Last Updated on July 16, 2022 by Editorial Team
Orton Gillingham is widely regarded teaching approach designed for struggling readers, such as in case of dyslexia. Named after reading and language pioneers, Samuel Torrey Orton (1879-1948) and Anna Gillingham (1878-1963) , Orton Gillingham approach focuses on teaching connections between letters and sounds.
It uses multisensory approach to teach reading which involves using visualization, hearing, touch and movement to form connection. Other than that, it recognizes learning needs of an individual student as the pace, learning style, topic strength varies student to student.
Although the main idea of Orton Gillingham approach is to trigger multisensory learning, but its scope doesn’t just stop there. There are alot other concepts involved in perfecting the practice of OG approach. Practicing Red words and phonemic awareness, to name a few.
If you are unaware, ‘Red Words’ are the non-phonetic words, meaning that they don’t follow the usual phonics rules. Practicing to recognize these words helps in building fluency and speed in reading. Students having learning disorders like dyslexia, generally struggles in memorizing these words with conventional methods. Adapting a multi sensory practice is a good start to get these into the minds of little learners. If you want to get started with Sight/Red words, here is the list of 100 Orton Gillingham Red Words for practice.
The real point is that no matter what strategy you use for learning, unless you practice them good on your own, it won’t matter. Similarly, in order to orton gillingham approach to perform well for your kid, It requires good practice and review. Practicing via. worksheets is a good start, if you’re comfortable on your own.
Now there are alot of resources available on internet for you to try. You may observe different worksheets following slightly different module. But they all follow the same principles of orton gillingham appraoch. Similarly, Numberdyslexia.com also made a worksheet for you to try for free.
Here is the free printable orton gillingham worksheet for you to try. You can also download the pdf version from the link below as well.
How to practice?
The given orton gillingham worksheet focuses on sight words, and functions well for practicing both spelling, writing and reading words. The example worksheet is,however given only for the sight word: THEY .
To get the best out of the approach, atleast 5 words must be practiced in a routine. So keeping that in mind, we are also providing a sample template of the worksheet to try. Teachers can xerox it as many times to practice different words. Below is the sample template of the orton gillingham worksheet to try.
A typical worksheet practice involves the following steps:
- Choosing Sight words for the day.
- Fill the top ellipse with the sight word
- Then write the word four more times in the blocks given
- In ‘Connect the letters’ section, Teacher or Parents can provide with random alphabet in four column as given in the sample. Make sure to include the actual ones in the respective order of column.
- Trace the respective word with crayon colors.
- Cut the letters from the bottom section and paste it on the given blocks in respective order.
- Take the sight words and write down a simple sentence. Do read it twice everytime.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,