Video Demos
Here is a series of videos that show Shawna teaching a student using the different Orton-Gillingham drills and teaching techniques used in every Flying Cat Academy lesson.
Sight Word Study Method
The Sight Word Study Method is a multisensory way to teach sight words. I have seen lots of different versions of the Sight Word Study Method, but the one that I learned at the Dyslexia Training Institute is the one that I like best.
Sight words come in two different types. Some sight words are words that don't play fair by the phonics rules so our students need to memorize them because they can't apply the rules of phonics to figure out how to read or write them. Other sight words are simply words that are so common that students need to learn them right away.
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Equipment Needed: list of common sight words, instruction sheet, blank index cards, and 1 marker
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Short Vowel Drill
The short vowel drill is a quick and effective way to enable student to resolve vowel confusion. This makes it a very important drill because vowel confusion is at the heart of the struggles experienced by every one of my students who struggle with literacy. The version that you will view in the video is one that I learned from the Dyslexia Training Institute.
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In order to help the student remember all of the short vowel sounds, we teach the student a keyword sentence. The sentence says, "Fat Ed is not up." In this sentence the short vowel sounds are listed in the order that we teach them.
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Equipment Needed: 5 short vowel keyword pictures and the “Fat Ed is not up” handout. Click here to download.
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Phonemic Awareness Drill
I call this drill the "king" of all of the drills that I do at the start of any Orton-Gillingham lesson because it has the power to rewire a student's brain for reading. The reason is because weak phonemic awareness is the main reason behind struggles with literacy faced by dyslexic students.
Phonemic awareness is the base of the reading pyramid. It is the understanding that a word is a series of individual sounds. When we do the phonemic awareness drill, we do not use letter tiles because we are working at the sound level only.
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Equipment Needed: coloured tiles of uniform shape in a variety of colours. You will need at least 6 different colours and at least 2 tiles of each colour.
Visual Drill
The visual drill helps students improve their reading skills. It does this by helping student to build automaticity when matching graphemes to their phonemes. Being adept at rapid naming is an essential skill of readers who are efficient and accurate decoders.
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When the student masters a grapheme/phoneme relationship, the card is removed from the pack. As new grapheme/phoneme relationship are taught, new cards are added to the pack. This means that that card pack is always changing. The student uses the same card pack for the visual drill and the auditory drill so I only remove a card when the student has mastered the grapheme/phoneme relationship in both reading (the visual drill is for reading) and spelling (the auditory drill is for spelling).
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Equipment Needed: index cards on which graphemes are written
Auditory Drill
The auditory drill helps students to improve their spelling skills. The purpose of the drill is to enable students to develop automaticity when matching phonemes to their graphemes. It
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When phoneme/grapheme relationships are mastered, cards that removed from the card pack. When new phoneme/grapheme relationships are taught, new cards are added to the card pack. The student use the same card pack for both the visual drill and the auditory drill.
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Students who are dyslexic can require additional think time so the teachers needs to be sure to give the student adequate time to answer.
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Equipment Needed: index cards on which graphemes are written
Blending Drill
The purpose of the blending drill is to teach students how to blend individual phonemes together. I also call this drill the "tap it, say it" drill because the students taps and says each sound in the word and then underlines the whole word and reads the whole word.
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When selecting words for the drills be sure to choose ones that contain only syllable types that have been previously taught. It is a good idea to use some real words and some non-sense words. The non-sense words will be real syllable. For example, "tas" is not a real word, but it is a real syllable that is part of the word "fantastic."
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Equipment Needed: letter cards
Syllable Card Drill
The Syllable Card Drill is an excellent multisensory tool for helping students to reading multisyllable words.
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Correct setup: 8-16 syllable cards are placed in columns and in front of student (with first syllables in first column and second syllables in second column etc.)
1. Ask the student to read the cards (read words in column #1 first and then read words in column #2)
2. Ask student to join index cards from different rows to make real and nonsense words each index card and blend sounds/syllables to read the words
3. Give student time to respond/process
4. When student makes a real word, the teacher asks student to use the word in a sentence
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Equipment Needed: small cards on which the different syllables are written
Syllable Pounding
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Card Sort
Using a card sort is a great way to prove a rule when you introduce a new concept. It is also an effective multisensory way to review a concept taught in a prior lesson.
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Remember to give the student lots of thinking time. Also, encourage the student to discuss his thinking as he is doing the sort.
