Orton-Gillingham: Diagnostic Assessment Workshop Series

The wealth of knowledge and engaging manner of the instructors are the main reasons I would recommend taking Orton-Gillingham training at the Stern Center. The content of the course was extremely relevant and applicable to my work.

After taking this class and knowing Orton-Gillingham has been around for a really long time, I can’t believe that we, as special educators, aren’t trained to teach reading this way. I feel very fortunate to be in a district where we are implementing a schoolwide Orton-Gillingham Approach to reading. One of our kindergarten teachers, who has been teaching for 13 years, said her students made the most progress she had seen last year using the approach.

I am grateful for the supportive environment cultivated through the Stern Center Orton-Gillingham Institute!

I learned a lot of new information that I already started to transfer over to my teaching. My teaching will be much more targeted now.

The workshop was clear, easy to understand, and packed with so much valuable information.

The presentation was well scheduled with a good mix of interaction & lecture. There are lots of great takeaways I can share with my staff immediately!

My district adopted the Orton-Gillingham Approach because we had been looking at data in years before and noticed that across grade levels we had students not meeting our benchmarks and they were really struggling to decode and spell words.

The instructional materials that were shared have been incredibly helpful. The content was displayed in a sequential and organized manner; it was easy to follow along. The instructor explained the assessment process clearly and thoroughly expressed the importance of analyzing students’ results.

The presentation was engaging and allowed attendees to access the information by chatting in breakout rooms or voting. The use of the chat feature to respond to Peggy kept me engaged as well. It’s not easy for us teachers to sit for even half a day!

I will be using many pieces of this course! A couple things I am already using today are the blending board and the student screens!

This course was engaging and the instructors did a fabulous job of organizing and sharing material in a way that made lots of learning possible in a relatively short period of time.

The instructor is very engaging and knowledgeable. I love collaborating with teachers from other schools…It is time well spent.

My Orton-Gillingham coursework and training have been the most valuable experiences of my teaching career. I have never worked so hard in a post-college course or gained so much real, usable, life-changing knowledge.

I now have so many new and great ideas for how to improve my teaching. I learned so much in this course and I am excited to keep fine-tuning and improving my teaching.

The instructor is brilliant and has a WEALTH of knowledge. She’s kind and a natural, patient teacher! She takes her time with you but also honors your time. I could talk to her for hours about Orton-Gillingham because I always learn so much from her!

Introduction to Orton-Gillingham for Upper Grades was the most helpful class I’ve ever taken. I highly recommend this course for anyone looking to improve their literacy instruction. You will not be disappointed!

The course was so professionally organized and thoughtful. The instructors made excellent use of the time. They did an incredible job of engaging people in the online environment.

This course was the most helpful class I’ve ever taken. It taught me how important it is for students to have a great foundation, and to master skills before moving on to new material. I highly recommend this course for anyone looking to improve their literacy instruction. You will not be disappointed!

The instructor was so detailed with all of her answers to any questions. It was very easy to follow along, and the course was very clear and concise on which bits of code to teach in which order. The syllable division was very helpful as a refresher, so I feel more confident using more multisyllabic words with my students.

I really liked how the instructor broke us out into small groups to discuss HOW to use the data from the Universal Assessment as a whole group and apply it to instructional needs.

An incredibly thorough resource. The workshop was set up so that we had time to learn about/understand the tools, implement the tools within our professional practice, and then come back to the group to debrief. The format was awesome for practical application.

The depth of information presented was incredible! I learned so much I didn’t know about the structure of the English language, which is not only helpful for my own understanding but will transform the way I teach reading.

I have new ideas I can take back to use with my students immediately, and incorporate into my professional learning with teachers.

I loved all of the resources! The content and activities shared in the course are invaluable. Thank you.

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow with a large community of educators. I think the networking aspect was vital.

The Orton-Gillingham courses are the absolute BEST professional development I have participated in throughout my 13-year career in education. The OG Certified Level courses have helped me hone my diagnostic and prescriptive skills.

The range of activities practiced in breakout rooms provided valuable practice to the participants.

I am coming away with so many tools I can use for my intervention groups. I have several students who need more of an Orton-Gillingham framework, and now I can use this approach.

Thank you so much for a wonderful course! I learned so much! Not only do I feel more knowledgeable about providing scientific-based reading instruction, I feel re-energized…I can’t tell you how much I appreciated the depth, substance, and quality of the class content and teaching strategies that you provided!

Preparing to become a certified Orton Gillingham Associate Level instructor was the most rewarding experience of my career as a teacher. The impact that Dr. Orton and Anna Gillingham’s work has on my student and me will last a lifetime. I wish to express my deep gratitude to my instructors for their passionate examples of what it means to be a teacher of structured literacy and their tireless support of my training.

I loved learning about the syllable types and syllable division. I can’t wait to bring this teaching to my classroom next year. The scope and sequence tools are very useful as I look to plan for next year.

