Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton (1879–1948)

Dr. Samuel Torrey Orton was a physician, neuropsychiatrist, and pathologist who became fascinated by children who struggled with reading despite having average or above-average intelligence. Through his medical work, he recognized similarities between the difficulties experienced by these children and the language difficulties seen in adults following brain injury.

At a time when struggling readers were often considered lazy, careless, or unintelligent, Dr. Orton saw something very different. He recognized that many of these children were bright and capable, but were having difficulty making sense of the written symbols of language. Through his research, Orton realized there was a neurological explanation for their difficulty with written language. He used the term “strephosymbolia,” meaning “twisted symbols,” to describe what he observed—a difficulty in connecting and organizing the symbols of written language.

Orton developed theories about the neurological basis of reading difficulties and became one of the earliest pioneers in the study of what we now call dyslexia. In 1925, Orton published important research on children with severe reading difficulties and called for instructional methods specifically designed around their needs. He believed that these students could learn to read and that instruction should engage multiple pathways to learning—including seeing, hearing, speaking, and writing. His work laid the neurological and educational foundation for what would become the Orton-Gillingham approach.

Most importantly, Orton believed that children with reading difficulties could learn when they were given instruction suited to the way they learned.

Anna Gillingham (1878–1963)

Anna Gillingham was an exceptional educator and psychologist with a deep understanding of the English language. She had already spent years working with children who struggled with reading and spelling when she began collaborating with Dr. Orton.

Gillingham took Orton’s ideas and helped turn them into a systematic, structured, sequential, and multisensory approach to teaching language. She worked closely with educator Bessie Stillman to organize instructional procedures and materials that teachers could use to explicitly teach children the structure of English. Their work emphasized teaching language explicitly, systematically, sequentially, and through multiple senses.

Gillingham understood something that remains at the heart of Orton-Gillingham instruction today: children should not be expected to guess their way into reading. They need to be explicitly taught how spoken language connects to written language, and they need sufficient practice to make those connections automatic.

Together, Orton, Gillingham, and Stillman developed instructional practices that incorporated visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning—having students see, hear, say, and write the elements of language.

Their work eventually led to the publication of Remedial Training for Children with Specific Disability in Reading, Spelling and Penmanship, which became an important foundation for Orton-Gillingham teacher training and instruction.

Bessie Stillman (1871–1947)

Bessie Stillman (1871-1947) was an educator and contributor to the Orton-Gillingham teaching method for students with disabilities in reading.

Stillman was a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York when she met Anna Gillingham. She collaborated with Anna Gillingham to create a remedial program called "The Alphabetic Method," which taught phonemes, morphemes and spelling rules through multisensory techniques, which they published in 1936.

During this time (1935-1937) Stillman worked and studied with Gillingham at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. There they adapted the Orton-Gillingham method for use in classrooms, translating Orton’s ideas into clear and practical instructional practices for teachers.

Bessie collaborated with Gillingham until her death in 1947.