Top Books for Teaching Writing in Orton-Gillingham Lessons
Writing is often one of the more challenging skills for students with dyslexia. It can be a challenging skill to teach, too. However, teaching writing in Orton-Gillingham lessons is a must. Some aspects of writing such as penmanship, spelling, and basic capitalization and punctuation are part of a typical OG lesson routine. More advanced writing skills such as composition, writing topic sentences, and varying sentence structure are challenging for students with dyslexia and may be something for which OG teachers need resources.
Need help incorporating writing into your Orton-Gillingham lessons? Listen to season 2, episode 8 of the Together in Literacy podcast: 2.8 Incorporating Writing in Structured Literacy Lessons
Here are my Top Five Books for Teaching Writing in Orton-Gillingham Lessons:
These books are great resources for OG teachers. They align with the Orton-Gillingham principles of being both direct and explicit.
Download a PDF version of this book list!
This book list contains Amazon affiliate links. I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you purchase through these links.
1. From Talking to Writing: Strategies for Supporting Narrative and Expository Writing
The author of this book, Terrill Jennings specializes in teaching students with Dyslexia. So, right from the start, you know this is going to be written with those learners in mind. This newly expanded updated edition includes instructional strategies for organization, semantic analysis, sentence expansion, and teaching word choice. This step-by-step guide includes templates, scripts, and case examples.
2. The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades
Too much to teach and not enough time? This book has the answers. Suitable for use with any content area, not only does TWR improve writing, but it also has a positive impact on reading comprehension, speaking, and organizational skills. TWR brings teachers through an explicit and carefully sequenced series of strategies and activities.
3. The Writing Rope: A Framework for Explicit Writing Instruction in All Subjects
Joan Sedita’s groundbreaking work divides the complex skill of writing into 5 fundamental threads. Using these skills, teachers will be able to provide explicit writing instruction that has a basis of evidence to support the practices.
4. Teacher’s Guide to Effective Sentence Writing (What Works for Special Needs Learners)
One commonality of many resources for writing instruction for children with dyslexia is the emphasis on sentence-level instruction. This is not necessarily part of typical writing instruction, but for students who struggle and need things broken down, this is key. This book provides not only the background information and theory behind sentence combining but also numerous sample activities and lessons.
5. Best Practices in Writing Instruction
This 3rd edition has added a lot of new information based on the latest research to turn cutting-edge knowledge into guidelines for instruction. This latest edition includes tips about motivating writers, writing in different genres, and the use of digital tools.
While teaching writing in Orton-Gillingham lessons may be difficult, with these tools at your disposal, your students will be more well-prepared to meet the challenge.
Morphology Bundle for Writing Activities
This morphology bundle will help you teach suffixes, prefixes, Latin roots, and Greek forms. The activities include writing prompts designed to help you plan targeted morphology lessons that focus on one morpheme. They’re a must-have for your collection of morphology activities. It will weave seamlessly into any morphology scope and sequence for Orton-Gillingham.
You can grab it at my TpT Shop.
More resources for writing and morphological awareness:
- Watch: Easy Writing Practice for Building Morphological Awareness
- Read: How to Use Writing to Improve Morphological Awareness
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