Resources

The Orton-Gillingham Approach

The Orton-Gillingham approach is named after Dr. Samuel Orton, a neuroscientist, and Anna Gillingham, a psychologist, who were reading and language pioneers in the early 20th century. Together they developed techniques to help students with language processing difficulty. Dr. Orton called it "word blindness"; today we call it dyslexia. The distinguishing features of the approach are that it is multisensory, structural, sequential and cumulative. Our language is a difficult one and Orton-Gillingham breaks English down into its most basic sounds (around 44) and builds from there. There are patterns and rules to our complicated language that many students do not know exist. This approach was designed for one-on-one tutoring but can be modified to work well in small groups and in the classroom. 

Local Resources:

Decoding Dyslexia (decodingdyslexia.org)

Language Skills Therapy (languageskillstherapy.org)

Northwest Dyslexia Resources (nwdyslexiaresources.org)

Oregon Dyslexia Institute (oregondyslexiainstitute.com)

The Blosser Center (theblossercenter.org)

IDA - Oregon Branch (or.dyslexiaida.org)

National Resources:

Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators (ortonacademy.org)

International Dyslexia Association (dyslexiaida.org)

Learning Ally (learningally.org)

Wrightslaw (wrightslaw.com)