FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Both Orton-Gillingham and EBLI are approaches to literacy instruction, but they come from different instructional traditions and have very different histories.
Orton-Gillingham is one of the most established approaches to dyslexia intervention in the world. Its foundations date to the pioneering work of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Samuel Orton in the 1920s and his subsequent collaboration with educator and psychologist Anna Gillingham. For nearly a century, the approach has continued to develop through research, clinical practice and generations of highly trained practitioners. It is frequently referred to as a gold standard in dyslexia intervention and has profoundly influenced many of the Structured Literacy programs used today.
Orton-Gillingham is explicit, structured, sequential, cumulative and multisensory. Just as importantly, authentic Orton-Gillingham instruction is diagnostic and prescriptive. A skilled practitioner continually observes the student’s performance and adjusts instruction to the individual learner rather than simply moving every student through the same predetermined sequence.
EBLI (Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction) is a considerably newer approach, developed in the early 2000s. It comes from a different instructional tradition that emphasizes moving from speech to print — beginning with the sounds in spoken words and connecting those sounds to their possible spellings.
The difference in the depth and maturity of the evidence bases is important. Orton-Gillingham grew from work that began nearly 100 years ago and has had generations of development, professional practice and worldwide influence in the field of dyslexia intervention. EBLI has a much shorter history and a substantially smaller body of independent research.
One notable randomized study of EBLI involved 63 teachers in grades 2–5 across seven Michigan charter schools. Teachers were randomly assigned either to receive EBLI training or to continue with business-as-usual reading instruction. Researchers found no statistically significant improvement in reading performance for students in the EBLI classrooms compared with students receiving the schools’ usual instruction. The researchers noted that implementation challenges may have contributed to those results.
At Dyslexia Rescue, we choose Orton-Gillingham-based Structured Literacy because of its extraordinary depth, its nearly century-long history in dyslexia intervention and its ability to be individualized to the learner.
For a child who has already struggled to learn to read, we believe there is tremendous value in choosing an approach with deep roots in dyslexia intervention — and an experienced practitioner who knows how to adapt that approach to the individual child.