The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct, explicit, multisensory, organized, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive method of teaching literacy to those who struggle with reading, writing, and spelling, such as those with dyslexia. It is an approach that is designed to address the unique needs of each individual student and is implemented by well-trained and experienced instructors who can use it as a powerful tool to improve literacy skills.
The History of Orton-Gillingham
The Orton-Gillingham Approach is based on a combination of time-tested knowledge and practices that have been validated over the past 80 years, as well as scientific evidence about how individuals learn to read and write, and the specific challenges faced by those with dyslexia. The approach is named after Samuel T. Orton and Anna Gillingham, who made foundational and seminal contributions to the field. Samuel Orton, a neuropsychiatrist and pathologist, was a pioneer in focusing attention on reading failure and related language processing difficulties. He brought together neuroscientific information and principles of remediation, and as early as 1925, he had identified dyslexia as an educational problem. Anna Gillingham, a gifted educator, and psychologist, compiled and published instructional materials as early as the 1930s that provided the foundation for student instruction and teacher training in what became known as the Orton-Gillingham Approach.
The Orton-Gillingham Approach is most often associated with a one-on-one teacher-student instructional model, but its use in small-group instruction is not uncommon. It has also been successfully adapted for classroom instruction and is effective in addressing reading, spelling, and writing difficulties. Additionally, the approach has been adapted for use with students who exhibit difficulty with mathematics.
Components of the Orton-Gillingham approach
One of the critical features of the Orton-Gillingham Approach is that it always focuses on the learning needs of the individual student. Orton-Gillingham (OG) practitioners design lessons and materials to work with students at their current level, pace instruction, and introduce new materials according to their individual strengths and weaknesses. This is especially important for students with dyslexia, who need to master the same basic knowledge about language and its relationship to our writing system as any student who seeks to become a competent reader and writer. However, because of their dyslexia, they need more help than most students in sorting, recognizing, and organizing the raw materials of language for thinking and use. Language elements that non-dyslexic learners acquire easily must be taught directly and systematically.
Overall, the Orton-Gillingham Approach is a comprehensive method for teaching literacy to individuals who struggle with reading, writing, and spelling, particularly those with dyslexia. It is an approach that is based on a combination of time-tested knowledge and practices, as well as scientific evidence about how individuals learn to read and write. It is designed to be direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive in its approach, and is implemented by well-trained and experienced instructors. The approach is focused on addressing the unique needs of each individual student and is effective in addressing reading, spelling, and writing difficulties, as well as difficulty with mathematics.
The development of Learn with Koala was assisted by experts in structured literacy, including Orton-Gillingham and Barton tutors, as well as Wilson and other branches of structured literacy. The above-mentioned experts in structured literacy believe that the Orton-Gillingham approach focuses on teaching rules and patterns in a systematic manner, which allows students to understand the underlying principles of reading. This approach helps children apply that knowledge to both decoding new words while reading and encoding new words while writing, by following the same rules. Learn with Koala offers classes for young learners with talented structured literacy tutors trained with the Orton-Gillingham approach. You can find and book those classes on this page.
Happy learning!
