Thoughts From My Notebook

 How slow can you go? For many Orton-Gillingham practitioners, the answer is not slow enough. We move as fast as we can and as slow as we must—the wisest words ever spoken when it comes to pacing. How do we...

  When I took Orton-Gillingham training we received several word books—all classics, all invaluable tools for an OG practitioner. Why do we need so many books? Why isn't just one enough? As I mentioned earlier,  I received the following books...

Let’s get to the bottom of this. I was taught to ask eliciting questions to bring student errors to correction.  When working with an Orton-Gillingham practitioner we want the student to develop skills that they can bring to the real...

  I don’t know about you, but when I took my first Orton-Gillingham course I was taught to be: firm but gentle, quiet but engaging, encouraging but not forceful, professional yet compassionate. We definitely were not taught to end the...

I made it easy for you.   As some of you know, I wrote a book on how to teach the endings rules. I knew there were a million workbooks on this topic, although few of the workbooks give an...

Magic, by definition, is unexplainable and mysterious; silent e isn’t that. When I hear teachers say "magic e" it usually makes my toes curl. I want to jump up and say what is so magical about it? What are these...

What possibly is there to know about <s> you ask? Well for starters it has two sounds, /s/ and /z/ as in cats and dogs, known as voiced and unvoiced sibilants. Teaching the two sounds to our students gives them...

Sight words, high-frequency words, red words…..are they the same thing? So what are the Dolch word list and the Fry lists all about? Why do we have these words grouped separately from other words? What makes them so special they...

When I look back on my career as an OG practitioner I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of students who didn't like tutoring. Sure, sometimes they put up a little fight, however, once the...