How we teach each section of a student’s reading lesson based on the Orton-Gillingham approach:
We follow the recommended order of instruction from the Orton training that we received in regards to drill work, blending, instruction of new material, writing and reading. We never miss an opportunity to praise students for their hard work and concrete success and the lesson plans make the success easy to show the student and to build on.
Depending on the student’s pathway strengths and weaknesses we teach each section of a lesson in accordance with that characteristic. We incorporate each and / or every pathway necessary to make that particular lesson understood and able to be applied to the student’s everyday reading material. I always remind students that what they just learned can be used with their other class work, homework and school work.
Throughout the drill work we mix the visual and auditory drills in accordance with the strengths and weaknesses of the student. If a student is more visually dominant we may work in more visually oriented drills in the beginning to build confidence in the student while gradually working in more challenging auditory drills. We gauge the depth and pace of the drills to always safeguard the spirit of the students as most students are very beaten down by failure by the time they arrive at the Reading Center. Within each drill we always emphasize quality and accuracy from each drill.
In the blending drill, we give ample amounts of time for the student to respond and then if necessary we will give memory keys in any of the three pathways to trigger the memory connection. We also always praise students for use of good phonetics, as it is the key to accurately identifying the most important elements to the English language. We also praise and encourage them for identifying words in the English language that are not pronounced phonetically.
Adirondack Reading Center
Queensbury, New York 12804
518-745-7323 (READ)
adkreadingcenter@gmail.com
