How The Orton-Gillingham Approach For Reading Instruction Helps Simplify The Learning Process

How The Orton-Gillingham Approach For Reading Instruction Helps Simplify The Learning Process

Reading is a fundamental skill necessary for every area of life. While there's no doubt of its importance, children across the country struggle to develop the basic skills necessary to grow into proficient readers. One approach, known as Orton-Gillingham, is gaining newfound popularity thanks to its targeted strategies for struggling readers. While it has been used for years, a resurgence in classroom implementation is changing the way students view reading and opening doors to comprehension and proficiency previously closed.

What Is The Orton-Gillingham Approach?

The Orton-Gillingham approach focuses on the connections between sounds and letters, breaking the process of reading into smaller skills that are built upon over time. Additionally, utilizing a groundbreaking multisensory approach, which implements hearing, sound, movement, and touch, which is proven to assist students with connecting language with words and letters, it is highly effective for those with dyslexia.

How Orton-Gillingham Works

Orton-Gilliingham uses multiple avenues to simplify the reading process and help students understand why words work the way they do. It brings reading down to the word level instead of focusing on the big picture. Using numerous teaching pathways, students can learn, for example, each letter by seeing what it looks like and saying its name while simultaneously writing it in a fun substance like sand or shaving cream.

Additionally, this highly-effective approach places great importance on helping students understand the "why" and "how" behind reading. They can explore the reasoning behind why the letter c sounds one way in cat and another way in cent. By teaching them consistent patterns and rules, they can learn to decode words by themselves.

To start the process, the student receives a comprehensive assessment from a teacher or trained specialist, determining their current reading level and strengths and weakness. They will then receive small group instruction with others at a similar level. All instructors follow a very structured approach, teaching the students skills in a specific order developed from an understanding of children's natural language development.

In practice, this process would entail the group learning how to make the connection between sounds and the letters they represent. Next, they will learn how to recognize the sounds within words. In order to move to the next skill, each student must master the current one, preventing them from falling behind. If a student is struggling, the teacher will restart their instruction from the beginning, helping to ensure proper comprehension of each skill.

Since all students learn at their own pace, the Orton Gillingham approach is highly effective at preventing them from learning at a pace that is either too fast or too slow, creating a customized learning experience with proven results.

Key Takeaways

• The Orton-Gillingham approach is designed to assist students who struggle to understand and implement reading skills.

• Orton-Gillingham uses a step-by-step approach developed to mimic a child's natural language development process.

• Students must first master their current reading skill before moving to the next one.