Mastering the Fundamentals: Unveiling the Timeless Principles of Orton Gillingham Approach to Reading Instruction
Introduction to Orton Gillingham
Orton Gillingham (often referred to as the OG approach) is a structured literacy method that assists struggling readers in acquiring the skills to read and spell by engaging multiple senses:
→ visual
→ auditory
→ kinesthetic-tactile)
through a highly systematic process. Orton-Gillingham teachers are trained to identify each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and any additional obstacles that could impede the reading process.
The teacher customizes instruction to meet each student’s individual needs and provides a comprehensive explanation of the “what,” “why,” and “how” of the learning content.
Phonics is taught systematically, adhering to the alphabetic principle and emphasizing sound-to-letter correspondence.
One of the distinguishing features of the OG approach is the incorporation of simultaneous, multisensory instruction across various activities. This multi-sensory approach enables students to activate multiple pathways within their brains simultaneously, facilitating the manipulation of letters and their associated sounds.
For a deeper dive into the history of Orton Gillingham, I invite you to explore my blog post
Principles of Orton Gillingham
What sets Orton Gillingham apart as a unique approach compared to other reading methods?
While there are numerous effective reading methods, when confronted with a student whose reading progress lags and is unresponsive to other approaches, it becomes imperative to investigate further and adapt instruction to better align with the student’s needs.
This is precisely where Orton Gillingham excels.
It is founded on specific learning principles that, when combined, form the basis for a successful strategy to support struggling readers.
1. Diagnostic and Prescriptive
Throughout each lesson, the teacher diligently monitors the student’s comprehension of the material. In subsequent lessons, any concepts not yet fully grasped are reviewed and reinforced, with the ultimate goal of mastery.
For instance, if a student struggles with remembering to add “e” to a silent-e word, such as writing “mad” instead of “made,” the teacher may incorporate short- and long-vowel phonemic awareness activities to help the student differentiate short- and long-vowel sounds in the next few lessons and eliminate all long-vowel words until it is evident that the student has mastered these sounds. Once the student consistently recognizes short- and long-vowel sounds, the teacher may introduce one silent-e phonogram at a time (e.g., “a_e”), focusing on word families (e.g., made, fade, wade). This careful and structured approach limits the introduction of new information, allowing for mastery before progressing. Follow-up lessons continue to emphasize reading and spelling silent-e words, complemented by activities that help the student understand how adding “e” to the end of a CVC word alters the vowel sound within the word. This cycle of review and reinforcement persists until the student consistently reads and spells silent-e words.
2. Individualized
Lessons are flexible and adjusted to meet student needs. While having a scope and sequence as a guide can be beneficial, it should serve as precisely that – a guide. Lesson objectives do not need to the scope and sequence line by line, nor should they dictate every step of the instructional process.
Objectives should be created based on the insights gained from observing the student and conducting initial assessments of their language skills. Once the teacher identifies the phonograms or skills the student needs help with, instruction begins from that point. Instruction then progresses based on the student’s grasp of new content while continuously reinforcing their established strengths and addressing areas of weakness
For instance, if a student struggles with phonemic awareness, the lesson may focus heavily on manipulating phonemes using letter tiles or tokens, aiding the student in visualizing how a word changes when phonemes are deleted, substituted, or added. Additionally, if a student is a stronger reader than speller, the reading component of the lesson may include two-syllable words or words containing suffixes, while the spelling component may focus on one-syllable words.
Flexibility and personalized lessons are critical factors contributing to student success.
Go as fast as you can, as slow as you must
3. Systematic and Cumulative
Within the OG approach, language skills are introduced in a specific sequence, progressing from simple to complex. New skills build upon previously introduced ones, all while continuously revisiting and reinforcing those that have already been mastered.
The order in which new skills are introduced remains flexible and is dependent upon a student’s existing knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.
