The

Power
of the
Orton-
Gillingham
Approach
 The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach
Hi, my name is Marie Rippel and I’m the author of the All About® Reading and
All About® Spelling programs. Thanks for downloading my free e-book on the
power of the Orton-Gillingham approach!
Have you ever had questions about the Orton-Gillingham approach and why
it’s so important? Maybe you’ve wondered what it means, how it’s taught,
and whether or not you should incorporate this methodology into your child’s
education. This e-book will introduce you to the elements of the Orton-Gillingham
approach and show you how and why they can make such an impact on a child’s
ability to read and spell.
As you read through this e-book, feel free to jot down any questions you may
have. You can email us at [email protected] or call us at 715-
477-1976. No question is too big or too small! We’re
here to help.
I hope this e-book provides helpful information
as you discover the benefits of the Orton-
Gillingham approach.
Make learning a joy!

Marie Rippel
Founder, All About® Learning Press, Inc.

Table of Contents
1 The Orton- 6 Cumulative ........ 10
Gillingham
Approach ........ 3-4 7 Individualized.... 11

2 Why OG Works .. 5 8 Phonogram-

based................ 12
3 Multisensory... 6-7
9 Explicit.............. 13
4 Sequential .......... 8
10 What’s Next?... 14
5 Incremental ........ 9

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 2
 1 The Orton-Gillingham Approach

The Orton-Gillingham A Powerful

approach is characterized
by several elements
Approach
that combine to create
On the pages that
a truly effective method
for teaching reading and follow, we’ll take
spelling. a closer look at
these hallmarks
On the following pages, we’ll explore each of of an effective OG
these elements and you’ll discover how they come program:
together to make a powerful impact in the lives of
students. Orton-Gillingham is commonly abbreviated 99 Multisensory
as OG; in this e-book, we’ll be using these terms 99 Sequential
interchangeably. 99 Incremental
99 Cumulative
Even though the Orton-Gillingham approach was
99 Individualized
first developed more than eighty years ago, modern
research has proven that Dr. Orton and Anna 99 Phonogram-
Gillingham’s observations and beliefs are still valid based
today. 99 Explicit

If a program is missing one of the seven elements

explored in this e-book, it is not truly an OG program. The label “Orton-
Gillingham” is not governed or controlled by any agency, and programs can
call themselves an Orton-Gillingham program even if they don’t stay true
to these essential elements. Therefore, it’s important to understand these
terms so you can judge for yourself whether a program you are considering
can truly be classified as a “pure” Orton-Gillingham program.
But first, let’s take a look at why the Orton-Gillingham approach works.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 3
 Who Were Orton and Gillingham?

Dr. Samuel T. One of Dr. Orton’s The manual,

Orton (1879-1948) students, Anna originally called
was a pioneer Gillingham (1878- Remedial Training
in the study and 1963), further for Children with
understanding developed Specific Disability in
of dyslexia. He Orton’s ideas Reading, Spelling,
studied children and eventually and Penmanship,
with language combined his was co-authored
processing issues teaching methods by Anna Gillingham
and eventually with her own and Bessie T.
developed understanding Stillman. It formed
teaching of language the backbone of
principles that structure. The first what is now the
were designed Orton-Gillingham OG approach
to help those manual was and has made a
children learn published in 1935. significant impact
language more on thousands of
effectively. students for over 80
years.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 4
 2 Why OG Works
The Orton-Gillingham Watch a
approach helps take
the mystery out of
Video
reading and spelling
Follow the link
by translating sounds
into phonograms and below to learn
by teaching students more about
to apply rules and phonograms in
generalizations that this brief YouTube
help make reading and video!
spelling much easier. http://bit.ly/
After all, even though the English language contains Phonograms-Video
just 26 letters, these letters combine to create 44
speech sounds, and there are over 250 ways to spell
those sounds. It’s easy to see why reliable rules are so valuable for students
as they learn to read and spell.
But there’s so much more! The Orton-Gillingham approach has been
effectively proven over decades, and you’ll discover the reasons as you
explore this e-book. But as a quick overview, the Orton-Gillingham approach
works because it…
• Instills confidence
• Helps children overcome learning disorders
• Makes it easier for children to learn to read, including children with
dyslexia and other learning challenges
Are you ready to explore all features that characterize the Orton-
Gillingham approach? Read on!

