Orton Gillingham Teacher Manual – “Join the journey in support of reading”
WHAT IS ORTON-GILLINGHAM?
Orton-Gillingham is an approach, not a method. This means the O-G practitioner is flexible in the use of materials and the sequence of instruction. Classic Orton-Gillingham is an alternative, research-based, reading, writing, and spelling curriculum designed specifically for dyslexic readers and others struggling with literacy skills.
- Validated by scientific reading research sponsored by The National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences
- Systematic–synthetic phonics emphasizes the alphabetic principle; phonemic awareness; phoneme segmentation and blending; reading comprehension; and reading fluency
- Flexible and individualized – diagnostic/prescriptive teaching enables the tutor to adapt curricular elements to the needs of each student.
- Effective for all ages – a skilled Orton-Gillingham tutor can help students achieve their potential and succeed in general education classes from grade school through college.
- Success-oriented – materials are presented in a direct instruction, multisensory format. Elements are introduced sequentially with cumulative review.
- Skill building – starting with basics, the student moves toward mastery of intermediate, then advanced elements of written language. Reading and spelling accuracy improves, often dramatically, as students learn to utilize letter-sound correspondences, syllable division patterns, and spelling generalizations to decode and spell words.
- Integrated – reading and spelling are taught together using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities simultaneously.
- Developed collaboratively – by a neuroscientist, a psychologist, a teacher, and a circle of their colleagues. As an open-source system, O-G is still evolving.
- Adaptable – for small groups.
Several programs and materials adapted from Classic Orton-Gillingham principles are: Lexia Reading, Alphabetic Phonics, Language!, Project Read, Recipe for Reading, Slingerland, S.P.I.R.E., and Wilson Reading Program.
Most phonics-based, remedial programs used in schools are NOT aligned with the Orton-Gillingham approach.
Orton Gillingham Teacher Manual
