Orton-Gillingham games: how to practice the method at home

Last updated 2026-07-10

What exactly are Orton-Gillingham games?

Orton-Gillingham games are practice activities built around the six language strands the OG approach targets: phonological awareness, phonics and decoding, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. They aren't a separate curriculum. They're ways to repeat and vary the skill practice a tutor or teacher is already doing, so a child gets more repetitions without more formal drill.

The OG method itself came out of the 1930s, developed by neurologist Samuel Orton and educator Anna Gillingham as a structured, sequential, multisensory approach to reading instruction. It became the base for most of what we now call "structured literacy." The International Dyslexia Association defines structured literacy as instruction that is explicit, systematic, sequential, and multisensory ^[1]. Games that fit this frame do the same things. They tie sound to symbol, they build from simple to complex, and they engage more than one sense at once.

The word "game" matters here. A 2021 analysis in the Journal of Learning Disabilities found that motivation and engagement are significant moderators of reading intervention outcomes, particularly for children with dyslexia ^[2]. When a child dreads the flashcard stack, the repetition stops working. A game keeps the repetitions coming.

You'll see these activities labeled many ways: OG games, structured literacy games, multisensory phonics games. They all mean the same thing. Deliberate practice of a specific OG skill, delivered in a format that feels less like work.

Does the research actually support using games for OG skills?

The honest answer is layered. The OG method itself has a strong evidence base for students with dyslexia. A 2019 meta-analysis in Reading Research Quarterly examined 66 studies of structured literacy interventions and found a mean effect size of 0.49 for decoding outcomes, which is a meaningful effect in reading research ^[3]. That evidence base is for systematic, explicit instruction, not specifically for game formats.

What the research does support about games is this: distributed practice (spreading repetitions across many short sessions) beats massed practice (one long session) for skill retention, a finding replicated across dozens of cognitive science studies ^[4]. Games are a natural vehicle for distributed practice because children will ask to play again tomorrow. The skill being practiced still has to follow OG scope and sequence. A game that practices random letters does nothing. A game that practices only the short-a CVC pattern your child learned this week does a lot.

Nobody has great randomized trial data on "OG games" as a category. The closest evidence comes from studies of gamified phonics practice and computer-based structured literacy programs, which show gains roughly comparable to traditional drill when the skill content is the same ^[5]. So the game format probably matters less than the skill it's practicing and whether it matches where your child is in their OG sequence.

The takeaway: use games to add repetitions of skills already taught. Don't use them to introduce new concepts. That's the tutor's job.

What skills do Orton-Gillingham games practice, and why does that matter?

OG instruction follows a specific scope and sequence. Games work best when they target one skill at a time and sit at the right level: hard enough that the child has to think, not so hard that they shut down.

The six skill areas and example game types:

OG Skill Area	What the child practices	Example game format
Phonological awareness	Hearing and manipulating sounds without print	Syllable clapping, sound-deletion games, rhyme sorting
Phonics / decoding	Mapping letters to sounds	Card flip, word ladders, phoneme-grapheme matching
Spelling / encoding	Spelling from sounds to letters	Spelling tap, sand tray writing, magnetic letter build
Fluency	Reading words and text at rate	Timed word sorts, phrase reading races
Vocabulary	Word meaning, morphology	Root word bingo, prefix/suffix card games
Reading comprehension	Understanding text	Story sequencing, retell games

If your child is early in OG instruction, most games should focus on phonological awareness and basic phonics. Phonological awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of spoken language) is the strongest predictor of later reading success, and deficits here are the core of most signs of dyslexia ^[6].

If your child's tutor is working on short vowels, games should practice short vowels. If the tutor just introduced consonant blends, games practice blends. This is not optional. Random phonics games that aren't tied to the current instructional sequence are, to be blunt, mostly a waste of time.

What are the best free or low-cost Orton-Gillingham games you can make at home?

Most of the best OG games cost under five dollars to make, or nothing at all. Here are twelve that experienced structured literacy tutors actually use.

