Orton-Gillingham is an approach to reading instruction that many reading specialists use. It’s the OG in another way, being the oldest specific reading instruction approach and one that many others originate from. It was developed in the 1930s by Samuel Orton, Anna Gillingham, and many of their colleagues.
Samuel Torrey Orton (1879–1948) was a psychiatrist who did most of his work in the US state of Iowa. He studied children who were failing in their schoolwork but had average or above average IQ test scores. He discovered that their main difficulty was in reading, and he hypothesized that the difficulty was caused by the brain’s disorganization when it came to associating written words with spoken words. He called this condition stephosymbolia (from Latin for twisted symbols). He believed that multisensory teaching would help these children learn to read.
Anna Gillingham (1879–1947) was an educator who specialized in language. At a time when children learned to read by simply memorizing all the words, she developed a system for reading instruction based on the sounds that letters make (phonemes) and units of meaning (such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots), along with some common spelling rules. Along with colleague Bessie Stillman, she co-wrote the book that OG still considers its foundation: Remedial Training for Children with Specific Disability in Reading, Spelling and Penmanship.
OG is not a magical way to treat dyslexia and other reading difficulties. It requires time, repetition, perseverance, individual or small group teaching, and a knowledgeable educator. OG is characterized by the following:
- Systematic instruction. This means that the OG teacher has a plan, a system. Instruction is guided by routines, sequences, expectations, assessments, and rules for how to respond to students’ progress or slowing of progress.
- Structure of language. This means that the OG teacher understands how language is put together. She understands phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and distinguish the tiniest sounds in words. For instance, chin has four letters but only three phonemes: ch—i—n. Throat has six letters but only four phonemes: th—r—oa—t. She also understands phonics, the relationship between phonemes and written symbols. For instance, the f in fish spells the same phoneme as the ph in phone and the gh in laugh. An OG teacher understands all those tricky things in English!
- Direct, explicit instruction. This means that the OG teacher tells and shows the student what to learn, models what the student is learning, guides the student to learn it, and gives the student plenty of opportunities to practice the new learning, right there and then. Nothing is left for the student to discover or figure out on their own.
- Sequential and cumulative instruction. This means that the OG teacher has a plan for teaching the various parts of reading, one bit at a time, in sequence, from the beginning to the end. For instance, OG teachers teach short vowel spellings (a as in bat, o as in hot) before the complex vowel spellings (ea as in bread, ea as in bead).
- Assessment or diagnostic guidance. This means that an OG teacher assesses almost constantly how a student is learning. This is done by observing, asking questions, listening to the student reading, and analyzing student spelling. The OG teacher keeps records to track student progress and make informed decisions about what to teach next.
- Multisensory instruction. This means that the OG student is using multiple senses to learn to read. They may be tracing letters in sand or shaving cream or writing them in the air. They may be singing or reading out loud what they are writing while they are writing it. An OG teacher leverages students’ auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic senses in reading and writing instruction.
In an OG lesson or tutoring session, a student may be learning and practicing any of the elements of language. Students working on beginning reading skills will be receiving direct, explicit instruction in phonemic awareness (hearing the sounds in the context of words) and phonics (connecting the sounds to the symbols/letters). They may be learning just one or two new sounds and spellings at a time, while reviewing the sounds and spellings studied previously. Students may be tracing letters or words on a tray filled with dry beans or rice, saying them out loud as they trace. They may be spelling sounds or words on a small white board or chalk board. They may be sorting cards with letters or words on them into groups, and they may be reading words or sentences made up mostly of decodable words (words that students can read with the sounds they already know or are learning). The OG teacher will be keeping track of the student’s progress, making notes on sounds and spellings that are solid and those that need more practice.
Reading specialists learn the OG method from private companies or schools who offer education in the OG method. The Orton-Gillingham Academy accredits programs that offer extensive (and expensive) courses leading to different levels of OG certification. However, beyond the program level, OG is not regulated—no one from the OG Academy follows up with certified OG specialists to make sure they are doing things the OG way or polices who gets to say they use the OG methods and who doesn’t. That means that one reading specialist who uses an OG approach may work quite differently from another. If you go into a Subway, you know what will be on the menu and what it will look like and taste like when you unwrap your sandwich. Orton-Gillingham is not like Subway.
The Orton-Gillingham method is traditional and accepted; some hold it as the “gold standard” for dyslexia interventions. However, research on Orton-Gillingham is mixed and limited. The components that appear solid and truly helpful for students who are having difficulty with reading (and writing) include the emphasis on direct instruction and lots of skills practice, constant assessment of student learning and teacher’s use of assessment to guide instruction, and focusing on the small parts of language and building them up into bigger pieces of language (letters to words, words to sentences…). The component that has the least research evidence is multisensory instruction. It doesn’t seem to hurt, but it’s far from the cornerstone of any Orton-Gillingham success.
The Orton-Gillingham method focuses on word-level reading. Some students who have difficulty learning to read words also have difficulty understanding vocabulary or sentence structure or how to use language in practical situations. Students with those difficulties may benefit from a speech therapist who specializes in language comprehension and production, social communication, or cognitive communication (organizing thoughts, planning, problem-solving).
Should you hire an OG tutor for your child?
Of course, it depends on the tutor! If your child has difficulty with word-level reading—identifying new words, recognizing familiar words, and spelling words—an OG tutor may be just the person who can provide the explicit, systematic instruction and practice in word-level reading that your child needs. However, no approach to treating reading difficulties is the best, the winner, the program that will transform a struggling reader into an advanced reader over a few months. The thing about reading difficulties is that they are… difficult. Slow, persistent, consistent instruction and practice is the way to make progress, and progress is indeed possible!