BenchmarkWelcome Letter |
Orton GillinghamWe are very excited to begin our second year using Orton Gillingham in our phonics and word recognition lessons. Orton Gillingham is a program that is sequential, systematic and explicit. The lessons include phonics, phonological awareness, and morphology. We use it to practice decoding and encoding as well as teaching spelling generalizations. Orton Gillingham is multi-sensory. When we talk about multi-sensory we are referring to using multiple senses, for our purposes sight, touch and sound, gives students multiple pathways for learning and retrieval. We use sand to trace letters and words, bumpy boards, red and green crayons, and we practice oral drills. After learning these routines and drills, we will move through all the steps at a brisk pace.
Most of the kindergarten and first grade teachers have now gone through the rigorous Orton Gillingham training, and those that have not will receive the training soon. The county is training teachers through a vendor, but slowly. It's an expensive training. Bells Mill PTA generously paid for my training as well as two first grade teachers, so we are very grateful to have been able to implement the program last year with fidelity. Red Words
Red Words are part of the Orton Gillingham program. They are high frequency words that the children need to be able to read and spell "just like that." We will start learning words the week of September 8.
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