Sound boxes (Elkonin boxes) Draw three to five squares on a piece of paper. The child pushes a small object (penny, chip, button) into each box as they say each phoneme in a word. Say "ship": push one for /sh/, one for /i/, one for /p/. This is one of the most researched phonological awareness activities available, and it costs nothing ^[6].

Sand tray or shaving cream writing Fill a shallow tray with salt or sand. The child says a sound, writes the letter, and feels it. The tactile-kinesthetic loop is the whole point of multisensory instruction. Shaving cream on a cookie sheet works the same way and is easier to clean.

Word ladders Start with a simple CVC word: "cat." Change one phoneme at a time: cat, bat, bad, bed, red. The child reads each word and says what changed. This practices decoding and phoneme manipulation at once. Timothy Rasinski's word ladders books at various grade levels are cheap and already sequenced.

Phoneme swap card game Write CVC words on index cards, one letter per card (three cards per word). Deal out a hand. On each turn, swap one card with one from a shared pile and read the new word. If it's a real word, keep the set. Nonsense words don't count. This forces decoding of unfamiliar combinations.

Syllable sort Write 20 words on index cards. Sort them into piles by syllable count: one, two, three. Then sort by syllable type (closed, open, vowel team, and so on) as the child advances. You can do this with words from any OG level.

Red words memory match Orton-Gillingham calls high-frequency irregular words "red words" because they can't be fully decoded phonetically. Make a matching game: one card has the word, another has a picture or sentence context. This overlaps with sight word flashcards practice but adds the memory-match format that lifts engagement. For which words to target early, Dolch sight words and first grade sight words are reasonable starting points.

Onset-rime flip books Fold index cards and write onsets (beginning sounds) on the left half, rimes (-at, -in, -op) on the right. Flip the onsets to make new words and read each one. Simple, fast, and endlessly reusable.

Tap and spell Tap fingers to count phonemes, then write or spell the word. This is encoding (spelling) practice, which OG treats as equal in weight to decoding. One sound per tap, use all fingers including the thumb.

Phoneme deletion challenge Say a word, delete a phoneme, what's left? "Say 'smile' without the /m/." "Sile." This sounds simple but is genuinely hard for kids with phonological dyslexia, and it's exactly the kind of manipulation OG instruction targets.

Prefix/suffix build Write root words on cards and keep a pile of prefix and suffix strips. Build real words, read them, define them. Morphology instruction is one of the highest-payoff vocabulary activities available, especially for older struggling readers.

Word sort by vowel sound Give the child 15 to 20 word cards and two header cards (short-a, long-a). Sort and read. The act of categorizing forces attention to the vowel pattern. This works for any contrasting vowel pair in the OG sequence.

Nonsense word knock Write nonsense words following a specific phonics pattern on cards ("frop," "delt," "snib"). Read one correctly, keep it. Miss it, put it back. First to 10 wins. Nonsense words are useful because the child can't lean on memorization and has to decode. The DIBELS nonsense word fluency measure runs on the same logic ^[7].

Are there good apps or digital games for Orton-Gillingham practice?

A few digital tools line up reasonably well with OG principles. I'll be honest about which ones have actual evidence behind them and which ones are just marketed as "OG-aligned."

GraphoGame has the most peer-reviewed evidence of any phonics app. A 2019 study found significant gains in phonological awareness and decoding for at-risk readers using the app versus a control group ^[5]. It's free in some countries and low-cost in the US.

Lexia Core5 is widely used in schools and has independent research support. A 2016 study found students using Core5 made significantly greater gains in foundational reading skills than comparison students ^[5]. It costs schools money, but families can sometimes get access through school licenses.

Teach Your Monster to Read (free on web, a few dollars on mobile) lines up well with phonics scope and sequence, though its evidence base is thinner. It's a reasonable supplement for young children.

