Phonemic awareness is often thought of as a precursor to reading, when in reality, it is critically important to a student’s reading success as the student can be more flexible with words.  Phonemic awareness is the ability to  notice, articulate and manipulate the smallest sounds within words.  As a child’s books become more complex and the words more and more difficult to read, phonological awareness will assist a child in breaking down the words to decode and comprehend more easily.  Within Orton Gillingham, daily lessons always begin with some type phonemic awareness practice.  Manipulation of sounds, such as deletion of a syllable, deletion of an onset or rime, substitution of a vowel sound or substitution of a final sound is a quick warm-up and repetitive practice of phonemic awareness as a lesson begins.  Students also may need support during this time with rhyming, alliteration, syllables, onset & rime or isolation of beginning, medial or final sounds within a word.  Any of these skills can be practiced and repeated during the first part of an OG lesson.

Good phonics instruction should bring together the brain’s orthographic processing system, such as bringing letters, sounds, meaning and context together as one.   The Orton Gillingham approach has a scope and sequence of phonograms that are carefully thought-out and implemented to ensure proficient understanding through repeated exposure.  The science of reading has research to prove that systematic phonics and meaningful interactions with books leads to a strong reading foundation for beginning readers.  Phonics instruction within an Orton Gillingham lesson is the foundation for understanding the code to reading.  Learning phonograms does not come as an easy task, as phonograms within the English language have many complicated rules.  Within a lesson taught with the Orton Gillingham approach, students are also taught the rules that guide each phonogram, such as “No English words end in an -v, it is always followed by -e”.  These concepts, spelling rules, and syllabication are integrated within the lesson to make the connection between decoding words and encoding words.  Students repeat these rules daily as a reminder and then apply them within the lesson as they read and write. 

During an OG lesson, vocabulary is emphasized in many different ways, which is a great reason why OG lessons are perfect for English Language Learners.  During a visual drill, students are reading multiple words using previous knowledge of phonograms learned.  Then students complete extensions to locate certain words, such as finding nouns, verbs, adjectives, and define the meaning of new words.  Students have an opportunity to ask questions about new words and discuss the multiple meanings one word holds.  Students also have the opportunity to practice vocabulary within the concept part of the lesson.  Vocabulary is finally reviewed within the sentence dictation. As sentences often define difficult vocabulary through reading by using comprehension strategy. They are focused specifically on understanding new vocabulary within a text. Vocabulary practice is a critical component of an Orton Gillingham lesson and one of the student’s favorite parts as well.

Fluency is the fourth component that research proves is essential for reading success.  With fluency comes repetition and practice.  Within a series of Orton Gillingham lessons, students repeat similar skills and concepts again and again to understand the structure, sequential and repetitive practice that allows the fluency of skills.  Word reading in isolation allows students to see phonograms used in a variety of ways as well as putting together all of the learning into reading a text.  Texts should be a mix of decodable as well as predictable, repetitive but novel, and engaging but still adds orthographic value.  Choosing the right book is so important with emerging reading.  Students need to practice the skills they have learned without discouraging reading from the beginning in order to make a lifelong reading habit.

Comprehension looks very different depending on your focus of a lesson. However, within any Orton Gillingham approached lesson, comprehension is the ultimate goal.  Students are putting together all of their grammatical, phonological and morphological understanding of the language into complete ideas to gain more understanding than what is explicitly stated within a text.  Students who are missing components, will struggle with reading comprehension, as their attention for understanding is elsewhere as a story comes together.  As comprehension is the ultimate goal, it is proven to be the most difficult as it requires a student to have a strong understanding of phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness to take shape.