[The instructor] has incredibly practical tips and tricks for making Orton-Gillingham instruction successful for all students.

I loved all the resources and discussions of the podcasts and assignments. I appreciated the focus on older students since many classes focus on early grades.

The instructor is so engaging and knowledgeable. Her presentation is streamlined and contains so much great information.

The course was clear, easy to understand, and packed with so much valuable information!

It was a very engaging and interactive course. The instructor has a warm presence that made me feel comfortable participating!

It was great to explore the scope and sequence in more depth. The instructor has a wealth of knowledge, and she mixes in important information with engaging anecdotes and humor. I loved this workshop.

The course included many practical examples that I can use in my teaching right away.

This course was not only led by amazing instructors who were there to support me every step of the way, but it was also life-changing for me. It helped me understand my students more and the strategies I can use to support their individual needs.

The instructors at the Stern Center are stellar with a very clear, organized, and sequential method for sharing the research and strategies of the OG Approach. The practicum puts everything you have learned in class into practice with a master teacher by your side, guiding and supporting your lessons. You are asked to work hard, but once you see the results, you are fueled to work even harder! The team is extremely knowledgeable, experienced, and professional. This work has re-enlivened my work with students.

My training with the Stern Center has been outstanding. I have learned a ton, but one of the most important things is that there is always more to learn! Thank you!

The instructor has such a deep understanding of the English language. She is able to seamlessly break down and explain these concepts, and connect them to literacy skills and instruction. Learning about the layers of the English Language and how it connects to spelling is truly eye-opening for me.

The Orton-Gillingham approach has given me the tools to help students become successful readers. Some of them show signs of dyslexia but haven’t been identified with a learning disability. One such student walked through the door during my first year of OG training. After a few weeks of using this approach, he turned to me and said, “Wow, I get this! It makes sense to me.”

Coming away feeling super prepared for teaching kids how to actually read. I feel like a totally different teacher!

The instructor’s knowledge of Orton Gillingham is so impressive. She made the course very interesting by including information on the history of the English Language, brain function, and evaluation materials. The amount of supporting materials and resources she provided was amazing.

Thank you so much for giving me the confidence and the know-how to be an effective literacy teacher!

I would recommend this workshop to all educators! The staff and participants are extremely thoughtful and professional. I feel like the entire experience is “next level” OG. I gained deeper knowledge of concepts I have learned but have not yet taught.

So powerful! The class was well organized, thought-out, and timed.

The instructor did a FANTASTIC job of presenting very comprehensive information in an engaging and dynamic way. She was easy to understand even though some of the concepts were incredibly complex.

Before Orton-Gillingham, I’m not sure I could answer every question that my students asked about spelling and decoding. OG opened my eyes to the origins of our language, how and why syllables and words fit together, which patterns worked most of the time, and why, and which syllable types were most common and why. This knowledge has absolutely changed my teaching in a positive way.

What I love about the Stern Center is the educator’s willingness to work with us. It’s such a collaboration, which is nice and convenient.

I learned new information and also learned how to improve my practice along with being more diagnostic with what the needs of my students are.

The instructors are both so knowledgeable and passionate about their work.

I was so excited to walk into my classroom following each class and use something immediately!

The instructors were absolutely amazing and very knowledgeable in all areas of Orton-Gillingham. I would love to continue learning with the Stern Center—it was a great experience.

This course has given me concrete steps to move forward in my teaching.

I enjoyed learning about how morphology fits into the OG lesson plan and what it looks like in each of the parts of the lesson. Making sure that students understand the difference between base words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes and how they change the meaning of words.

The course offered tons of information and resources to help me do my job better, and provided a thorough review of concepts!

The presenters were engaging and pleasant and so understanding toward people who have zero prior experience with reading instruction. I can’t applaud them enough.

I loved learning about all the vocabulary strategies and how they would fit into my reading lessons.

This Orton-Gillingham journey has been tremendously helpful to my practice and my students. I have learned more under the guidance of your instructors over the past years than in my undergraduate and graduate degrees combined.

The Orton-Gillingham practicum gave me a structured approach to supporting my students during a time of upheaval—for which I am deeply grateful. I look forward to taking advantage of continued opportunities to refine my practice and to share the importance of this work with my friends, colleagues, and community.

This is the best teacher training for teaching reading I have ever received!!! The instructor is very engaging and knowledgeable [and] I love collaborating with teachers from other schools.

This Orton-Gillingham practicum class helped to keep me on track with my practicum student and allowed me to connect with classmates and share successes, challenges, etc. The instructor, as always, was engaging, dynamic, easy to listen to, a wealth of knowledge, and a supportive advocate for us, her students.

This course has provided me with more organization in my introduction of upper-level morphology. The multisensory resources and various ideas for presenting and teaching bases, prefixes, and suffixes have helped me make my lessons more effective and varied.

The course was Informative and filled with positive instruction creating a classroom community of respect and support.