ORTON-GILLINGHAM S.T.A.R.S CERTIFICATION
Equipping parents, tutors, and schools to use evidence-based, multi-sensory tools to help children overcome reading difficulties
This course is offered on the S.M.A.R.T. platform, which is ScholarSkills Multisensory Academy for Reading Teachers. Click below to view the courses you will be purchasing. Once you enroll, you will receive an email with your log-in information so that you can begin your coursework.
Upon completion of this course, educators will receive certification from ScholarSkills as certified Orton-Gillingham STAR Instructors. STAR is our acronym for Systematic Training in Analytical Reading. This certification means that instructors have been intensively trained in the use of multi-sensory tools to teach and remediate students in foundational reading skills comprising the structures of sounds, words, and sentences. This equips instructors to teach and remediate students from Kindergarten through Grade 8.
Overview of Course Content
This course trains instructors in evidence-based, multi-sensory techniques for teaching students--especially those who are struggling to read. It is an intensive, systematic, phonetic, structured evidenced-based approach to decoding and word recognition. Instructors will learn how to use multi-sensory visual, interactive, tactile, auditory learning strategies to help students avoid or overcome reading difficulties. For example, teachers will learn how to engage students in exciting, effective ways by helping them sound, say, and sing syllabic and phonemic sounds.
Ultimately, this is a speech-to-print course. Students will build foundations for excellence in reading and writing by learning how to spell phonemic and syllabic sounds and write them down. In other words, students will learn how to spell well to read well. The course content includes the following:
Levels 1-3: Phonetic Foundations
- An introduction to the Science of Reading made simple: What every reading teacher needs to know about how the brain learns to read.
- An introduction to the Science of Spelling made simple: what every reading teacher needs to know about how systematic spelling instruction enhances reading instruction.
- Instructors will learn:
- How to help students master the alphabetic principle
- How to help students build phonemic awareness through auditory training
- How to help students master phonetic elements through simple syllables
- How to help students develop phonemic analysis through syllabic segmentation
- How to help students build words by using the essential syllabic patterns such as CVC and VCE words
Level 4: Multi-letter consonant sounds
Level 6: Multi-sensory tools for teaching grammatical foundations and sentence analysis
This section will help instructors to learn the most effective and exciting ways to teach grammar for reading comprehension.
Level 7: Multi-sensory tools for teaching vocabulary acquisition through morphological analysis
This section will help instructors to learn the most effective and exciting ways to teach students how to build a rich vocabulary by analyzing morphological components such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
This course consists of over 150 self-teaching videos, which help students to master the structures of sounds, words, and sentences. Interactive digital quizzes help students to target their weaknesses while affirming their strengths and encouraging their efforts.
ScholarSkills will provide webinars and live coaching sessions throughout the training process.
Upon completion of this course, educators will receive certification from ScholarSkills as Orton-Gillingham STAR Instructors. STAR is our acronym for Systematic Training in Analytical Reading. This certification means that instructors have been intensively trained in the use of multi-sensory tools to teach and remediate students in foundational reading skills comprising the structures of sounds, words, and sentences. This equips instructors to teach and remediate students from Kindergarten through Grade 8.
Click here to see a preview of the courses you will be purchasing.
Once you have made your purchase, you will be assigned a user-id and password to begin your coursework on our SMART platform.
(ScholarSkills Multisensory Academy for Reading Teachers)
What's unique about this course?
This course will equip instructors to teach students how to Spell well to Read well. Educators will learn how to use the Science of Spelling to teach reading skills. Teaching spelling skills has been historically proven as the most effective way to teach reading and writing skills---especially to students who face reading difficulties or have been diagnosed with specific learning disorders.
Here's a summary of why spelling is the most effective way to teach reading:
What multi-sensory tools do we use to implement this spell-to-read or speech-to-print methodology?
1. Interactive flashcards with embedded QR codes
We use interactive flashcards with embedded QR codes, which help students to hear and spell phonemic sounds correctly. These cards can be used in both an online or physical classroom environment. They are available as PDF printouts, and they are also available in book form so that students can practice at home.
2. Interactive audio lessons and student response exercises
Our LMS (course platform) makes it easy for instructors to help students sharpen their auditory skills by using guided audio developmental spelling exercises and quizzes. Students demonstrate their reading and spelling skills by recording themselves and uploading the recordings through the platform or by email.
3. Physical textbooks with interactive QR codes
These texts allow students to hear sounds, spell sounds, and write them down. They also provide instructors with ways of identifying and targeting weaknesses that are specific to individual students.
4. Self-teaching learning videos
Self-teaching videos are a major component of each course level, as they allow students to learn critical elements of sound and to review those elements at their own pace. They also provide teachers with an invaluable tool for individuating and differentiating lessons.
5. Singing and chanting spelling songs
Chanting enchants students and helps them to remember concepts by rhyming. We have created our own blend of easy-to- remember sing-along sounds so that students can store critical concepts quickly and retrieve them easily.
6. Gamification and motivation
Our course platform motivates students and affirms their effort by constantly showing how many points they are gaining for each exercise or quiz completion.
What unique value will instructors gain from this course?
Most teacher training courses provide valuable ways for teachers to interact with their students. This program offers that and more: the training course becomes a fully loaded teaching course. Instructors get to keep the entire course and implement it immediately within their classrooms as teachers and outside of their classrooms as tutors. Entrepreneurially minded educators can use the course and the Learning Management System (LMS) to launch their own full or part-time reading skills tutoring businesses.
Click here to see the courses you will be purchasing.
Once you have made your purchase, you will be assigned a user-id and password to begin your coursework on our SMART platform.
(ScholarSkills Multisensory Academy for Reading Teachers)
Your Instructor
Mr. Vieira is the President of ScholarSkills Learning Center in N.Y and the Executive Director of Win With Reading. He has been a state-certified teacher, principal, and educational services provider in New York City for nearly thirty years. Mr. Vieira is a reading specialist who offers live and asynchronous courses that equip educators with evidence-based, multi-sensory tools, which help struggling students overcome reading difficulties and specific learning disorders. He is a graduate of Emory University, with an M.A. from Brooklyn College.
Course Curriculum
Courses Included with Purchase


