OG time in the classroom

I am very excited to be using the Orton Gillingham approach in the classroom.  This is a multi-sensory approach that is used to teach letters, sounds, and words.  I attended a week long training last summer to learn about using the "OG" approach in the classroom.  When I left the training, I was so excited to get back to school and start this new style of teaching!  Last year was the first year that I incorporated this style of teaching into my daily lessons and I was amazed at how quickly the children picked up these new skills and I was amazed at the amount of material we were covering.  I had some of the best spellers, readers, and writers last year when comparing them to previous year.

Each day, we go through a card deck of letters and review the letter name, letter sound, and the keyword for that letter.  Then, we do a whole group lesson.  Each child fills out a paper to show me what they have been learning.  I have sent these pages home today.  Typically, I will keep these papers to look at them and make any notes for myself and then I will send them home to you when I am done.  It has a triangle, square, and a heart on it.   The triangle line is for the children to write the letters that we have already learned.  If a mistake is made, the children have been asked to just cross out the letter and correct it above.  I am looking for all lower case letters on these papers.  The square on the page is where we spell words using the letters that we have worked on.  We have started to learn how to finger spell these words.  Basically, each child puts up a finger for each sound heard in a word.  Finally, the heart lines have two purposes.  First, the children practice the phoneme, or new letter sound, for the day.  Then, the bottom line is meant to practice the sight word that we are working on learning.  We will eventually add sentence dictation into this paper as time goes on.

Here is what you can do to help out at school.  When you do receive these pages, go over them with your child.  See if they can go through the letters at the top and say the letter name, keyword, and sound for each letter.  If not, this is an area to practice.  Another thing to practice at home would be finger spelling simple consonant vowel consonant words.  Most importantly, have fun with this!  We have a great time in the classroom and I hope that enthusiasm is coming home.  I am excited to see the growth from everyone this school year.