Orton-Gillingham Approach

The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured approach to teaching literacy to students. The approach helps to improve students’ ability to read, write, and spell. The Orton-Gillingham Approach was created with dyslexic students in mind. Samuel T. Orton and Anna Gillingham created the Orton-Gillingham Approach. They taught students the elements of language, facilitated language, and automaticity in encoding and decoding of language. The Orton-Gillingham Approach is very multisensory so it tends to keep students engaged in their learning. Some of the strategies that Orton-Gillingham uses to increase students literacy ability are card drills, vowel intensive, letter formation techniques, decoding of words, spelling strategies, and tapping out words. When students are tapping out words, they use a hand that is about their size. The students use the hand that they do not write with to pound out the word. The students say the word and then use three fingers to tap out the sounds. This helps the students to hear the individual sounds in the word so that they can spell the word and then write it down. When the students are spelling their words, they have visual cues on the dictation sheets. Visual cues are used for students to help them with individual words and sentences. For example, a student would know that they should be listening for and writing a digraph if the visual cue of a squiggly line is provided. The three-part drill that is a part of the Orton-Gillingham Approach consists of visual, auditory, and blending. It should be completed two to three times per week, and it should last approximately ten to fifteen minutes. Another strategy of the Orton- Gillingham Approach is Learning a Red Word. A “red” word is a sight word. Students learn a red word by using a red crayon, screen paper, and red word paper. The students will get the red word paper, put it over the top of the screen paper, and then write it three times while spelling and saying the word out loud. The students will then trace over the word with their finger three times while spelling and saying the word. The students then turn the paper over and write it three times. I will definitely use this strategy in my future classroom to familiarize students with sight words and to encourage them to learn the spelling.