I’ve been lurking quietly on the boards, and one thing that keeps coming up is EBLI. I’m a long-time Orton-Gillingham Academy (OGA) Accredited Trainer. I’ve been doing this work of pure Orton-Gillingham (O-G) since 2008 in classrooms and in private practice with various learners.

I went to the EBLI website to see what all the hubbub was about, and I take pretty serious issue with their categorization of how EBLI differs from O-G.

If I were a betting woman, I’m guessing they’re relying on y’all not knowing the difference between Orton-Gillingham as an approach and Orton-Gillingham based programs. Orton-Gillingham BASED programs have specific, rigid sequences. These sequences often die in the weeds of linguistic minutia. Some programs require that all students start at lesson one and demonstrate certain mastery levels before moving forward. These are NOT examples of pure Orton-Gillingham delivered by Orton-Gillingham Academy trained professionals.

Let’s go line by line:

Starting point: They claim that O-G begins with print, syllable types, and rules and connects them back to speech sounds. This isn’t true.

Orton-Gillingham begins where the student is.

If I’m working with a 4-year-old, I’ll begin with oral language, phonological awareness, and gross motor movements. But to be clear, Dr. Maryanne Wolf says that when we begin talking about sounds, it’s imperative that we’re talking about letters, and words AND MEANING!

If a student already knows certain patterns or words, practitioners begin with what a student knows. Some Orton-Gillingham programs have rigid starting points, but the approach does not.

Instructional Focus: They claim that O-G is heavily rule- and syllable-based and that mastery is required before moving forward. My friend, Dr. Leslie Stuart, has assessed thousands of students in the Greater Atlanta area over the years, and she likes to remind parents that dyslexia is consistently inconsistent. For this reason, requiring mastery may be unrealistic for some of our students with ADHD and more complex learning profiles. Orton-Gillingham lessons are designed to have structured flexibility. This means that we may need to adjust our expectations based on the student in the chair.

Pacing: This one lit me up. In Orton-Gillingham, our guiding mantra is, “As fast as you can, but as slow as you must.” Personalized pacing is essential for students to encounter success, but also to access achievable challenge. When I train, I caution my trainees that with 2nd graders and beyond, we can’t spend more than 10 sessions on a topic before moving forward incrementally and sequentially. Utilizing near-point reference in the form of a student notebook may help some students improve accuracy with skills that are more problematic. Because our lessons always contain cumulative, spiral review, there is ample time to continue to practice sticky topics while moving students forward.

Text use: Do we use decodable text, sure? Do we also use authentic text as soon as a child is ready? Absolutely. As part of a complete formative assessment, students are given authentic, connected text using an assessment like Pearson’s Qualitative Reading Inventory. Some students, especially older students, will demonstrate an ability to read connected text at a higher level than their word attack skills. If the data supports authentic text, students are given that in each lesson for the purpose of building comprehension, written expression, and top end of the rope skills[1]. Students are also given decodable sentences or phrases that target the current skill. In my practice, these decodable sentences are also used to support grammar knowledge and written expression at the sentence level.

Multisyllabic: Multisyllable words are introduced to my students as soon as they can reliably read closed syllables. These patterns are controlled. For example, I will begin with VCCV, closed-closed words like rabbit, ascot, submit, traffic. This pattern allows ALL students to encounter success as early as age 6, even if expressive language is weak. Giving students willy-nilly multisyllable words without a tool to unlock them presents many of our struggling students with frustration. As Diana Hanbury King liked to remind us, the English Language isn’t crazy. Many students need keys to unlock the more controlled patterns to gain the confidence to begin to read. Vocabulary is a key component for success with more complex patterns. To be clear, I think allowing 6-year-olds the ability to unlock multisyllable words is a pretty swift introduction.

Phonemic Awareness: EBLI claims that this is taught separately or in isolation. This is categorically false. Orton-Gillingham Academy trained tutors know that PA work must be individualized to the student based on errors or overall phonological weaknesses. This is actually in the rubric for certification. These activities should mirror and enhance the work done in the lesson. They should not be siloed. As students master phonemic awareness, activities shift to morphological awareness.

Encoding: I will agree that we teach kids to spell through rules, drills, and syllable type. I would add that we also teach kids to spell through etymology and morphological knowledge. We teach kids to spell. Dr. Sylvia Richardson argued, “If you teach a child to read the word, he may never learn to spell it. If you teach a child to spell the word, he will learn to read it.”

Cognitive Load: Although the Orton-Gillingham approach is cognitive in that it engages students in cognitive questioning, I would argue that teaching students to build automaticity with pattern recognition reduces cognitive load when reading, freeing up more space for higher order thinking. Understanding what’s INSIDE a word is part of what students need to unlock more complex vocabulary. For example, understanding that the word statistician includes -cian, indicating a person, helps us unlock the meaning. Then we look to see what else we know. Stats! We might make a connection to sport stats = numbers! A statistician must be someone who works with numbers.

Student experience: A guiding principle in the Orton-Gillingham Approach is that the lesson must be emotionally sound. Because our lessons are individualized based on real-time diagnostic data, each lesson is customized to ensure that students encounter both success and achievable challenge. Scaffolds are built into each lesson. Text is chosen to reflect student interest and to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and figurative language. As we move with structured flexibility, the lesson may look different based on each child.

Lesson Planning: I will admit that learning to plan an Orton-Gillingham lesson is time consuming because it is individualized. However, I currently run 35 sessions a week. I prep two weeks of lesson plans every other Sunday. I can prep all 70 lessons, with the materials I need in 2-3 hours. This is precisely why the OGA requires practicum for certification. Teachers and therapists need guidance to help them streamline the lesson planning process.

Student Outcomes: All my students can read AND write. Older students should never feel held back in a pure Orton-Gillingham lesson. Lessons, pacing, sequencing, word choice, and text should be designed to accelerate their progress by prioritizing patterns that older students need to access authentic text as soon as possible. Students are taught to simultaneously write while learning to read. Grammar is embedded with the written work to ensure students aren’t just writing a stream of consciousness, but they are writing actual syntactically correct text.

Dr. Sam Orton, June Lyday Orton, and Anna Gillingham, with the help of Bessie Stillman and Paula Rome, designed a flexible approach that has withstood the test of time. This approach is so good that hundreds of companies have created more rigid programs based on its principles.

But don’t be fooled.

A program is not the same as pure Orton-Gillingham. Inside the OGA, we can each trace our lineage directly back to one of these pioneers. We hold tight to their guiding principles.

EBLI, please don’t conflate a program with what we do inside the Orton-Gillingham Academy as pure O-G practitioners. Orton and Gillingham began this work nearly 100 years ago. The structured flexibility, and my deep knowledge of the language allows me to deliver dynamic instruction to ALL students regardless of age or profile.

The work we do with students isn’t just about sounding good or hitting a words per minute score on authentic text. It’s about teaching students to understand how the language works, so they can read deeply and write thoughtfully.