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 5
 3 Multisensory
The hallmark of a true Free
Orton-Gillingham
program is that it
Download!
is multisensory.
All About Reading
Children are wired to
learn using multiple provides hands-
pathways to the on activities
brain—visual, auditory, throughout
and kinesthetic—and the lessons. To
while teaching through a child’s strongest pathway download a few
is a good start, Dr. Orton discovered that there’s samples of our
an even better way to achieve optimal learning: activities, follow the
simultaneous multisensory instruction. Modern link below!
research has confirmed that when a child is taught
http://bit.ly/
through all three pathways at the same time, he
Reading-Bundle
will learn significantly more than when taught only
through his strongest pathway.
It isn’t enough for a program to have some
multisensory aspects; all three pathways to
the brain must be activated at the same time
si g

ht
in order for a program to be Orton-Gillingham.
When a child is able to employ his senses of
sight, sound, and touch, learning takes on a
whole new level of potential. When children can
to
he

ar ch
in g
u

see something as it is explained, and hear about

it, and then do it using hands-on activities, they
are much more likely to retain the new information.
All About Reading and All About Spelling were carefully developed to activate
all three learning pathways simultaneously. Doing this speeds up the
learning process, aids in retention, and increases motivation, allowing your
child to succeed.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 6
 For some real-life examples, let’s take a look at how the activities in All About
Spelling activate all three pathways to the brain.

Learning through the visual pathway

• Children watch as new concepts are
demonstrated with color-coded letter
tiles.
• Children see the spelling words written
down.
• Children look at and read the
flashcards during review sessions.

Learning through the auditory pathway

• Children review flashcards orally.
• Children segment words aloud.
• Children say the sounds of the
phonograms as they are written down
during review sessions.

Learning through the kinesthetic, or tactile,

pathway
• Children write down dictated
phonograms, phrases, and sentences.
• Children build new spelling words with
the letter tiles.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 7
 4 Sequential

The Orton-Gillingham Scope and

approach is sequential.
When instruction is
Sequence
sequential, lessons
You can see the
are presented in a
logical sequence of
logical, well-planned
All About Reading
sequence. This allows
children to make easy and All About
connections between what they already know and Spelling by viewing
what they are currently learning. the scope and
sequence pages.
Visit the link below.
http://bit.ly/Scope-
and-Sequence

As a child learns, he adds new information to what he already knows. His

brain continually reorganizes, adapts, and restructures. When your child
learns sequentially, he connects new information to previously learned
information, and those connections are an important step in achieving long-
term learning.
The sequences in All About Reading and All About Spelling have been
carefully planned to maximize learning and retention. Each lesson builds on
previous lessons and ensures that there are no gaps in the learning process.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 8
 5 Incremental
An incremental approach Learn
is one of the fundamental
components of Orton-
More
Goal
Gillingham, ensuring that there
Does your child
are no gaps in a student’s
have gaps in
learning. With a no-gaps
approach, students move easily reading and
and naturally from simple spelling? Read
concepts to more complex ones. about the no-
gaps approach by
Think of it like this: Imagine that your child is reading the article
climbing a ladder. With an incremental approach, linked below.
each rung of the ladder helps
your child get closer to the goal http://bit.ly/No-
of fluent reading and spelling. Gaps
There are no missing rungs,
so there are no gaps. This is
one of the reasons that students who have experienced
failure with other programs can learn to read and spell
with the Orton-Gillingham approach.
All About Reading and All About Spelling teach through
a research-based, logical sequence with no gaps. Both
programs are “ladders” with precisely placed rungs
that make it easy for your student to climb to the top
regardless of his age or ability. With this approach, kids
can successfully climb to the top of the ladder—step
by step by step—and reap the rewards of mastery in
reading and spelling without all the struggles along the
way.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 9
 6 Cumulative
Regular, consistent review Review
leads to long-term learning.
Cumulative review is a
Tips
cornerstone element of the
Looking for some
Orton-Gillingham approach
because review is vital to great ways to add
the development of good reading and spelling
readers and spellers. That’s why it is essential that review to your
Orton-Gillingham-based programs provide daily routine? Check out
review opportunities. All About Reading and All the links below for
About Spelling build review into every single lesson, some fun ideas!
so you never need to worry about whether you’re http://bit.ly/
doing enough.
Reading-Review
Mastery is another important component of
http://bit.ly/
cumulative instruction. When instruction is
Spelling-Review
cumulative, students master one concept before
moving on to a more advanced concept. The goal?
To make sure that the brain is able to permanently store, manage, and
retrieve information for later use; in short, to achieve learning that “sticks.” If
a concept is learned and then forgotten, it hasn’t been mastered. But when
a concept is learned and mastered, the goal of long-term learning has been
reached.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 10
 7 Individualized

