Orton Gillingham phonics

[countrymum]

I took an Orton Gillingham training on college where I needed the Language Toolkit by Paula Rome and jean Osman from EPS. Not several years later I am teaching my kids to read and have some materials from the All About Reading. These seem to introduce some different phonograms and have an extra or deleted sound from some phonogram cards. Why do i care avout this??? (Perhaps i should have studied linguistics....my son sure doesn't care this much though he gets frustrated if AAS doesn't match his reading cards so recently I have been using the AAR cards for reading for continuity. Does it really matter which I follow?? Is one program any better??? Should I include anything that at least one program has so I don't miss anything??

 

Some examples ti=\sh\ in AAR tion=\shun\ in the language toolkit

GU=\g\ And ci=\sh\ in AAR and nothing like these in LTk

WOR as a phonogram in LTk and nothing comoerable in AAR.

As you see its all in the more advanced phonograms. Any thoughts?

[HomeAgain]

Hmm...I don't think it matters when you get in that far.  For example, a kid who has read the word 'militia' will not be surprised when the sound appears in 'action' or vise versa.

 

After a while, especially with the advanced phonograms, kids will come across them in daily reading and grasp the sound almost intuitively (or have the teacher point it out).  This will be reinforced during spelling class, and reinforced again during language studies.  They won't miss out if a few are not explicitly taught during phonics class. 

 

 

[Jess4879]

We love AAR/AAS, but I actually really dislike how they teach the /sh/ sound.  I believe they do it that way to account for words like "special, delicious, initial" etc.  I prefer to teach -tion and -sion as chunks.  We just make our own cards for these sounds and use them to practice.  My other pet peeve is the /nk/ sound.  It just doesn't come off the tongue nicely when separated from the vowel, so we make up our own cards for these as well.  

[sweet2ndchance]

I went to a school that used The Writing Road To Reading as their main language arts curriculum way back in the 80s. I even got to meet Romalda Spalding when I was in third grade as she came to our school to do a teacher's in-service day workshop and my mother was a teacher's assistant back then that attended the workshop. Needless to say, O-G and Spalding is so ingrained in me that it is very, very hard to imagine any other way of teaching reading and language arts in general.

 

Usually, when I see a program that puts its own spin on O-G or Spalding, if I see it as possibly easier for the child in question to remember, I incorporate it. If I disagree with it entirely (like teaching "tion" instead of "ti, tall /sh/") I teach it my way and move on.

 

To that end, I have changed some of how I was taught to fit my children. For example, I was taught that 'y' had only 3 sounds " /y/, /short i/, /long i/" and the phonogram 'ey' has only 3 sounds "/long a/, /long e/, /short i/" according to WRTR. We had to "think to spell" words like penny, lily and valley which used to be pronounced with a short i sound on the end when Romalda Spalding, Anna Gillingham and Dr. Orton were doing their research in the early part of the 20th century. But as conversational English has become more relaxed and casual, we now routinely pronounce those words with the long e sound on the end and the short i sound is almost never heard in those situations. While I don't think the Spalding think to spell method is wrong at all and I do employ it as part of my instruction, I just think it makes more sense to me to update some of the materials to match modern English and just add the long e sound to both phonograms.

 

No program is perfect and there are many ways to arrive at the desired end, a child that reads and spells proficiently. If you feel there is room for improvement in your current curriculum, make the changes you need to make it work for you. You should use the curriculum, not let the curriculum use you.

 

 

[MerryAtHope]

Some examples ti=\sh\ in AAR tion=\shun\ in the language toolkit

GU=\g\ And ci=\sh\ in AAR and nothing like these in LTk

WOR as a phonogram in LTk and nothing comoerable in AAR.

As you see its all in the more advanced phonograms. Any thoughts?

 

For tion-shun, AAR and AAS are specifically breaking it down into phonograms. You want him to be able to know ti in partial, patience, negotiate, etc... too. However, both AAR and AAS teach the suffix "tion" and if you want to teach it as a word part and memorize "shun," there's nothing wrong with doing that. AAR 3 has the "tion" suffix tile.

 

WOR is taught as two phonograms in AAR and AAS: W + OR. It teaches that OR says /er/ after W in AAR 3 and AAS 4. 

 

So, the concepts are taught as you go through the programs. You could always adjust it to make it exactly how you want it though. 

[countrymum]

This is making more sense. I also just read some about revisions to writting road to reading that also explained it well. I will keep going with AAR and AAS with my additions and modifications. My 6 year old little guy is starting to read fluently (the fluency sheets don't bother him now and he is fast at them!) so it must be working and I have gotten into a routine. I have to say I introduce some phonograms out of order so he can read other things and don't really use the readers...I don't have dyslexic students and can't help changing a program;) I love the manual, games, tiles, and fluency sheets though!

I would like to keep hearing thoughts ...I love phonics and learning to read philosophy talk;) I would love to tutor some day.

Edited October 3, 2017 by Rjha