Orton-Gillingham Approach
The Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching dyslexics is named for Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton and Anna Gillingham. Orton was a neuropsychiatrist who practiced in the 1920s and 1930s. He noticed that many of his young patients had problems with language that were similar to symptoms shown by patients who had suffered certain kinds of traumatic brain injury. That observation led Orton to hypothesize that the children's reading difficulties were caused by differences in their brains -- neurological differences. Although not all of Orton's detailed hypotheses have been born out by recent research, his fundamental conjecture that dyslexia (although he did not use that word) was neurological in origin is now widely accepted. (You'll find a bibliographic reference for one of Orton's publications on the suggested reading page.)
As well as investigating the physiological causes of dyslexia, Orton developed theories about how dyslexics should be taught. Anna Gillingham, a teacher, applied Orton's theories to develop teaching procedures. Gillingham wrote manuals, prepared teaching materials, and trained other practitioners and researchers. Some of Gillingham's trainees developed their own variations of her methods. There are now several Orton-Gillingham methods: Alphabetic Phonics, Slingerland, Wilson Language, and others. All have certain principles in common.
The Orton-Gillingham methods are all multisensory, structured, synthetic phonics methods.
Multisensory. A multisensory teaching method teaches the student through several senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile (VAKT); and leads the student to link together those four perceptions. For example, most Orton-Gillingham lessons will include a reading deck drill and a spelling deck drill. In the reading deck drill, the teacher shows grapheme (letter or letter combination) cards to the student and the student says the sound (or sounds) that each grapheme makes. That reinforces a visual-auditory linkage. In the spelling deck drill, the teacher says the phonemes (sounds), and the student names the proper grapheme or graphemes and writes them out in cursive. That reinforces auditory-kinesthetic links: the sound of the letter and the sound of its name are linked with the kinetic feel of writing the cursive form of the letter. The tactile linkages are not so frequently drilled for all students, but for some they hold they key. Tactile linkages are exercised by having students feel letters made felt, sand, or other highly textured materials while saying the letter's name and sound. Another kind of kinsethetic linkage can be made by calling the student's attention to the motions and positions of his lips, teeth, and tongue as he says sounds. Once again, not all students need that linkage, but for some it is very helpful.
Structured. One of the aspects of the structured nature of the Orton-Gillingham methods is their sequentiality. Concepts are taught in a carefully planned sequence so that each builds on previous ones. Great efforts are made to avoid "forward references," such as expecting a student to read a grapheme that has not yet been explicitly taught. Another example of structure is that each individual lesson is planned to follow one well-defined framework that soon becomes familiar to the student. A third use of structure is that students are taught explicit procedures for reading- and writing-related activities. There are procedures for identifying unfamiliar written words, procedures for spelling, procedures for writing compositions and so on. Some students, of course, need explicit procedures more than others. Which procedures are taught and the level of detail that the teacher prescribes varies with the student. More advanced students may be encouraged to notice when they need a procedure and helped to define their own.
Synthetic phonics. The Orton-Gillingham methods use synthetic phonics: students are first taught the grapheme-phoneme associations, and then taught to read by synthesizing the sound of the word from the individual phonemes associated with the graphemes. That approach gives them a more secure foundation than does the analytic phonics method, in which students are taught words by sight and encouraged analyze the sound of the word to deduce the phonemes associated with the constituent graphemes.
For a discussion of specific Orton-Gillingham methods (and some
non-Orton-Gillingham methods as well), please look for
Dyslexia: Theory and Practice of Remedial Instruction
on the
suggested reading
page.
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Everything on this web site is the personal opinion of S. W. Davison. Any of it might be incorrect or out-of-date.