishing the minimum total practicum hours and impact requirements for certified Structured Literacy/Dyslexia Interventionists and Structured Literacy/Dyslexia Specialists for example, CERI carefully evaluated the scientific research concerning impaired readers’ response to interventions provided, consulted researchers within the field, evaluated supervised practicum requirements of other independent reading certification programs and approaches, and secured input from multiple stakeholders through committees and public comment initiatives.