The Orton-Gillingham approach is always focused Bottom

on the needs of the individual. Anna Gillingham
once said, “Go as fast as you can, but as slow as you
Line
must.” This is an important point to keep in mind.
An individualized
A curriculum that incorporates an individualized approach allows
approach makes it easy to teach to a child’s you to “go as fast
individual strengths while at the same time as you can, but
respecting the child’s pace. That’s why an as slow as you
individualized approach is effective for ALL ages— must” by helping
beginning readers, intermediate students, teens, parents customize
adults, and struggling learners.
the programs to
When I developed All About Reading and All About successfully meet
Spelling, I kept this principle of individualized the needs of each
instruction at the forefront by making it easy to individual child.
customize a child’s instruction according to his or
her individual needs.
And that’s why All About Reading and All
About Spelling are mastery-based instead
of grade level-based. In a grade-level
program, your child completes Grade 6
and then moves on to Grade 7 regardless
of whether the Grade 6 content has been
mastered. This can set up a miserable cycle
of defeat and frustration for parent and
student alike. But with a mastery-based
program, your child moves on to the next level only after she has mastered
the content in the previous level.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 11
 8 Phonogram-based
One of the priorities Free Digital
of the Orton-
Gillingham approach
App!
is to simplify the
If you’d like
English language by
focusing on why words to familiarize
are spelled the way yourself with the
they are. By teaching phonograms, you
the basic phonograms and the rules and patterns can download our
that apply to the vast majority of English words, the Phonogram Sounds
Orton-Gillingham approach takes the guesswork out App for free. This
of reading and spelling. program allows
you to click on a
So what are phonograms?
phonogram and
A phonogram is a letter or combination of letters hear the sound
that represents a sound. For example: or sounds. Visit
• CK is a phonogram that says /k/ as in clock. the link below to
download!
• S is a phonogram that says /s/ as in sat or /z/
as in has. http://bit.ly/
Phonograms-App
• OY is a phonogram that says /oi/ as in boy.
Each sound in
a word is represented by a phonogram.
When a student has a solid working
knowledge of the phonograms and the
sounds they represent, reading and
spelling are much easier.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 12
 9 Explicit
And finally, the Orton- Free
Gillingham approach
is explicit. This means
Lessons!
that students are taught
Would you like
exactly what they need
to know in a clear and to see a real-life
straightforward manner. example of how the
And because it teaches Orton-Gillingham
a student exactly what he needs to know, an explicit approach works?
program erases the need for guessing, eliminates Take a peek at
ambiguity, and—best of all—prevents confusion. some sample
lessons from All
About Reading and
All About Spelling
to see how this
powerful approach
is used!
http://bit.ly/Lesson-
Samples

If you’ve never taught reading or spelling before, you’ll appreciate our lightly
scripted teacher’s manual. The lesson plans explain exactly what to do. You
don’t have to figure out what to teach next or how to explain a new concept,
so your attention can stay on your student. And no previous teaching
experience or special training is needed!

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 13
 10 What’s Next?

By reading this e-book, you’ve gained a better understanding of the Orton-

Gillingham approach and how it can help you teach reading and spelling.
Although some of the principles of the OG approach may sound complex,
All About Reading and All About Spelling break them down into easy, bite-
sized lessons that are easy for you to teach and easy for your student to
learn.
While I originally developed these programs for my own child who had a
hard time learning to read and spell, they’ve gone on to help over 150,000
children master reading and spelling—even those who were previously
diagnosed with a learning disorder.

If you have any questions at all, please call us at 715-477-1976, or email us

at [email protected]. My staff and I are passionate about
helping children read and spell, and we would love to help you help your
child.

The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach © 2019, 2016 by All About®Learning Press, Inc. 14