“We have children come that are nine or ten years old and cannot read at all. Ava White, the founder, has these kids reading in 3-4 months. It’s unbelievable.”
— Martha Megahee
Read the full article by American Federation for Children.
“I teach children with mild learning
disabilities such as dyslexia. The Wilson Reading System enables children with these reading difficulties the ability to read. It is encouraging and rewarding to watch a child that encounters many struggles with reading become avid readers once they experience the Wilson Reading System.”
— Educator, Kris M.
“My child now reads for fun. He asks to go to the library and bookstores to find new non-fiction books. He works with his younger siblings and helps them with their phonics. He is finally happy and making new friends. He seeks out information on his own and is able to be independent in his learning.”
— Parent
A Tutor’s Insight on OG vs. Wilson Reading System
“As a tutor who has cross-trained in both Orton-Gillingham approach broadly and Wilson Reading System specifically, the foundation laid by neuropsychiatrist Dr. Samuel Orton and gifted educator Anna Gillingham almost 100 years ago for effectively teaching dyslexic students is sound. The tools they pioneered work incredibly well. However, OG approaches are a big umbrella and not all are created equal.
My initial training was in general OG, while their core tenets of OG were there, the scope and sequence of the curriculum was haphazard and not well-organized, it relied on repeated exposure rather than mastery and offered no meaningful benchmarks to chart progress. I was taught how to use the tools of OG, but not how to orchestrate them in a meaningful way for my student. It was like I was shown how to use an axe safely, but not taught how or where to cut down the tree in the right sequence.
The brilliance of Barbara Wilson, founder of the Wilson Reading System, is how she wrote the curriculum to first start with the most common sounds and syllable types first, and, brick by brick, builds language capacity into my students.
If OG is an axe wielded by an inexperienced lumberjack, Wilson is a scalpel wielded by a trained surgeon. It’s precise, patient, and, when taught by a skilled teacher, generates remarkable results.
With WRS, there’s ample practice material, a very clear, well-defined scope and sequence that helps students synthesize their decoding and encoding skills, and meaningful assessments. Wilson is the only OG program that the International Dyslexia Association recommends by name, and there’s good reason for it.”
— Kate
“Children with intellectual disabilities can learn to read. The research has proved over and over again that it can be done with a teacher who is consistent with the instruction, and it takes time. Students with intellectual disabilities, according to research, typically require about three school years to gain one school year of growth in reading, because of the national burnout rate among teachers and special education in America among all 50 states. Teachers don't usually stay in the field long enough to see that growth long term, and to see what they are teaching of systematic and explicit phonics instruction can do for students with intellectual disabilities.”
- Suzanne Slaughter
Ed.D. Elementary Special Education Coordinator Gainesville City School System
