The Orton-Gillingham approach is a method of teaching reading using multisensory structured phonics. It’s been used to teach reading, writing, and spelling to people with dyslexia or other learning disabilities for almost 100 years, because it’s proven to be effective. The Orton-Gillingham Academy offers courses and certification to educators who wish to learn more about strategies and language structure.
There’s also a number of popular reading programs that use Orton-Gillingham methods and ideas to base their materials, such as the Wilson Reading Program. In order to better understand this method, today we’ll be looking back at how it all started.
Who were Orton and Gillingham?
Dr. Samuel Orton
Dr. Samuel Orton was an early pioneer in neuropsychiatry working in Massachusetts. In the 1920s, he began studying cases of children with average or above average intelligence that had difficulty learning to read. He theorized that there was something happening in the organization and structure of the brain that caused these children to have difficulty with written language.
Based on this, Orton recommended using multisensory strategies to teach reading using touch, movement, sound, and visuals to learn letter names and sounds. Although he was working before the age of MRIs, Orton’s theories have since been confirmed by other neuropsychologists.
Anna Gillingham
Anna Gillingham was an educator and psychologist who developed teacher training and wrote a manual for teaching multisensory phonics. Building on the research and ideas of Dr. Orton, Gillingham began to apply and study the approach with teachers and students in the field. The Academy of Orton-Gillingham still offers training and certification for teachers, tutors, and parents in the approach today.
Along with her long-time collaborator Bessie Stillman, Gillingham detailed the multisensory methods as well as detailing the structure of the English language to provide sound-spelling rules. In 1935, they published the first edition of The Gillingham Manual: Remedial Training for Children with Specific Disability in Reading, Spelling and Penmanship. It’s still in print, currently in the eighth edition.
Bessie Stillman and Anna Gillingham in Hawaii
The Slingerland Connection
Beth Slingerland was a classroom teacher in Honolulu, Hawaii in the 1930s who began working with students who had difficulty learning to read. With the guidance of Anna Gillingham and Bessie Stillman, Slingerland developed a version of the Orton-Gillingham approach for the classroom. Slingerland started her own academy in Washington State which continues to offer training and certification to educators today.
Further Reading
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