I’m digging into specific principles of the Orton-Gillingham approach. Three words are key to describing some of the principles that define Orton-Gillingham. Instruction is explicit, systematic, and sequential. While these principles are crucial for your students with dyslexia or learning challenges, they also constitute powerful teaching for most of your learners. What does explicit, systematic…
If you do an online search for reading interventions, your head will start to spin. The marketplace is full of products, programs and philosophies of reading. As an educator for over twenty years, I have used my fair share of different programs and products. Nothing compares to the success I have seen since I began…
Teaching to mastery is one of the most important considerations when teaching your students with dyslexia. Striving readers and writers very often find the class and instruction moving forward before they have had a chance to master new concepts. This results in learning gaps. When I encountered this in pupils at school, I would describe…
In Part 1 of Teaching Schwa Vowels, we talked about strategies for learning schwa a. Schwa a is a great place to introduce the schwa vowel because it is predictable in its location and spelling. In addition, this post offers a lot of suggestions about teaching children about accent and stress which is a necessary…
When you’re the parent of a child with a diagnosis like dyslexia can be overwhelming. Relief over finally having answers and a plan for helping your child can swiftly turn to a feeling of being unprepared. Parents find themselves faced with an abundance of new information, unfamiliar terms in both legalese and “teacherese” and overwhelming…
Multisensory teaching is a key element of instruction for students with dyslexia. Orton Gillingham has become synonymous with multisensory instruction, but let’s review what multisensory actually means. Multisensory teaching engages multiple senses for the student to support their learning. Ideally, this would involve the senses of sight, hearing and touch or movement. When I am…
Want to learn how to monitor your orton gillingham lessons? Here are some useful tips. The data-driven world of education can sometimes feel overwhelming. But with the tips I have for progress monitoring, the task isn’t going to feel so daunting. Is it important for you take some time to consider progress monitoring? Yes!…
The road you take to become a more structured literacy interventionist can take many twists and turns throughout your career. Who I am today is certainly not the young, impressionable twenty-two-year-old in her first year of teaching back in 2000. If I could talk to that young teacher now, I would definitely have some advice…
When you’re in the middle of Orton-Gillingham training, you learn how to write lesson plans for your students. Part of writing an effective Orton-Gillingham lesson plan is to create a word list. The words you select must be appropriate for reading and spelling. By appropriate, I mean you are choosing words that suit the needs…
Many teachers are familiar with decoding strategies that may emphasize the use of picture clues, meaning and self-monitoring. Sometimes these decoding activities are even given cute nicknames to help students remember. While we want students to monitor our students and their reading for accuracy to make sure it makes sense, often…
