GAYNOR ON GAYNOR

If you look into one of our classrooms this year what will catch your attention isn’t the masks, hand sanitizers, or desks six feet apart. What you will see is instruction steeped in the proven pedagogical approaches of Orton (reading), Stern (math) and Hochman (writing). Students will be actively engaged, challenged, and emboldened in their work. Teachers will be actively encouraging students to take risks in their learning and rewarding them for their effort. This has always been the foundation of our program and the key to unlocking our children’s success.

While we have spent a great deal of our time, resources, and communications around battling the COVID pandemic, the core of our academic program has always remained at the center of our work. Our teachers have been remarkable in upholding the essential tenets of our program throughout the crisis. So let’s take a momentary break from COVID to focus on one of our core competencies at Gaynor: reading instruction.

One day last year, Yvette Siegel, our founding visionary and daily beacon of remaining focused on what each individual child needs, walked into my office and placed a stack of journals on my desk. They were from the Orton Society spanning the 1960’s when Yvette and my grandmother Dr. Miriam Michael started Gaynor. Thirty years before our doors opened, neurologist Dr. Samuel T. Orton and educator and psychologist Anna Gillingham developed the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction for students with "word-blindness," which would later become known as dyslexia. Yvette noted that I should hold on to the journals as they were reminders of the core of our instruction and the foundation of our reading program. I accepted the gift and promptly placed them in the back of my closet. I had always been told that OG was our first reading approach, but now I had actual evidence. I have to admit that I had no intention of reading them as I placed them in the category of historical artifact with very little relevance for the work we are doing almost sixty years later.

Every once in a while I would come across the dusty stack of journals thinking one day when I have some time I am going to read them. However, it was a few weeks ago when a prospective Gaynor parent asked me why we use the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach that sparked my interest. I was thrilled to get this question as we are the only school in the New York area that is certified by the Orton-Gillingham Academy as an accredited training program with over 25 of our faculty who have achieved the classroom certification level or higher. I responded to the question by stating that we have used this approach because it is the most evidence-based proven reading approach for struggling readers. Grounded in multisensory instruction, OG is a highly structured approach to help build the sound/symbol relationship in order to develop fluent readers. But most importantly, we see the success of the OG approach every day in our classrooms.

While I was pleased with my answer, I was curious if Dr. Orton’s and Ms. Gillingham’s findings had changed in all these years. My answer was readily awaiting me in the gift I received from Yvette. It didn’t take long for me to come across an issue entitled A History and Synopsis of Orton’s Contribution to the Theory and Identification of Reading Disability - The Orton-Gillingham Approach, which was originally published in 1966. In the section on The Method Used by Orton and Gillingham, the author writes:

In his instruction to teachers, Orton emphasized the importance of day-by-day observations of the pupil’s language difficulties, with flexible

procedures to meet individual needs, rather than a fixed formula or method of remedial work. He found two basic principles most useful:

1. Training for the simultaneous association of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic language stimuli — in reading cases, tracing and sounding the visually presented word and maintaining consistent directions by following the letters with the fingers during the sound synthesis of syllables and words (Orton. 1928).

2. Finding such units as the child can use without difficulty in the field of his particular disability and directing the training towards developing the process of fusing these smaller units into larger and more complex wholes (Orton. 1937).

I was pleasantly reminded that what our founding visionaries adopted at Gaynor back in 1962 is still the heart of our reading program today. Orton referred to teachers needing to be flexible in their instruction in order to meet the individual needs of the student. Our teachers are well trained in being diagnostic prescriptive instructors. This means that they continually monitor and adapt their instructions based on their understanding of the students' progress within a lesson. Our goal is to meet each child’s individual need in real time.

Orton’s first principle is now what we refer to as our multi-sensory approach, which is not only found in our reading instruction, but also throughout all of our academic programs. The approach focuses on using all of our primary senses to stimulate brain activity and improve learning. This is essential for students who learn differently and depend on accessing different senses to optimize learning.

The second premise supports our approach to teaching to mastery. Director of Lower Division Donna Logue often reminds teachers (and parents) about the need to review, revisit, and relearn. We are always emphasizing the relationship between new material and what was previously taught. The sequential approach of OG ensures that our students master the basic relationship between sounds and symbols to build confident, fluent readers. It was abundantly clear that the theories and approaches developed by Orton and Gillingham and adapted by our founders have not only withstood the test of time, but continue to be the gold standard for teaching reading.

I am proud that almost a century later and in the midst of a pandemic, our teachers have remained true to the original approach of Orton, Gillingham, Michael, and Siegel. Our founding leaders still guide us today.

DR. SCOTT GAYNOR

Head of School