Apps to be skeptical of: any app that calls itself "OG-inspired" but has no published efficacy data, teaches random phonics patterns with no stated scope and sequence, or leans on whole-word recognition instead of sound-symbol correspondence. App stores are full of these. They're often colorful and fun, but the fun isn't doing reading work.

One practical note. Screen time is separate from the game itself. If a child has already hit their screen limit for the day, a physical card game is genuinely better than a tablet app, not because the app is bad but because the child can do more of it.

How do you match a game to your child's current OG level?

This is the piece most parents get wrong. They find a game they like and play it without checking whether it matches the skills their child is currently learning. The mismatch means wasted time or, worse, practicing errors.

The right process:

1. Ask your child's OG tutor or structured literacy teacher: "What skill units are you working on right now?" Get a specific answer, more than "blends." Ask which blends, in which position, with which vowel patterns.

2. Build or choose games that practice exactly those patterns. If the tutor is on short-e CVC words and initial blends with short-e, your games should use those words.

3. Include some review material. OG is cumulative, and games are a good way to keep earlier skills fluent. But most game content should be current-level material.

4. Watch the error rate. If your child gets fewer than 80% of items right during a game, the game is too hard and you're practicing errors. Pull back to an easier level. If they're getting 98% right without thinking, the game is too easy and you should add challenge.

If you're not sure where your child sits in an OG sequence, a dyslexia test or a learning disability test from a qualified evaluator will spell out their specific phonological and decoding skills in detail. That report is the map for choosing games at the right level.

Parents who use ReadFlare's free reading tools can find a phonics scope-and-sequence reference that maps directly to OG levels, which makes it easier to audit whether a game you're considering hits the right skill.

Can these games replace a real OG tutor?

No. Full stop.

Formal OG tutoring with a trained practitioner involves diagnostic teaching. The tutor watches how the child responds to each new concept and adjusts. Games can't do that. Games practice skills already introduced. They don't teach new concepts, catch systematic error patterns, or adjust scope and sequence based on the child's responses.

For children with dyslexia, IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.) gives eligible students the right to specially designed instruction at no cost to parents ^[8]. If your child qualifies for an IEP, that instruction should include explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Games are what happens at home between sessions, not the intervention itself.

If your child doesn't currently have an IEP and you're wondering whether they should, look at the signs of dyslexia and consider requesting a school evaluation in writing. Private OG tutoring runs roughly $80 to $200 per hour depending on region and the tutor's credential level (Certified Academic Language Therapist vs. OG practitioner). Games at home stretch the benefit of each paid session, which makes the tutor's time more efficient.

Think of it this way. A physical therapist teaches you exercises. The exercises you do at home between appointments are what actually build strength. The appointment is the teaching. The homework is the practice. OG games are the homework.

What multisensory elements should OG games include?

OG instruction is multisensory by design. The more sensory channels a game engages, the closer it sits to the OG method's intent. The three channels are auditory (hearing), visual (seeing), and kinesthetic-tactile (touching and moving).

A good OG game touches at least two of the three:

• The child says the sound out loud (auditory) while tracing the letter in sand (tactile). Two channels.
• The child reads a word card (visual) and taps the phonemes on their arm (kinesthetic). Two channels.
• The child hears a word, writes it in shaving cream, and reads it back. All three channels.

This multisensory approach is more than OG tradition. Research on memory encoding suggests that connecting new information to multiple memory systems increases retention, a principle sometimes called dual coding ^[4]. Whether the specific mix of modalities matters as much as OG practitioners believe is still debated in the literature. But there's no downside to making a game multisensory, and it usually makes it more fun.

The practical read: if a game is purely visual (reading word cards silently), add a say-it-out-loud component. If it's purely auditory (the parent says words, child responds), add something to touch or write. The add-on costs nothing and lines the game up more closely with what the tutor is doing.

For children who also struggle with numbers or math symbols alongside reading, which sometimes signals number dyslexia, multisensory games can be adapted to practice number-symbol associations using the same principles.

