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Does An Orton Gillingham Reading Program Work? Unpacking Research in Plain English (+ clear answers to help your struggling reader) · The Literacy Keys - Dyslexia resources and structured literacy tips by an Orton Gillingham tutor

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  What if I told you that the gold standard of reading intervention
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  isn't actually that shiny? A few years ago, a meta analysis
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  questioned whether the hands on, multi sensory part of Horton
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  Gillingham even matters. If you're a worried parent, that
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  headline should make your stomach drop.
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  I'm Tracy Young, an Orton Gillingham trained, ultra
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  certified practitioner and founder of The Literacy Keys.
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  I love to ask questions. In the next 20 minutes I'm
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  handing you the real unsugar coated story behind the Orton
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  Gillingham reading intervention. You are about to discover what
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  science says and why some critics might be missing the
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  bigger picture. So stick with me.
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  Well, hello everyone, my name is Tracy Young, OG Tudor
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  extraordinaire, founder of the literacy keys.com, and most
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  importantly, mom of a dyslexic daughter.
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  Welcome to my podcast where you'll discover ways to unlock
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  your child's reading potential. I'll share tips, strategies, and
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  war stories that have happened along the way because everyone
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  deserves to be able to read. So let's get started.
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  Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Literacy Keys.
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  I'm Tracy Young, an altar certified Orton Gillingham tutor
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  and mom of a dyslexic daughter. I'm really glad you're here
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  today. We're talking about something
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  near and dear to my heart. But if I'm honest with you, it's
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  also a tad bit uncomfortable because what I'm going to be
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  saying is not a bed of roses. So several years ago, in 2021, a
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  meta analysis was conducted on Orton Gillingham reading
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  interventions. Now, when I started this
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  podcast, I promised the good, the bad and the ugly.
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  And I'm not going to sugarcoat the study.
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  I'm going to translate it so you can make an informed decision.
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  For the next 20 minutes or so, I'll walk you through what the
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  research says in plain English. Yes, that is my promise, What it
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  means for real kids that struggle to read, and why Orton
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  Gillingham has an excellent foundation for helping kids
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  become proficient readers. So grab a cup of coffee,
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  whatever you're drinking, and let's get started.
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  Now, before we dive into the study.
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  And I said, I'm going to keep it in simple English, all right, no
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  PhD required. I want to clear up and just
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  introduce a couple of things. So the first is that Orton
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  Gillingham isn't a program. It is not a curriculum.
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  It's an approach. It's an explicit, systematic,
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  structured literacy approach that teaches the why and how of
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  the English language. For all of those listeners who
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  said that English just doesn't have rules, it definitely does.
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  Phonics, spelling rules, morphology, and using multi
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  sensory techniques are all part of that Orton Gillingham
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  approach. A child sees it, they hear it,
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  they say it, and sometimes they even move with it.
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  And it's that part in my mind that makes Orton Gillingham feel
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  different from just a worksheet at school.
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  I understand many people think of Orton Gillingham as a
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  program, but it's important to remember that it's not
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  particularly when we're talking about the study.
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  The instructors, the people that teach Orton Gillingham and
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  programs based on the Orton Gillingham approach have very
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  different levels of training and expertise.
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  All right, so that's the first point.
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  Now let me also explain what a meta analysis is.
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  It is a statistical method of analyzing several studies all at
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  once. Believe it or not, there's a
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  statistical benefit to analyzing hundreds or thousands of results
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  across different studies. It allows you to reduce the
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  noise that can be found in an individual study because you are
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  going over larger quantities, right?
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  And you're looking for similarities across the
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  different studies. So by combining these similar
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  studies, researchers can detect subtle nuances that they might
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  not when dealing with just an individual study.
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  OK, I get it. I am definitely geeking out on
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  you. A key point to remember about a
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  meta analysis is the following. If any of the original studies
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  had design flaws, then the meta analysis will also be flawed.
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  So let's dive in. So this meta analysis happened a
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  couple of years ago and I have heard of it.
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  There was, I remember a lot of talk where people are saying,
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  well, you know, oh Gee, it's just not that effective.
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  And I was like, well, where is that coming from?
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  Well, recently, this past weekend in fact, I found out
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  because I was part of a group that meets monthly or several
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  times a year of Orton Gillingham therapists and instructors.
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  And part of what that particular session was all about was
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  discussing the 2021 meta analysis from Stevens and
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  colleagues journal. So the Reading Lead journal did
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  a great job at explaining the study in fairly simple English
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  and I linked the article in the show notes for any of you other
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  geeks who does want to kind of dive in and read the actual
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  information. So the meta analysis looked at
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  16. So multiple rigorous studies of
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  small group Orton Gillingham instruction.
