Wilson Reading is based on the Orton-Gillingham approach to addressing reading difficulties. Unlike OG, which relies on principles, assessments, and professional judgment of an individual reading teacher, Wilson is a complete program, a product, if you will. It’s developed, owned, and marketed by Wilson Language Training, a for-profit company that sells everything from training for professionals to curriculum for students to an online teaching and assessment system.
Like OG, the Wilson Reading System is designed to be taught in small groups or individually. It’s for students in second grade through adulthood who experience persistent and intense difficulty learning to read and spell. A Wilson Reading System lesson is set up in three blocks of instruction, each one lasting 20–30 minutes.
- The first and longest block is word study, which includes learning to decode new words and automatically identify known words. In this part of the lesson, students may be reading single words or syllables on flashcards; sorting cards with letters, words, or syllables printed on them; and reading words in lists and sentences.
- The second block focuses on spelling; spelling a word is the reverse of reading a word. In the spelling block, students may be segmenting words into syllables or phonemes (the tiniest unit of sound), spelling words by arranging pre-printed cards, and writing teacher-dictated words or sentences.
- The third block focuses on two things: reading fluency and comprehension. Reading fluency means reading with appropriate speed, accuracy, and expression. In the comprehension section, students may be listening to the teacher read a passage (listening comprehension), or they may be reading the passage themselves (reading comprehension), trying to focus on the meaning of the text. This is important because students who have to work so hard on decoding individual words may develop a habit of “word calling” or saying the words of a sentence out loud without understanding what the sentence means. Of course, comprehending text is the main thing about reading!
Wilson Language Training has other programs in addition to the Wilson Reading System, which provides intensive interventions with students in second grade through adulthood with significant reading difficulties, such as dyslexia. Just Words is for students in fourth grade through adults who need to improve their reading and spelling but whose difficulties are less intense. Wilson Fundations is a classroom reading curriculum for all students K–5. Wilson also has apps to track student assessment, programs for teacher professional development, and materials in Spanish. That’s a lot of programs! If you guessed that Wilson sounds like something a school or a school district would purchase for teachers to use in a range of contexts, you’re right! Teachers who work for a school that adopts Wilson Language Training curriculum receive professional development or learning about how to implement the program. Some of the reading specialists in the directory have learned the Wilson system through their teaching jobs.
Earning a Wilson Reading System certification is expensive. Altogether, the introductory course, the level I certification course with supervised teaching, the level II certification course with supervised teaching, and the required materials can cost about $10,000.
A reading specialist following the Wilson program is expected (by the Wilson system) to follow it “with fidelity.” Some of the teachers’ materials are even scripted, telling reading specialists just what to say, what learning activities to lead, in what order, and for how long. This is because the program has been tested by the Wilson company as it is, and it has shown some success in helping students improve their reading. If a teacher picks and chooses what parts of the Wilson program to implement and what parts to omit, then it’s hard to tell how well it will work.
Of course, there are no Wilson Language Training police making sure that a Wilson reading specialist doesn’t stray from the plan. Teaching the program with fidelity may be more of a concern for a school district that has a responsibility to make sure the instruction measures up, but not so much for an individual reading specialist who is working with one student at a time, assessing progress, and making professional judgments about what the student is ready for next. Many of the reading specialists in the directory who use the Wilson method use other methods as well, choosing the best of each approach. You can be certain that a Wilson-prepared reading specialist will know about the foundations of language, structured literacy instruction, and what helps a student make progress in learning to read and spell.