Dyslexi The Orton-Gillingham Approach

What is Dyslexia
Dyslexia is part of a set of disorders know as Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD). It can cause difficulties when learning to read, write, spell and speak. Dyslexia can also affect short-term memory, concentration, sequencing, mathematics, personal organisation and kinaesthetic motor skills. (Creative Education, 2015)
Different Approaches
Orton-Gillingham Approach
One of the oldest tactics for dyslexia is the Orton-Gillingham Approach (OG) from the 1930s. It uses an intensive phonetics-based system that teaches the basics of word formation before whole meanings and utilizes the three pathways; visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic. (Ritchey & Goeke, 2006)
In a study by Oakland, Black, Stanford, Nussbaum & Balise (1998) a course
It was devised via trial and error before being fine-tuned using neurophysiological tests to assess progress. Example activities involve using a balance board, throwing and catching bean bags, dual tasks and a range of stretching and coordination exercises.
It is worth mentioning that whilst the exercise group had an activity to do at home there was no activity for the control group which may be have affected for the results. The DDAT children may have suffered from the placebo effect. The placebo effect is bad as children may have improved due to their belief that the treatment will work. This means that it is not the treatment causing the improvement but the psychological therapeutic effect of the treatment (Eccles, 2007). However it may have been unethical to give the control group an activity that has no benefit to them and to ask parents to supervise it.
Finally the control group improved significantly on nonsense passage reading which suggests that the treatments in school played a role in improving the exercise group’s nonsense passage reading. However the control group did not improve on anything else suggesting that the DDAT approach was involved in improving a range of motor and cognitive skills in the
They used two matched groups of children with dyslexia and tested their reading, phonological and attentional skills before and after. One group of children played action video games (AVGs) whereas the other group played non-action games. Both groups played nine sessions of 80 minutes. They found that dyslexic children who played AVGs their reading ability and speed drastically improved and their spatial and temporal attention also improved.
It is thought that AVGs improve the efficiency of the magnocellular-dorsal pathway through a great amount of perceptual and motor load due to the speed of transient events and moving objects. In dyslexics the development of the visual magnocellular system is thought to be impaired (Stein, 2001).
The research suggests that letting dyslexic children play video games in-between lessons could improve their reading ability. However this something that would need to be investigated further perhaps by having a study in a school setting where dyslexic children played video games for shorter time such as ten minutes in-between their lessons or at lunch and break