"Building literacy through the tides of learning, empowering readers to soar."

 The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading, writing, and spelling does not come easily to individuals, such as those with dyslexia.  It is most properly understood and practiced as an approach, not a method, program, or system. In the hands of a well-trained and experienced instructor, it is a powerful tool of exceptional breadth, depth, and flexibility. 

  The teaching of new concepts incorporates visual, auditory, and kinesthetic pathways. With this approach, students learn language by ear (listening), mouth (speaking), eyes (seeing), and hand (writing). 

The key reading skills include phonological awareness, letter identification and sounds, segmenting and blending words, decoding (reading) whole words and sentences with automaticity, encoding (spelling) whole words and sentences, fluency when reading decodable short passages and books.

 Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in learning to read. Knowing letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember the forms of written words and their ability to treat words as sequences of letters. 

Phonological awareness is a broad skill that involves the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of spoken language. It includes the capacity to identify and isolate individual sounds (phonemes), syllables, and rhymes in words. This awareness allows a learner to realize that the word "cat" comprises three distinct sounds: /c/, /a/, /t/.

 Blending (putting sounds together) and segmenting (pulling sounds apart) are skills that are necessary for learning to read and spell. When students understand that spoken words can be broken up into individual sounds (phonemes) and that letters can be used to represent those sounds, they have the insight necessary to read and write in an alphabetic language. Blending and segmenting activities can help students to develop phonemic awareness, a strong predictor of reading achievement.   

 Decoding in reading is the process of translating printed words into speech. Decoding involves the use of phonics, or the correlation between letters and sounds. Important concepts are phonemes, the smallest units of sound in a language, and phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate these sounds. 

 Encoding is converting spoken language into written text. When children encode, they use their knowledge of letter-sound relationships and oral language to spell words. This is the opposite process of decoding; encoding is writing or spelling. 

Decodable texts are written with the purpose of targeting a specific phonics feature. They provide readers with a chance to practice decoding words within connected text. Students are provided with opportunities to segment and blend familiar phonics features to build automaticity. succeed.

This approach uses multiple pathways to help kids learn. For example, students might learn a letter by seeing it, saying its name and sounding it out while writing it. 

Orton Gillingham also puts a strong emphasis on understanding the “how” and “why” behind reading. Reading instruction engages all of a student's senses to help learning – including seeing, feeling, hearing and moving – which ultimately then improves retention. The multisensory component of this approach offers a robust experience for students.

According to The International Dyslexia Association, “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”

Dyslexia is a multi-faceted, life-long neurological condition that combines auditory, memory, and language-based learning difficulties. People with dyslexia lack the basic phonemic awareness that most individuals have, and they may have a hard time with reading comprehension, spelling, writing, vocabulary, and fluency. It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a child to succeed academically in a typical classroom setting.

The exact causes of dyslexia are not completely clear, but brain imagery studies have shed light on the differences in brain development and functions between people who have dyslexia and those who do not.

Early warning signs of dyslexia:

• Frequent spelling mistakes
• Letter or number reversals after first grade
• Slow, choppy reading
• Guessing after repeated exposure to letters or words
• Poor comprehension
• Poor memory for sight words (the, were, to)
• Difficulty following instructions with multiple steps
• Trouble memorizing math facts