The best place to begin is to become familiar with the Orton-Gillingham approach to decide if it's right for you. Many homeschooling parents find it involves an extensive time commitment just to become versed in the approach. Some Orton-Gillingham programs offer parent training or come with a teacher's manual. Oftentimes, homeschoolers will find a certified Orton-Gillingham tutor to work with, especiallly in the beginning.
Check out the curriculum. Homeschoolers are frequently attracted to the creativity built into lesson plans, given the multi-sensory approach. Suggested activities include making letters out of tactile materials such as sandpaper, fake fur, felt and seeds. Kinetic lesson plans find ways to build movement into learning to read. An example of this is writing letters or words in chalk on the ground and tracing them by walking the shapes, or bending one's body into the shape of a letter. Different learning styles are taught in ways that more traditional curriculums neglect.
Once you've made the decision an Orton-Gillingham approach is right for you, the next step is to determine specifically which program will best target your needs. What type of learner is your child? Is he just learning to read, older and reading at an age-appropriate level or older and struggling with learning to read? There are many resources to help you with choosing a well-suited program.
An important part of making the right choice for which Orton-Gillingham program to use is making certain you have an accurate assessment of your child's reading level. For homeschoolers working with a struggling reader, it is best to get a professional assessment. Parents usually turn to the special-education services of their school district for this, some of which have an Orton-Gillingham trained reading specialist on staff. Other parents utilize an educational psychologist or other testing professional, or a local organization specializing in these services. Much will depend on the available resources in your community. Getting a specific diagnosis will be invaluable to identifying learning style and the presence of any conditions such as dyslexia or auditory processing disorder.
Once you have this information in place, you can best select the Orton-Gillingham program that will offer your child the most promising results. The more specific your assessment can be, the more tailored your curriculum can be to insure your child's progress.
Explore what Orton-Gillingham resources are available to assist you in your teaching. Some programs offer corresponding flashcards and worksheets. Others have their programming set up online and provide a menu of interactive choices for learning. Over time, you will come to learn what works best for your student.