Given the value of reading and the challenges experienced by students, teachers must provide engaging reading instruction to support students in developing their reading skills. Utilizing Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction (OG) is one method.
An explicit instruction model called Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction (OG) incorporates many of the essential elements of Direct Instruction. For instance, OG teaches each sound and symbol separately as a standalone unit until the sound and sign can be independently used to form words and sentences. Lessons are also given systematically, giving students practice and review so they can decode (read) and encode (spell). Numerous elements of direct instruction are included in OG, as described: it offers learner mastery of concepts and skills, clear presentation of academic content, sequenced components and sub-components of skills, teacher-supported instruction, high rates of opportunity to respond, systematic content review, systematic feedback, initial and ongoing assessment.
Teaching letter-sound correlations is the first step in the Orton-Gillingham education method. Syllables and multi-syllable words follow. The youngster should get instruction at their own pace. In order to aid with their memory of the short vowel sound, the students acquire “hand signs.” This organic evolution also teaches spelling rules. These rules include the “Magic E” rule, which illustrates the CVE pattern and how the letter “E” turns the vowel from short to long, and the “Floss” rule, which doubles the letters F, L, and S when they follow a short vowel. Each has a methodical approach and order that follows a logical progression of difficulty levels.
The National Reading Panel, established by Congress in 2017 to evaluate the efficacy of reading education methodologies, determined that there are four critical components of reading instruction that Orton-Gillingham integrates. “The Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read” (NRP, 2017) was produced by the panel. The report concluded that in order for students to become proficient readers, they needed to be taught the following skills: (1) phonemic awareness, or the capacity to produce the sounds that make spoken language; (2) phonics, or the knowledge that letters and sounds have relationships; (3) fluency, or the capacity to read accurately, quickly, and expressively; and (4) application of reading comprehension strategies, or the capacity to comprehend what they read.
According to Goeke (2016), Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction is a thorough, systematic, explicit, sequential, synthetic, and multisensory phonics-based approach that can be adjusted for individual or group instruction at all reading levels. It is used to teach all parts of reading and spelling. One piece of evidence that backs up the academic gains made by students utilizing Orton-Gillingham is a two-year longitudinal study that showed students receiving Orton-Gillingham Reading instruction had higher academic success. According to Jones (2016), there was a notable improvement in phonemic awareness, word identification, word attachment, speaking, and syntax.
Students encountered difficulties in all subject areas when reading sentences with several syllables. Various teaching techniques were employed, ranging from highly organized to child-centered and explicit. There was no one educational strategy that worked for every youngster. A range of teaching strategies were required to guarantee that every student achieved academic achievement in every subject area. It was the teacher’s responsibility to have a solid understanding of various instructional models and to select the best one for a given session, a particular student, and their stage of reading development. According to the evidence cited and discussed above, reading is the most crucial skill for language learners to learn. Reading fosters vocabulary growth in students, which promotes long-term learning and ability progress. As a result, reading research has long been interested in several factors, particularly reading methods, that influence reading comprehension. For this instance, you may think of Orton-Gillingham Reading Instruction (OG).
