Have you ever tried to ski a black diamond trail without any instruction? Or make a soup without a good broth underneath, faking your way through the kitchen and hoping it will be edible? Without a firm foundation, success in challenging endeavors can be hard to find.
For dyslexic students, the Orton-Gillingham approach builds the underlying literacy skills they need to achieve consistent academic success.
The OG Intensive addresses the academic vulnerabilities rooted in dyslexia. The breadth and depth of the Orton-Gillingham approach is effective for a wide variety of learners. The approach is highly individualized, but here is some of the language training these students might receive:
- Phonemic Awareness: Working on an advanced phonemic awareness task (such as pronouncing ‘sphinx’ without the ‘f’ sound, making it ‘sinks’) builds sequencing skills which in turn support orthographic mapping and a wider sight word vocabulary, yielding greater reading fluency and comprehension.
- Advanced Phonics: Phonics training involves learning how to dissect the phonetics of words like ‘propitious’ or ‘infectious’ so that the next time an unknown word comes along, students have more strategies to employ. They learn the building blocks of six syllable types, patterns of syllabication, and advanced phonics including Latin and Greek word parts. Cumulatively, learning the structure of our language builds a solid foundation for advanced critical reading and writing.
- Written expression: When we teach writing explicitly – sentence and paragraph structure – we build reading comprehension, too. The Orton-Gillingham approach focuses on sentence structure as the stable, varied, and colorful building blocks of essay-writing. When a student is taught how to craft better sentences, they are also more able to dissect sentences so they can understand a complex novel or understand how to approach and solve a word problem.
- Vocabulary: When an Orton-Gillingham practitioner works explicitly with a student to expand their understanding of the varied meanings of words, students develop the ability to better understand the complexities and nuances of the English language.
Working to understand the structure of our language in this intensive manner is a commitment. It takes courage to take a few steps back in order to move forward with greater confidence. The goal is always to elevate reading and writing skills so they are commensurate with the innate intelligence our students display so readily in their understanding, speech, and listening comprehension. We know our dyslexic students are bright, capable students, and we work to unlock their full potential – that is the Orton-Gillingham difference!
