LOGIC

09/05/2026

How much of what you teach this year will your students remember 10 years from now? They might not remember what you taught, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

08/20/2026

I have been a bit puzzled by the claims that a particular program and a particular type of program get students over the finish line much more quickly than Orton-Gillingham does, and it took me a minute (or more) to figure out why that might be true or why people think it is true. Well, it comes down to mastery practice vs distributed practice. OG does NOT require mastery before teaching new material!

The Orton Gillingham approach, or technique as Ms. Gillingham (1960) referred to it as, has an expectation that "... we introduce new letters, not more than one or two a day...", although she did include exceptions. The daily lesson included practice of the letters taught so far. One could infer that the practice section of the lesson plan could be voluminous. Neither in the 1960 version nor the one edited 37 years later was there any mention of mastering one element before moving to a new one.

Somewhere along the way, it must have occurred to someone that the length of a lesson could become overwhelmingly long once students progressed through a great number of sound/symbol combinations and that practice should be limited. My early training was influenced by Language Tool Kit written by Paula D. Rome and Jean S. Osman and Arlene Sonday's Workshop Manual: The Orton-Gillingham Approach to teaching Reading, Writing, Spelling and the many Fellows who provided training at the NY(C) Branch of the Orton Society/IDA - unfortunately disbanded by a former president. Nowhere can I find any reference to mastery practice before moving on. The lesson plan that I adopted includes 12 days of practice in the first 4 parts of the lesson plan before teaching new material EVERY lesson! Some lesson plans include even less practice than that. Twelve days of targeted practice seems to meet the needs of most students.

Orton-Gillingham is getting a bad rap because some training program(s) are telling their trainees that students must attain mastery of each new concept before moving on to teaching anything new. No wonder it is taking students so long to reach proficiency in more complex material and students being taught with other programs are sailing ahead. Mastery practice is not an Orton-Gillingham thing! A particular program that requires it has notoriously been earmarked by slow progress and this is why. Mastery practice is not supported by research, so stick to the science. NO mastery is required before moving on to a new concept, just include practice while they learn new material. If a problem crops up, put the problem pattern back in the practice. If students don't need all 12 practices, drop the element.

While we are at it - Orton-Gillingham does not require sand, shaving cream or manipulatives - if you think these items are the kinesthetic element of OG, you have been sold a story. It is handwriting that is the necessary kinesthetic element (Orton preferred cursive). Anna was influenced by Grace Fernald and did recommend tracing letters, and Orton thought saying the letters out loud during spelling was helpful. I have never included either of those practices in my lessons, and students have performed well without them. Teach letter formation in kindergarten or preschool, if possible, before they learn bad habits.

STOP promulgating bad practices and blaming it on the Orton-Gillingham approach/technique.

Send a message to learn more

08/16/2026

"The United States, with its history of and propensity for individualism and exceptionalism, is the quintessential "you are not the boss of me" culture." Blase, Fixsen, Sims, & Ward, Implementation Science: Changing Hearts, Minds, Behavior, and Systems to Improve Educational Outcomes. National Implementation Research Network. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Send a message to learn more

08/16/2026

“…while we can teach all students to read up to the level of their intelligence, the same is not true of spelling. There are students who will never learn to spell well enough to profit from a spellcheck that requires at least a fifth-grade spelling level to be useful.”
Hanbury King, D. English Isn’t Crazy: The Elements of Our Language and How to Teach them. York Press. (2000). p.110.

07/22/2026

So Now You Know... Preface page 2

07/22/2026

So Now You Know...Preface page 1.

07/22/2026

Coming soon!

07/15/2026

New programs and practices or the use of a new curriculum (program) often ends prematurely and often with disappointing outcomes. What follows is a return to “education as usual “ or the enthusiastic introduction of the next “silver bullet
(Adelman & Duda, Naoom, & Van D**e, 2010).

Implementation Science

07/13/2026

Over teaching sin number 3 - the rules! It seems that the idea here is that more time is spent teaching the rule than on word recognition. Once again, it is the process not the content that causes a potential problem. Teaching the "floss" rule (I would never refer to this most regular construct of English by that name) is too much for students to learn. First of all, don't teach the 4 letters (s, l, f, z)that double after a short vowel at the end of a one syllable word in the same lesson. You add them over time and bring them together by the end. Loewus from Education Next mentions that teachers say the rule has some common exceptions like gas and bus, so it is not really a rule. These words are not exceptions, which a teacher learns and is ready to respond to students when they ask: gas is clipped at the end and omnibus is shortened at the begging in less formal conversations-they didn't start out this way. There are other words that students will encounter down the road like butt and buss where the doubling serves to differentiate them from other words that sound the same, but they will be less troubled by them once they are more proficient with the language. If reciting this "rule" is taking up more of teachers' time than reading and writing words, then it is the instructional process that is the problem, not the content. These conventions of English orthography help children and their teachers to problem solve during cognitive corrective feedback. If they write spell with one l, the teacher can ask a series of questions that lead students to the answer - double the l. These conventions are like guide posts that create thinking readers and writers.

Send a message to learn more

07/13/2026

Round 2 about over teaching... teaching elements beyond the basics strains working memory and makes it harder for students to master them. Every pattern that is taught explicitly and systematically with practice that is both cumulative and distributed opens the door to introduce more words to read and spell, gradually expanding students' repertoire while building confidence as students are exposed to connected text. Perhaps this is not true of every program. If phonics instruction is not integrated with spelling and does not practice new content from isolation to word, to sentence, to connected text both in reading and spelling for an extended period of time, while introducing new content, perhaps it is the teaching process (the HOW), not WHAT is taught, that is at fault for straining working memory.

Send a message to learn more