How much time should kids spend on OG games each day?

The research on distributed practice suggests shorter, more frequent sessions beat longer, less frequent ones for skill retention ^[4]. For most children in OG programs, 10 to 20 minutes of game-based practice per day is a reasonable target on days between tutoring sessions.

A few practical notes:

Stop before frustration hits. If a child starts making careless errors or pulling away, the session is over. Five good minutes beat fifteen bad ones. Ending on a success is worth more than finishing a full session.

Don't play games on the same day as a tutoring session if the session was demanding. The child needs processing time, and more drilling the same afternoon often gives you diminishing returns.

Weekends are a good time for slightly longer game sessions (20 to 30 minutes) using review material the child already knows well, which builds fluency and confidence.

For children with an IEP, check what the document says about home practice expectations. Some IEPs include parent training or home program components. If yours doesn't and you want guidance, you can ask the IEP team to add it. That's a legitimate IEP request under IDEA's requirement that the plan address all areas of need ^[8].

Ages matter too. A six-year-old doing 10 minutes of OG game practice is doing well. A ten-year-old can sustain 15 to 20 minutes. A twelve-year-old with strong motivation can do 20 to 25. These are rough ranges, not rules.

What should parents look for in commercial OG-aligned games?

The commercial market for "OG games" and "structured literacy games" is large and poorly regulated. Anyone can stamp "Orton-Gillingham inspired" on a product. Here's what actually matters.

Clear scope and sequence. The product should tell you exactly which phonics patterns it covers and in what order. If the packaging says "phonics fun" without specifying which phonics, skip it.

Sound-symbol correspondence at the core. The game should make the child map sounds to letters or letters to sounds, more than match pictures or recognize whole words.

Controlled vocabulary. Words in the game should use only the phonics patterns listed as the game's target, plus a few known red words. If a short-vowel game includes silent-e words, it's not well-controlled.

Published sequence from a known OG program. Games from programs like Wilson Reading, Barton Reading, SPIRE, or Sounds Sensible follow a documented sequence you can cross-reference against your child's current level.

Prices swing wide. Card games from structured literacy publishers run $15 to $40. Board games marketed as OG-aligned run $25 to $60. Most of them are overpriced for what they are. The sand tray and index card games described earlier do the same job for under $5. Spend money on a good tutor before spending it on packaged games.

One exception. If a specific game keeps a reluctant child engaged when nothing else does, the engagement premium is worth paying. A child who wants to play a $40 game every day for three months is banking a lot of practice repetitions.

How do OG games fit into an IEP or 504 plan?

Games themselves usually aren't written into IEPs, but the skills they practice are. An IEP for a student with dyslexia will include annual goals targeting specific decoding, phonological awareness, or fluency benchmarks. Short-term objectives break those down into measurable steps ^[8].

If you're playing OG games at home, you're supporting those IEP goals. You can and should tell the IEP team what you're doing. Some teams will note it in the home support section of the plan. More useful still, you can ask the team to tell you which skills to prioritize in home games so they line up with current instruction. This is a reasonable request at any IEP meeting.

504 plans (under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act) provide accommodations but typically don't include specialized instruction ^[9]. A child on a 504 who also needs OG instruction may be better served by an IEP evaluation request. If the school has refused to evaluate and you believe your child has a disability affecting learning, you can dispute that decision through the procedural safeguards IDEA provides, including mediation and due process ^[8].

The ReadFlare parent advocacy kit covers how to request evaluations in writing, respond to prior written notices, and document what's working at home. That documentation, including which OG games your child can now do fluently, can support your case at IEP meetings.

For families sorting out the difference between an IEP and a 504, or wondering whether a learning disabilities evaluation would help, the school's special education coordinator is the first call. Put your request for evaluation in writing and keep a copy.

What are some games specifically for older kids and teens doing OG work?

Older kids present a real problem. They know the activities look babyish, even when the skill level is genuinely hard. The game has to be age-appropriate in format even when the phonics content is basic.

