The Orton-Gillingham approach is a highly structured approach - the gold standard for reading intervention.
OG tutorials are personalized, prescriptive, and one-on-one. Instruction is explicit. Each lesson is built carefully upon the previous lesson, focusing on your child's needs. Your tutor will ensure that there are no gaps in your child's learning. As Anna Gillingham said, "The learning pace is as fast as one can, but as slow as one must."
For children with Dyslexia, OG is not a one-time solution. Skills are learned over time. Mastery is built. Lessons need to be regular and a minimum of two sessions weekly. OG intervention is most successful when the commitment is long-term.
Students will first be given an assessment - a series of diagnostic and placement tests, to place each child's reading skills and find where the gaps are. From there, we will work to improve reading and spelling using the Orton-Gillingham approach.
What are the sessions like?
During each session, we work on many skill areas to target the word recognition strands of reading to increase automaticity.
Each session includes many parts, such as:
phonological/phonemic awareness
alphabet sequencing and handwriting
symbol-sound correspondences
visual, blending, and auditory drills
syllabication
cumulative review
spelling
new lesson
non-phonetic words
text reading
Experience and research over 50 years by many dedicated tutors lead to the belief that it is never too late to learn. While early remediation is recommended to prevent failure and the ensuing painful experiences, successful results have followed tutoring at any age. (International Dyslexia Association)
The old saying, “Just wait, and they will catch up,” does not hold up to all the empirical data and support for providing early intervention for struggling readers. (International Dyslexia Association)