What is the Orton-Gillingham Approach?

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Orton-Gillingham (OG) is a multi-sensory approach that engages multiple pathways in the brain to help students learn to read and write. This means that sight, hearing, touch, and movement is used to help students connect language with letters and words.

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Orton-Gillingham, developed by Samuel Orton (neuropsychologist) and Anna Gillingham (educator and psychologist), has been helping children with dyslexia for almost a century.

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OG is highly structured and breaks reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds. These skills build over time. There is a strong emphasis on understanding the how and why behind reading. The English language can seem complicated but it is almost 90% phonetically regular. This means that once we explicitly teach students the rules and patterns, students are able to decode words more successfully.

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Orton-Gillingham educators receive extensive training. To achieve the first (associate) level of training, teachers must attend 60 hours of training and complete a supervised, 100-hour practicum with a student who has dyslexia.  Learn more about the teacher certification process at: www.ortonacademy.org.

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