These formats work well for middle and high school students:

Morpheme sort competition. Cards with prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Compete to build the most words in two minutes. This targets morphology (a high-payoff skill for older readers) and feels more like a word game than reading remediation.

Code-breaking framing. Present nonsense words or new phonics patterns as "codes" to crack. The student is the cryptographer. This reframes decoding in a way that doesn't feel like being a bad reader.

Beat your own time. Record how many words from a word list the student reads correctly in one minute. Try to beat that number next session. This is essentially curriculum-based measurement for fluency, but the self-competition framing works for older students who don't want to compete against peers.

Etymology detective. For vocabulary and morphology work, the student traces a word back to its Latin or Greek root and finds related English words. This connects to history and language in a way that interests many older students.

Crossword with phonics constraints. Make or find crosswords that use only words following the current phonics pattern. This exists in published form for several OG levels.

For teens who also struggle with letter or symbol reversals and wonder if there's something visually distinct about their dyslexia, the article on visual dyslexia covers that in detail. The games don't change much, but understanding the source of the difficulty can help a teenager feel less confused about their own reading.

Frequently asked questions

Do Orton-Gillingham games really work for kids with dyslexia?

Games themselves aren't the intervention. The OG method has solid evidence for dyslexia, with a mean effect size of 0.49 for decoding in a 2019 meta-analysis of 66 structured literacy studies. Games add practice repetitions of OG skills, which helps retention through distributed practice. They work when they're matched to the skill your child is currently learning. Random phonics games do very little.

What is the cheapest way to do Orton-Gillingham games at home?

Index cards, a salt or sand tray, and small objects like coins or chips cover almost every OG game that matters. Elkonin sound boxes need only paper and pennies. Word ladders need only a pencil. The total cost is under five dollars. Most expensive packaged OG games do the same thing. Spend your money on a qualified tutor, not on game kits.

How do I know which OG game is right for my child's reading level?

Ask your child's OG tutor or structured literacy teacher which phonics unit they're currently teaching. Build or choose games that practice exactly those patterns. If the tutor is working on short-e CVC words and initial blends, games should use those words. If your child gets fewer than 80% of items right in a game, the game is too hard and you're practicing errors.

Can I use OG games instead of a tutor to teach my child to read?

No. Games practice skills already taught. They can't introduce new concepts, catch systematic errors, or adjust instruction based on your child's responses. A trained OG tutor does diagnostic teaching that games can't replicate. Think of games as the home exercises between PT appointments. The appointment does the teaching; the homework builds the skill.

Are there free Orton-Gillingham games online?

Yes, though quality varies. GraphoGame has some free access and peer-reviewed evidence for phonological awareness gains. Teach Your Monster to Read is free on web and reasonably aligned to phonics scope and sequence. Many structured literacy teacher-resource sites (Teachers Pay Teachers, Reading Rockets) offer free printable OG-aligned card games. Check that any free game specifies which phonics pattern it targets before using it.

How long should my child play OG games each day?

Ten to twenty minutes on days between tutoring sessions is a reasonable target for most children. Stop before frustration hits, even if that's only five minutes. Shorter, more frequent sessions retain skill better than long occasional ones. Don't add game time on the same afternoon as a demanding tutoring session. Weekends work well for slightly longer review sessions using already-mastered material.

What's the difference between OG games and regular phonics games?

The difference is structure. OG games follow a specific scope and sequence, use controlled vocabulary (only patterns already taught), and are explicitly multisensory. Many commercial phonics games mix patterns randomly or include words with untaught patterns, which undercuts the systematic approach OG requires. An OG game should tell you exactly which phonics level it targets.

My child's school says they use OG. How can I tell if the games they're using are real OG?

Ask the teacher or interventionist to show you their scope and sequence document and where your child currently sits on it. Ask which phonics patterns the games they use target. Real OG-aligned programs like Wilson, Barton, or SPIRE have published sequences. If the school can't point to a specific sequence or can't tell you which unit your child is in, the instruction may be OG-branded but not systematically delivered.

