While there are several educational therapy training programs and governing bodies, only the National Institute for Learning Development Educational Therapy training is accredited by the International Dyslexia Association. To learn more about IDA’s accreditation model, click here.
Educational Therapy
Educational therapy is a program designed to help students with learning difficulties including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, executive functioning, processing, and memory deficits. The focus of educational therapy is to address the underlying causes of learning difficulties rather than treat the symptoms as tutoring, accommodations or modifications do.
Therapy involves intense, individualized sessions rooted in the Orton-Gillingham approach with additional techniques that continually stimulate and develop areas of perception, cognition, language, and thinking skills.
Over the last half-century the Orton-Gillingham approach has been the most influential intervention designed expressly for remediating the language processing problems of children and adults with dyslexia. The Orton-Gillingham approach is language-based, multisensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive, and flexible.
Language-based - The Orton-Gillingham approach is based on a technique of studying and teaching language, understanding the nature of human language, the mechanisms involved in learning, and the language-learning processes in individuals.
Multisensory- teaching sessions are action oriented with auditory, visual, and kinesthetic elements reinforcing each other for optimal learning. The student learns spelling simultaneously with reading.
Structured, Sequential, Cumulative - elements of the language are introduced systematically. Students begin by reading and writing sounds in isolation. Then they blend the sounds into syllables and words. Students learn the elements of language, e.g., consonants, vowels, digraphs, blends, and diphthongs, in an orderly fashion. They then proceed to advanced structural elements such as syllable types, roots, and affixes. As students learn new material, they continue to review old material to the level of automaticity. The teacher addresses vocabulary, sentence structure, composition, and reading comprehension in a similar structured, sequential, and cumulative manner.
Cognitive- Students learn about the history of the English language and study the many generalizations and rules that govern its structure. They also learn how best they can learn and apply the language knowledge necessary for achieving reading and writing competencies.
Flexible - teaching is diagnostic and prescriptive in nature. The teacher always seeks to understand how an individual learns and to devise appropriate teaching strategies.
Emotionally Sound - In every lesson, the student experiences a high degree of success and gains confidence as well as skill. Learning becomes a rewarding and happy experience.
From the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators, "The Orton-Gillingham Approach", 2008, 2010, www.ortonacademy.org
Educational therapy is effective for students ages 7 through adult. Students typically meet with a trained therapist for two one-on-one sessions per week over the course of three school calendar years. Accommodations can be made Homework is required. Arrangements can be made for additional summer sessions.
“We use our understanding of the skills involved with learning and data-driven explicit intentional interventions to train our students HOW to learn, not WHAT to learn.”
— Jane Stout