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  Now these were branded programs like Wilson Barton Spire and all
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  of those programs are built on Orton Gillingham principles.
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  Every child in those studies had word level reading difficulties.
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  So what did they find? The good news?
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  The core of Orton Gillingham, the explicit systematic teaching
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  of phonological awareness, letter sound connection and
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  decoding, has mountains of strong evidence behind it,
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  Decades of it, in fact, to validate that it works.
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  All right. Great news.
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  But that part was not up for debate.
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  The bad news, the meta analysis questioned whether the multi
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  sensory piece, the touching, the moving, whether it really had
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  something extra on top of good systematic instruction.
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  If you listen to that sentence, all right, it's kind of like,
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  well, so do I do it? Do I not do it?
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  You know, you kind of, you're questioning, in fact, your
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  stomach even drops. Like what have I been doing all
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  along, right? Mine did.
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  As I'm an OG practitioner, I'm trained in this, right?
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  So is it effective? Because I want to make sure that
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  the student or the child next to me that I am instructing is
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  learning to read, write and spell.
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  Now one of the things right is that the research could not
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  definitively say with confidence that the results didn't just
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  happen by chance, which is a very convoluted way of saying
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  they're not sure and they need to conduct more research.
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  When I first read the meta analysis, I was actually
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  surprised that the studies did not control for the level of
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  Orton Gillingham expertise or implementation.
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  And for me that was a big red flag.
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  When I read it, I'm like I remember jotting down in the
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  notes, you know, question mark level of experience because
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  let's face it, I am a much better educational therapist
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  today after hundreds upon hundreds of hours helping
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  students then when I first started.
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  And I also know in talking to parents that schools don't
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  always send their teachers for intensive training in Wilson,
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  right? So how could that information
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  not be included, number one, in a study or in a meta analysis
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  that's looking at the effectiveness?
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  What we find at times is schools will enroll a teacher in the
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  introductory workshop, let's say for Wilson, that represents 16
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  hours of training in which they learn about language structure
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  because they didn't get it in their educational university or
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  training, right, and how to execute a Wilson Lesson plan. 16
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  hours, that's it. So they have a study or they
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  have multiple studies where they're analyzing the
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  effectiveness of Wilson and then extrapolating or projecting out
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  to say, OK, Wilson is based on OG.
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  So therefore it is representative of all these
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  different things without ever asking.
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  How many hours of intensive preparation does the individual
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  who is working with the child have?
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  If you are learning to drive, do you want to be taught by someone
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  who has five hours behind the wheel or do you want to be
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  taught by someone who has 5000 hours behind the wheel?
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  Ask yourself that question, why? It makes a difference.
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  OK, so why am I telling you all of this?
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  Because honestly, I want you to have the real story.
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  Not the marketing version, the real 1.
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  You spend good money trying to find the best therapist for your
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  child and trusting a school to know what they are doing.
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  And now someone, whether it's because you're listening to this
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  podcast or you're actually reading the article again,
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  several years old, someone is saying that the gold standard
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  isn't the gold standard, right? Beyond frustrating.
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  I get it. OK, let's take a deep breath,
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  relax, say Ohm. The goal overall is continuous
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  improvement. Science evolves.
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  If we think about all the information that we have
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  discovered because of functional Mr. Is, we now know how the
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  brain learns to read, right. Science is evolving, it
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  improves. So it is really important to
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  have some part of or to conduct self analysis and soul
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  searching. It's only with that that we can
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  get better, and improvement can't happen if we're unwilling
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  to be critical. A meta study or analysis like
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  this one is powerful because it averages across lots of research
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  at once, but it does have its limitations.
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  We can't simply and the researchers clearly stated in
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  the analysis, right? Many of the studies used in the
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  analysis had small numbers of children and the research
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  designed varied some of the programs.
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  Some of the studies included extra pieces that weren't pure
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  Orton Gillingham which could muddy the water.
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  And as I said previously, the expertise of the individuals
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  conducting the intervention was never mentioned or factored in.
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  Right? Do a regression analysis in
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  order to figure out what the relevancy is.
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  OK, so where do we go from here? All right, let's take a minute
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  and leave reading research, and now let's hop over to psychology
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  and look at how human memory actually works.
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  All right? Because we have seen in
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  psychology and neuroscience over and over that engaging more than
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  one sense builds stronger, longer lasting memories.
