How does Orton-Gillingham differ from other reading programs?
The Orton-Gillingham reading program uses different pathways to send messages to the brain to solidify the letter/sound association. It uses the VAKT Method as follows:
- Visual - seeing the letter
- Auditory - hearing the sound
- Kinesthetic - moving our hands
- Tactile - touching a bumpy surface for our sense of touch
The program starts slowly and builds a strong foundation, leading to successful reading. The small steps we take make a huge difference over time.
This method focuses on the learning needs of the individual student. The child has an assessment and progresses at their own pace based on their strengths and weaknesses. Children learn how to read and write through direct instruction.
Touching the letter cards helps reinforce learning
How did the Orton-Gillingham approach originate?
Dr. Samuel T. Orton (1879-1948) was a psychiatrist and neurologist whose child had challenges learning to read. He started investigating different methods to help his child learn to read. He was convinced that his child's "word blindness" was caused by neurological differences in the brain.
He worked with a team of professionals and successfully taught the children with the weakest reading skills how to read using the VAKT (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile) method. He customized his reading method for each child to maximize their success.
Dr. Oron partnered with Anna Gillingham (psychologist and teacher), who documented his approach to "word blindness" (later termed dyslexia) in a manual. The Orton-Gillingham Approach was created and has helped many children become successful readers.
Dr. Samuel Orton
What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that results in weak decoding and spelling skills. Children with dyslexia have poor reading comprehension and limited vocabulary.
Dyslexia encompasses a wide range of symptoms.
These symptoms include deficits with auditory processing, such as:
- Confusing similar sounds such as f/v/th, p/b, t/d and e/i.
- Difficulty processing instructions with background noise.
- Inability to hear the beginning or end of words or omitting a consonant in a word, for example, reading “tick” for “trick” or “ban” for “bank”.
Other symptoms are deficits with visual processing, such as:
- Confusing similar letters, for example: n/h, b/d/p, m/w and p/q.
- Letter and number reversals.
- Reversal of words, for example, reading “saw” for “was”.
- Inability to remember sight words. These are common words that most children recognize instantly such as "the," "was," "of," "a," "to," and "they".
- Refusal to read or a major dislike of reading.
- Finding math challenging.
- Attention deficit disorder (ADD)
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Issues with articulation of speech sounds.
- Misreading or omitting words.
