Orton-Gillingham Method: An Approach To Teaching People With Learning Disabilities

Education Published on

The Orton-Gillingham method is a sequential, structured, multisensory, cumulative, cognitive approach to language learning. Orton Gillingham's training methods include his three methods: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. These methods are used to teach people who have difficulty reading and writing.

How did these learning approaches get the name Orton-Gillingham?
This approach was developed by Drs. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham. Samuel was an American physician interested in studying learning disabilities. He became famous for his research into the causes and treatment methods of dyslexia.

While working as a pathologist in Massachusetts, he began treating patients with brain injuries. By spending time with his patients, he learned a lot about their common behaviors, weaknesses, and challenges they face throughout their lives. His research found that they have great difficulty learning languages and reading. This observation led him to further investigate why some children with seemingly intact neurological functioning have similar problems with language processing and reading comprehension. Through his research, he concluded that people with brain damage fail to build the appropriate brain tissue to support associations between visual words and their spoken words.

He later began working with psychologist Anna Gillingham. She helped Samuel Orton design and publish educational materials to help people with brain injuries. This material includes the 44 sounds of the English alphabet and morphemes, including prefixes and suffixes, as well as some general rules to follow for specific patterns and types of syllables. This teaching method helped students with language learning difficulties use their decoding skills to memorize non-speech words. Combined with Orton's multisensory teaching ideas, her instructional manual became known as the Orton-Gillingham method for teaching reading.

Today, the Orton-Gillingham method is used as an effective treatment for people with a language processing disorder known as dyslexia. What makes this teaching method so popular is that it presents simple and more complex phonetic concepts and syllable patterns in a multisensory way. This allows learners to progress and fully experience success. What are the Orton-Gillingham methods? 
Language-based method: In this approach, there are specific techniques for learning and mastering a language. This approach helps us understand human language, the mechanisms involved in learning, and the language learning process. Multisensory: This is an action-oriented approach. Learning is based on acoustic, visual, and kinesthetic elements. In addition to reading, students can also learn to spell.

Structured, sequential, and cumulative—this is a systematic approach to language learning. In this method, students learn to read and write by mixing sounds into words. Instructors address vocabulary, sentence structure, structure, and reading comprehension in a similarly structured and layered manner.

Cognitive: This method helps students learn about languages and their histories. In addition to learning, you will also be taught how to apply that knowledge to achieve reading and writing skills.

Article Source: https://boostarticles.com

Join Us: https://boostarticles.com/signup


avatar
0