Orton Gillingham

Stephanie Bieberly presented an overview of an Orton-Gillingham based program called Multi-Sensory Reading, Writing, and Spelling to our Reading PLC group on January 25, 2008.

Characteristics of the Program:

  • Uses all pathways of learning (visual, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic).
  • Circular approach-every lesson starts with a review of previously learned patterns.
  • Phonics based approach knowing that students need decoding skills.
  • Each lesson is explicitly taught part to whole (analytic).
  • Students learn to take a given word and break it apart-whole to part (synthetic).
  • Reading and writing go hand in hand.
  • Lessons are structured, sequential, and repetitive.
  • New skills taught are always connected to previous learning.
  • Since dyslexia is a language-based processing disorder, this approach teaches students how the language works and why it is that way.
  • Diagnostic assessment happens daily. Lessons are prescriptive based on observations.

Lesson Design

  1. Review previously learned patterns.
    • Visual -teacher says, student looks and repeats.
    • Tactile/Kinesthetic-student looks, says, and traces (plastic craft mat, carpet square, gel baggy, saltbox)
    • Auditory-teacher says and students spells (white board, chalkboard, paper)
    • Blending activity-student blends sounds on the table
  2. Introduce new patterns.
    • Visual -teacher says, student looks and repeats.
    • Tactile/Kinesthetic-student looks, says, and traces (plastic craft mat, carpet square, gel baggy, sand)
    • Auditory-teacher says and students spells (white board, chalkboard, paper)
    • Blending activity-student blends sounds on the table
  3. Reading for Word Attack
    • Read words, phrases and sentences that incorporate the new pattern with previously learned ones.
  4. Dictation of Words/Sentences
    • Choose 5-10 words from the word attack pages for dictation.
    • Choose 2-4 sentences to dictate-good time to work on sentence structure, grammar, etc.
  5. Reading for Comprehension
  6. Writing for Comprehension and the Writing Process

Helpful Websites and Resources:

SPIRE and Other Multi-Sensory Materials

Foundations

Wilson Language

Alphabetic Phonics

Institute for Multi-Sensory Education - The Orton-Gillingham website.

Go Phonics - A K-2 literacy program.

Reading Rockets - Information about multi-sensory structured language programs.

Education Tutorial Consortium - A resource for multisensory materials including basic sound cards and intermediate prefix, root, and suffix cards.

Bright Solutions

Resource: