The Orton-Gillingham Approach

      Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton and his colleagues began using multisensory techniques in the mid-1920's at the mobile mental health clinic he directed in Iowa. Orton was influenced by the kinesthetic method described by Grace Fernald and Helen Keller. He suggested that kinesthetic-tactile reinforcement of visual and auditory associations could correct the tendency of reversing letters and transposing the sequence of letters while reading and writing. Students who reverse b and d are taught to use consistent, different strokes in forming each letter. For example, students make the vertical line before drawing the circle in printing the letter b; they form the circle before drawing the vertical line in printing the letter d.

      Anna Gillingham and Bessie Stillman based their original 1936 teaching manual for the "alphabetic method" on Dr. Orton's theories. They combined multisensory techniques with teaching the structure of written English, including the sounds (phonemes), meaning units (morphemes such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots) and common spelling rules. The phrase "Orton-Gillingham approach methodology" refers to the structured, sequential, multisensory techniques established by Dr. Orton and Ms. Gillingham and their colleagues.

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