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  This isn't a feel good idea. It is well documented and
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  studied. But what's the problem?
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  It's in the psychology department.
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  It's in the neuroscience department.
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  It's not in the reading research department.
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  It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is
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  saying. But enough of that.
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  Well according to dual coding theory, when you pair something,
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  let's say a child hears or says, with something that they see and
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  touch, the brain actually creates 2 separate memory
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  pathways that are linked together.
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  Think of it like 2 roads heading off to the same destination.
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  The good news is, if one Rd. is a little foggy, the other one
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  still gets you there. And that's why recall becomes
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  faster and more reliable the more senses that are involved.
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  All right, let's not just talk about one thing.
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  In 2023, researchers at Oxford studied learning at the level of
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  brain circuits. I think it was fruit flies or
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  something like that. I did link the research in the
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  show notes just in case anyone is interested.
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  Well, they found that when learning involves more than one
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  sense or sensory pathways become bound together.
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  So why is this important? Because later a single cue from
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  just one sense can retrieve and pull up the entire memory. 1
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  Harvard neurologist put it plainly, When you're forming
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  memories, you want them to be as multi sensory as you can make
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  them. The more senses provide more
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  entry points which generate more ways to retrieve the memory.
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  Similarly, other studies have found significantly better long
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  term retention when learners use multi sensory cues instead of
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  just a single sense. Now let's think about it from
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  the perspective a child who's struggling to read extrasensory
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  scaffolding might be the difference between a spelling
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  rule that slips away in 2 days or a spelling rule that actually
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  sticks. Granted, I am not a scientist
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  right? But I've seen it time and time
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  again. Students remember things when we
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  incorporate multiple senses. I was doing something just
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  yesterday and with the student we were using an analogy of now
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  pretend you have M&M's. We're putting M&M's into your
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  hand. And I made her cup her hands as
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  if she was holding the M&M's, right.
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  Why? Because she's going to remember
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  that discussion, right? By cupping her hands, that's
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  part of the retrieval process. So the reading specific study on
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  Orton Gillingham, that meta analysis that we talked about
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  concluded the need for more research.
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  So at least that was great. They didn't say definitively yes
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  or no, and they did what scientists always do.
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  We can't say it definitively. We need more research, which is
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  really a good thing, right? That is an absolutely solid
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  recommendation. But we know from science and
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  other departments how humans actually hold onto and retrieve
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  information. So that's part of the reason
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  that the multi sensory part of Orton Gillingham, what we see
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  anecdotally, it works in practice.
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  The simple answer is, well, it's how the brain works.
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  Now that is not to take away or dismiss the need for additional
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  research. It is absolutely needed.
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  But what I would like to see is I would like to see controlling
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  or somehow analyzing and dividing the results according
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  to the level of expertise of the individual administering the
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  reading intervention. All right?
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  The more years you have doing this, chances are the better at
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  it. It's that.
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  Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours. All right, See how I'd like to,
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  you know, just combine all these different things.
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  All right? So what does this mean for you?
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  You're busy, all right? Maybe you're driving to work and
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  it's like, Tracy, get to the point.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it.
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  I get it. All right.
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  So this podcast is all about practical steps, right?
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  So let's make it practical. First, as a parent, you need to
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  prioritize explicit systematic phonics instruction that is non
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  negotiable. There are decades of strong
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  research behind it so that is not being questioned.
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  That was in the meta analysis. Second, don't necessarily throw
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  out the multi sensory piece just yet simply because a study
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  couldn't isolate the variable right.
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  For a lot of kids, especially the ones that wrestle with
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  attention, working memory, or phonological processing, the
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  hands on part encourages engagement, focus and retention.
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  Third, you got to be an informed consumer.
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  Not every branded program or Orton Gillingham tutor is the
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  same, and not every child needs that intensity.
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  You want to look for a structured cumulative diagnostic
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  teaching that meets your child exactly where they're at.
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  So here's what I'll leave you with today.
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  Science is always evolving. We don't have perfect evidence
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  on every element of Wharton Gillingham, and that's OK.
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  But we have more than enough to know that explicit, systematic,
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  structured literacy helps kids read, spell, and write.
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  Most importantly, it helps kids believe that they can.
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  So if this episode helped you feel just a little more
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  informed, please share it with another parent who needs to hear
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  it. I thank you for listening and I
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  will see you next week. Well, that's a wrap.
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  Thank you for listening to the Literacy Keys podcast.
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  Follow us on social media and most importantly, tell a friend.
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  See you next week.