For instance, one student may effectively grasp silent-e, collectively introducing one-syllable words (e.g., “a_e,” “e_e,” “i_e,” “o_e,” “u_e”). However, another student may need individual introductions of these phonograms, starting with specific word families (e.g., “ade”: fade, bade, wade). This same student might also need various long- and short-vowel phonemic awareness activities to reinforce comprehension. Material is meticulously introduced one step at a time in an organized structure while systematically reviewing previously taught concepts.
4. Multisensory
OG lessons actively engage the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile senses, often referred to as the “language triangle” or VAKT model.
The rationale behind employing these senses simultaneously is to activate multiple neural pathways, facilitating the association between sounds and letters. Dyslexic individuals, who tend to exhibit reduced activity in the left hemisphere of the brain (the region primarily responsible for language processing), benefit from tapping into alternative neural pathways through their other senses.
An apt analogy involves heart bypass surgery: when primary vessels leading to and from the heart become obstructed, patients require bypass surgery to redirect other vessels, which in turn enhances the heart’s function. While this doesn’t mean optimal heart function, it ensures the heart receives the necessary blood supply to fulfill its role.
Similarly, multisensory instruction accesses alternative and/or additional neural pathways within the brain to aid in the development of language skills because the primary neural pathways (responsible for language acquisition) are not processing the information correctly or as quickly as they should. This approach may take slightly longer, but it yields the desired results.
An example of early multisensory language instruction involving multiple senses which engages multiple neural pathways includes the following steps during the phonogram drill portion of an OG lesson:
- The teacher presents a letter to the student (visual)
- The student vocalizes the letter’s name (auditory)
- The student traces the letter on a textured surface (kinesthetic-tactile)
- The student enunciates the sound associated with the letter (auditory)
As students become acquainted with letters and their corresponding sounds, they progress to blending them together to read words, employing cards or tiles featuring individual phonograms. This process engages the visual sense by presenting the letters, the auditory sense by vocalizing letter names and sounds, and the kinesthetic-tactile sense through tactile engagement while articulating each letter.
Check out this short video to see multisensory language instruction in action.
5. Direct and Explicit
This principle involves the delivery of multisensory language instruction directly from the teacher to the student, with clearly defined learning outcomes.
Students are not expected to possess knowledge that has not been explicitly taught.
The teacher scaffolds instruction until students can accurately and independently apply their knowledge of newly introduced information.
Essentially, this includes an “I do, we do, you do” approach.
For example:
(Step 1) “I do”
– the teacher shows the student how to finger tap the sounds within a word
(Step 2) “We do”
– the student and teacher finger tap the sounds within the word together
(Step 3) “You do”
– the student fingers taps the sounds within the word independently
6. Language-based
The structured literacy approach of OG includes instruction in all the primary components of language: reading, spelling, writing, and oral language. Instruction for each component moves from simple to complex, beginning at the sound/symbol relationship and progressing to more advanced-level concepts such as morphemic, syntactic, and semantic structures in the English language.
Instruction begins with phonemic awareness activities (recognizing and manipulating individual sounds) and continues to build by introducing words, sentences, and connected text. As students become more advanced, so do the language concepts. They expand their vocabulary by learning about morphology, which encompasses base words, suffixes, prefixes, plus, and past/present/future tenses. Additionally, they explore syntax, which is the study of how individual words are grouped together to form meaningful sentences, and semantics, which is the figurative meaning behind language.
Concept of Orton Gillingham
This question is often asked whether Orton Gillngham is a curriculum. And the answer is “no”.
Orton Gillingham is not a curriculum.
Orton-Gillingham is an approach.
It is a set of teaching methods derived from solid educational and scientific research. These methods serve as the foundation for several well-known curricula, including Wilson, Barton, All About Reading, Logic of English, and others. .
Through explicit instruction in the overall structure of language, students who are given instruction using the OG approach are taught all the components necessary to become a proficient language learner. Information is systematically and sequentially presented, with students advancing from one stage to the next only once mastery has been achieved.
This approach not only instills a sense of accomplishment within students as they progress through the program but also provides them with a better understanding of how language is structured and the purpose behind the progression of skills.