Are OG games different for kids with double-deficit dyslexia?

Children with double-deficit dyslexia have both phonological awareness deficits and slow rapid naming, which affects reading fluency. Games for these children should hit both: phoneme manipulation games for the phonological side, and timed word-reading games (beat your own time, word sorts against a clock) for fluency. The fluency component is easy to skip but matters a lot for this profile. See the article on double-deficit dyslexia for more detail.

Can OG games be written into an IEP?

Games themselves are rarely written into IEPs, but the skills they practice correspond directly to IEP goals. You can ask the IEP team to specify which skills to prioritize in home practice so your games line up with current instruction. Under IDEA, IEPs must address all areas of educational need, and parent training or home program components are legitimate additions to request at any IEP meeting.

What are the best OG games for kindergarten or first grade?

At early OG levels, focus on phonological awareness games: syllable clapping, rhyme sorting, Elkonin sound boxes with pictures (no print yet), and onset-rime flip books. Add phoneme-grapheme matching once letter sounds are introduced. Keep sessions very short, five to ten minutes. The goal is hearing and manipulating sounds, not reading words. Reading words comes after the phonological foundation is solid.

Do OG games help with spelling, or just reading?

OG treats reading and spelling as two sides of the same coin: decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) both reinforce the sound-symbol relationship. Games like tap-and-spell, sand tray writing, and magnetic letter building directly practice spelling. The International Dyslexia Association's structured literacy definition explicitly includes spelling as a core component, so OG games should include encoding practice alongside decoding.

My child has a 504, not an IEP. Can they still benefit from OG games at home?

Yes, completely. OG games are home practice tools that any child can use regardless of their school plan. A 504 provides accommodations but usually not specialized instruction. If your child needs OG-style instruction and isn't getting it at school, you can pursue private tutoring and supplement it with home games. If the reading difficulty is severe enough, consider requesting a full special education evaluation for potential IEP eligibility under IDEA.

Sources

1. International Dyslexia Association, Structured Literacy overview: Structured literacy is defined as explicit, systematic, sequential, and multisensory instruction targeting six language strands
2. Journal of Learning Disabilities, motivation and reading intervention outcomes, 2021: Motivation and engagement are significant moderators of reading intervention outcomes for children with dyslexia
3. Reading Research Quarterly, meta-analysis of structured literacy interventions, 2019: A meta-analysis of 66 structured literacy studies found a mean effect size of 0.49 for decoding outcomes
4. Cognitive Science Society, spacing effect and distributed practice: Distributed practice across many short sessions outperforms massed practice for skill retention; dual coding connecting new information to multiple memory systems increases retention
5. Lexia Learning, Core5 independent research; GraphoGame efficacy studies: Studies of gamified phonics practice and computer-based structured literacy programs show gains roughly comparable to traditional drill when skill content is the same; GraphoGame showed significant gains in phonological awareness; Core5 students made significantly greater gains in foundational reading skills
6. National Reading Panel, phonological awareness as predictor of reading success: Phonological awareness is the strongest predictor of later reading success; Elkonin sound boxes are one of the most researched phonological awareness activities
7. DIBELS 8th Edition, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, University of Oregon: DIBELS nonsense word fluency measure uses nonsense words to ensure children must decode rather than rely on memorization
8. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, U.S. Department of Education: IDEA gives eligible students the right to specially designed instruction at no cost; IEPs must address all areas of educational need; procedural safeguards include mediation and due process
9. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act: 504 plans provide accommodations but typically do not include specialized instruction
10. Reading Rockets, phonological and phonemic awareness activities: Elkonin boxes, onset-rime activities, and phoneme deletion are evidence-based phonological awareness activities recommended for struggling readers
11. Florida Center for Reading Research, structured literacy scope and sequence: OG instruction follows a specific scope and sequence, building from simple to complex phonics patterns in a systematic way