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
- 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
- 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
- Reading for Word Attack
- Read words, phrases and sentences that incorporate the new pattern with previously learned ones.
- 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.
- Reading for Comprehension
- Writing for Comprehension and the Writing Process
Helpful Websites and Resources:
SPIRE and Other Multi-Sensory Materials
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.