What is Orton Gillingham?
The Orton-Gillingham Approach is based on the teaching philosophy of Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham. In the 1920's, Dr. Orton combined neuroscientific information and principles of language processing remediation. Ms. Gillingham was a gifted educator and linguist with a superb mastery of language and was an early advocate of multisensory teaching. Together they developed the Orton-Gillingham Approach which remains the optimal approach for teaching students with learning differences.
The Orton-Gillingham approach is made up of components that ensure that students are not only able to use learned strategies, but can also explain the how and why of phonological strategies. This instructional approach encourages students by seeing, saying, sounding, and writing letters to master decoding and encoding of words.
The Orton-Gillingham approach emphasizes multisensory learning, which combines sight, hearing, touch, and movement. This approach works well for students with dyslexia who lack a basic level of phonemic awareness.
Students that struggle with reading, writing and spelling can thrive with tutoring using these key featureS :
● Multisensory - Lessons designed using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic methods.
● Sequential - Concepts are taught logically and in sequence.
● Incremental - Each lesson is based upon the previous.
● Cumulative - Previous concepts are constantly and consistently reviewed.
● Individualized - Each student’s lessons are specific to their needs.
● Based on Phonograms - Learning is simplified using letter combinations known as phonograms.
● Explicit - Lessons are clear and straightforward.