Success for
Struggling Students

The Slingerland Approach is designed to support students in a classroom or small group-based setting, including—and especially—those who struggle with reading.

The Slingerland Approach teaches through all three pathways at the same time—seeing, hearing, speaking, and writing—so stronger pathways can support weaker ones. This multisensory approach helps students make clearer connections, build confidence, and use language more successfully.

How Brains Typically

Learn Language

Brains learn language (oral and written) through three main modalities or pathways:

Seeing (visual)
Hearing (auditory)
Doing (writing and speaking—sometimes called kinesthetic or kinesthetic-motor)

For some brains, these pathways work together easily. For others, one pathway may be weaker or harder to use. This can make reading, writing, or spelling more difficult—even for bright, capable students.

What the
Research Shows

Every child can benefit from strong reading instruction. While some students learn to read with little formal teaching, most need explicit, systematic instruction, and some require additional support.
Providing effective literacy instruction from the start helps all students build confidence and reduces the need for later intervention.

Common Struggles

People may:

Mix up letters, numbers, or sounds
Understand ideas but struggle to read or spell them
Have trouble remembering words they have learned
Know what they want to say, but find it hard to say or write it
Know how mathematical concepts work, but find it difficult to apply them

These challenges are not caused by lack of effort or intelligence. They reflect differences in how the brain processes language. Many of those who struggle to read may be diagnosed with some form of language-based learning difference, such as:

Dyslexia (difficulty understanding and processing reading)
Dysgraphia (difficulty organizing and producing writing)
Dyscalculia (difficulty understanding and processing mathematics)
and others

Learn more about dyslexia through factsheets from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA).

"Absolutely transformational! Honestly, I had low expectations - the results are blowing me away!"

Slingerland and
Orton-Gillingham

Samuel Orton was a neurologist who made some of the most influential contributions to understanding how neurobiology played a significant role in learning differences such as dyslexia. Most significantly, he realized that students who struggled to learn literacy skills frequently were intelligent, but needed different forms of instruction to succeed.

Anna Gillingham and Bessie Stillman, both expert educators, built on Orton's research and translated it into a systematic, multisensory instruction approach for teaching read, writing, and spelling. This remedial approach was intended to be used 1-on-1 and often with older students who needed remediation.

Mrs. Slingerland was directly trained by Gillingham and Stillman. She wanted to have an approach that would prevent failure and could be implemented in a whole-classroom setting. Mrs. Slingerland developed the only whole-classroom adaptation of the 1-on-1 Orton-Gillingham approved by Anna Gillingham. It is effective for general education classrooms and particularly effective for struggling readers (e.g., students with dyslexia, ELL needs, or other language-based learning challenges).

While the Slingerland Approach is rooted in Orton-Gillingham, there are some significant differences.

Adapting and Expanding - The Slingerland Difference

Orton-Gillingham Approach

Designed as 1:1 clinical approach and later applied to classrooms
Remedial (Tier 3 focus)
Utilizes the Language Triangle to show the relationship between V-A-KT (visual-auditory-kinesthetic tactile)
Cursive taught in all grades with manuscript as add on
Teaches encoding and spelling, leading toward independent writing
Emphasizes letter-sound relationships leading to encoding and decoding skills
Emphasizes encoding and decoding from left to right
Reading begins after learning to decode
No structured preparation for reading
Lesson plans move between visual (reading) and auditory (spelling) modalities

The Slingerland® Approach

Designed for whole classrooms; applicable in small groups and 1:1
Preventative in nature (applicable Tier 1 - Tier 3)
Develops skills from simple to complex in each modality (kinesthetic, auditory, visual) and integrates as new skills as learned
Teaches manuscript and/or cursive based on school requirements in a structured step-by-step process
Expands on Orton-Gillingham principles and breaks encoding and decoding down into smaller steps for a clearer path forward
Emphasizes letter-sound relationships leading to encoding and decoding skills with focus on functional use
Begins encoding and decoding at the vowel first to prepare for multisyllabic words
Reading can be introduced before decoding
Structured process for reading comprehension and reading from the book steps integrated into every lesson plan
Lesson plans focus on the oral and auditory (writing) modalities first with the knowledge that visual (reading) modalities rely on the oral and auditory aspects to develop literacy skills

Success for Struggling Students