What is Orton-Gillingham Approach?  

Dyslexia and the Orton-Gillingham Approach

Dyslexia is a neurobiological learning disorder characterized by difficulty reading and spelling in individuals who are receiving adequate classroom instruction and do not have cognitive deficits.

Individuals with dyslexia may have difficulty:

  • Reading, writing and spelling

  • Learning the names and sounds of letters

  • Making sense of unfamiliar words

  • Rhyming Words (identifying word endings that are the same)

  • Attending to tasks and following directions

  • Sequencing

  • Managing frustration

  • Copying written language

  • Math

  • Recognizing letters that look the same and writing letters the “right way”

The Orton-Gillingham Approach was developed by Samuel Torrey Orton (1879-1948), a neuropsychiatrist, and Anna Gillingham (1878-1963), an educator and psychologist, to help struggling readers by explicitly teaching them the relationship between letters and sounds. 

10 essential elements of the Orton-Gillingham Approach

  • Multi-sensory

  • Phonetic and alphabetic

  • Synthetic/Analytic

  • Structured

  • Sequential

  • Repetitive

  • Cumulative

  • Cognitive

  • Diagnostic

  • Prescriptive