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I use cart sorts frequently, so I have developed a system to keep all of the cards used in my card sorts organized. I place the cards for a specific card drill in a plastic zip lock bag and label the bag with the words "Card Sort" and the lesson number to which the card sort relates. Then, I file it in my lesson plan binder directly behind the lesson plan to which it relates.
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Equipment: cards on which the teacher writes words and headers
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Magnetic Letter Tile Drill for Reading
In this drill, the student uses magnetic letter tiles to learn to Read isolated words. The words relate to the concepts were taught in the lesson.
1. Give the student the first sound in the word. /s/ Teacher says, “What letter makes the sound /s/?”
2. Have the student repeat the sound and select the letter card s.
3. Give the student the next sound in the word. /a/ Teacher says, “What letter makes the sound /a/?”
5. Have the student repeat the sound and select the letter card a.
6. Give the student the next sound in the word. /t/ Teacher says, “What letter makes the sound /t/?”
7. Have the student repeat the sound and select the letter card t.
(For longer words, repeat the last two steps until all sounds of the word have been selected.) Sound tap out the word with your student. /s/ /a/ /t/ Ask the student if she can say the word.
Equipment Needed: magnetic letter tiles placed in rainbow shape in alphabetical order
Reading Isolated Words
The teacher creates a word list that relates to the concepts covered in the lesson. The student reads each word on the list. The list contains mostly read words, but there are some non-sense words included too. The nonsense words will be real syllables. For example, "tas" is not a real word but it is a real syllable that is part of the word fantastic.
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When a student struggles with reading a word, I will use the "tap it, say it" method. This means that the student will tap out each sound in the word and then try to blend them together.
Equipment Needed: word list
Reading Connected Text
In this part of the lesson, the student reads a one page story. The story uses only decodable text. This means that the story is composed only of words that contain previously type syllable types and previously taught sight words. The story also contains words that related to the concept that was taught in the lesson.
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Orton-Gillingham lessons are designed to teach students to decode with accuracy. However, the Orton-Gillingham method does not work on fluency. For this reason, when the student had gained solid decoding skills and it ready to work on fluency (reading with speed, accuracy and a natural expression) it is necessary to add a proven reading fluency program to the lessons. I used Reading Naturally and The 6 Minute Reading Solution reading fluency programs.
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Equipment needed: decodable text that contains only previously taught syllable types and sight words
Magnetic Letter Tile Drill Writing
In this drill, the student uses magnetic letter tiles to learn to spell isolated words. The words relate to the concepts were taught in the lesson.
1. Give the student the word. (Teacher says, “The word is sap.”)
2. Have the student repeat the word.
3. Have the student use it in a sentence to make sure she knows what word you are going to spell.
4. Ask the student, “What is the first sound you hear in the word sap?”
5. Student identifies the sound and pulls down the letter card. /s/
6. Ask the student, “What is the next sound you hear in the word sap?”
7. Student identifies the sound and pulls down the letter card. /a/
8. Ask the student, “What is the next sound you hear in the word sap?”
9. Student identifies the sound and pulls down the letter card. /p/
10. (For longer words, repeat the last two steps until all sounds of the word have been selected.)
11. Have the student repeat the word they have just spelled.
12. Ask the student to write the word on a cue card or on paper in binder
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Equipment Needed: magnetic letter tiles placed in rainbow shape in alphabetical order
Writing Isolated Words
This is a segmentation exercise in which the student uses a multisensory tool and then writes word on a lined page.
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1. ask student to trace the word on the desk or his/her leg
2. ask student to write each word on in their notebook, sounding as they form the letters. Sounding out is important because it brings in the two kinesthetic elements. The point is to teach the student to coordinate the kinesthetic cues from his speech production with his hand movements as he writes the words. This should be practiced until the two kinesthetic pathways work quickly and efficiently = automatic)
3. For the second word, teach the student how to finger tap the sounds in the word and then ask them to write it in their notebook
4. For the remaining words, ask the student to choose to either trace or finger tap and then write the words
Writing Connected Text
The student will write 2 or 3 dictated sentences and then use CHOPS (see below) to self-check the work. The sentences will contain only sight words that have been previously taught and syllables types that have been previously taught. Some of the words in each sentence will relate to the concept taught in the lesson.
CHOPS
• Capitalization
• Handwriting
• Out Loud (Read the sentence)
• Punctuation
• Spelling