Orton-Gillingham is the Gold-Standard approach to teaching reading and writing skills that are specifically tailored for students who have difficulty learning to read. This method provides learners with the knowledge and strategies they need to become successful readers, spellers, and writers. The Orton-Gillingham approach is a reading method using direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive way to teach literacy when reading, writing, and spelling to students with dyslexia as these skills do not develop with the same automaticity that the regularly functioning reading brain does. The strength of Orton-Gillingham lies in its multi-sensory approach as it uses auditory, visual, kinesthetic and tactile elements such as gestures and repetition to engage students while they learn fundamental literacy skills.
The Science of Reading combines research findings from psychology, linguistics, education, neuroscience, and other fields to better understand how humans learn to read. This research informs educators as they teach children critical foundational literacy skills, such as phonemic awareness or spelling. With this research informing teaching methods and practices, students have opportunities to build higher order thinking skills with confidence in their literacy development through the Orton Gillingham approach.