Remedial teaching for reading and spelling: methods that work

Remedial teaching for reading and spelling works when several methods stack together: explicit, systematic instruction like Orton-Gillingham, multisensory practice, phonemic awareness training, decodable books, and diagnostic, mastery-based pacing. No single technique carries a struggling reader alone; the plan follows the child rather than a syllabus.

What actually makes a remedial method work?

A boy came to his first session with me last year after a full year of “practise more at home” advice and a weekly spelling list that never seemed to shrink his mistakes. He was handed the same fifteen words every week. He had learned to recite them, not to read them. Ten minutes into that first session, a simple card drill, see the letter pattern, say its sound, write it while saying it aloud, told me exactly which sounds were still shaky for him. That same information became the one new thing I taught him that day. The new pattern went straight into a short decodable passage built only from patterns he already knew, and he read it correctly from the first line to the last. That was something he could not remember doing before. No single method produced that moment. The drill surfaced the gap, the teaching filled it precisely, and the decodable passage let him prove it to himself immediately.

That stacking, not any one branded technique, is what makes remedial teaching actually work. If you have not read what a remedial class is, or how it differs from tuition, those two pieces cover the ground this one stands on. Every method below matters, but only as part of that stack, and only when the pacing is diagnostic rather than fixed by a calendar, the same point every method below comes back to.

What is structured literacy and how does Orton-Gillingham fit in?

The International Dyslexia Association has a name for the family of methods that actually work: Structured Literacy. Teaching is systematic and cumulative, explicit, and diagnostic, covering phonology, sound-symbol association, syllables, morphology, syntax and meaning, in that deliberate order. The Orton-Gillingham approach is the oldest and best known form of Structured Literacy, and I have written about it in full elsewhere, so I will not repeat its history here. The principle it established matters here: children with dyslexia, and plenty of children without a diagnosis at all, learn to read when the code of written English is taught to them directly instead of left for them to guess at.

Why does multisensory teaching matter so much?

Every effective remedial method delivers its teaching through more than one sense at once. A child sees a letter pattern, says its sound, hears it, and traces or writes it, often in the same few seconds. I have covered the mechanism behind multisensory teaching in detail already, so here it is enough to say why it belongs in this stack. A child with a reading difficulty often cannot rely on one sense alone to hold new information. Multisensory input gives the brain several routes in and several routes back out, so the same lesson stays.

Where do phonological and phonemic awareness fit in?

Underneath phonics sits an earlier skill: noticing that spoken language is made of sounds at all. Phonological awareness is the broad version of this, rhymes, syllables, word breaks, and it starts developing around age three. Phonemic awareness is the finer version, hearing and moving the individual sounds inside a word, and it is one of the strongest predictors of how easily reading instruction takes hold. Once both are in place, phonics can connect those sounds to their written symbols with something solid underneath them.

There is also a piece that decides how much of this a child can hold onto in the moment: phonological working memory, the short-term store that keeps sounds available while a child blends them into a word. In many children with reading difficulty, this store holds less than usual. So a remedial method has to teach in smaller pieces and check mastery more often, not push through a fixed pace regardless.

A method is not working because it has a name. It is working because it is diagnostic: it teaches only what testing shows is missing, and it moves on only once that gap has actually closed.

What role do decodable books play?

Once a child has been taught a handful of sound-symbol patterns, that knowledge needs somewhere to land. Decodable books use only the patterns a child has already learned, so instead of guessing at a word from its shape or the picture on the page, the child sounds it out and gets it right. That single experience, reading a whole page correctly, is what turns a lesson into confidence, and it is why every remedial session I run ends with a passage the child can actually finish.

How is fluency built once decoding is solid?

Decoding accurately is not the same as reading well. Fluency, reading accurately, at a reasonable pace, and with the sounds of ordinary speech, is what frees a child’s attention for meaning instead of the mechanics of the words themselves. Repeated reading of a short passage is one of the best-evidenced ways to build that automaticity, and once the early stumbling stops, the work shifts toward growing fluent readers through books matched to a child’s interest and plenty of daily practice.

Do vocabulary and comprehension matter too?

Yes, and a remedial plan that stops at decoding has stopped too early. The National Reading Panel’s review of reading instruction pointed to the same handful of pieces working together: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, none of them optional. As decoding becomes automatic, teaching widens into the meaning of words, the structure of sentences, and how a child pulls a passage together into understanding. How parents can use the science of reading at home has more on what this looks like day to day, outside a formal session.

How do you know a method is actually working?

Mastery-based pacing is the same point every method above comes back to. A good remedial method starts with an informal assessment that maps exactly where a child’s skills sit, not a guess based on age or grade. Every session after that is built on evidence from the one before it, and I have described what that actually looks like minute by minute in what a remedial teacher does in a session. Progress is checked constantly, and a skill is retaught, differently, until it holds, rather than covered once and left behind on a fixed timetable. What actually tells you a method is working is not which brand name it carries, but whether the child’s actual gaps are closing, one at a time, in an order that never leaves a hole underneath.

I run these sessions online, one to one, for children across seven countries, and the method does not change on a screen. You can read more about how remedial classes work online if that is the piece you are weighing. If you want to talk through what any of this would look like for your child, my about page has more on my background, and I am always happy to talk it through directly.

Frequently asked questions

Is Orton-Gillingham the only method that works for remedial reading and spelling?

No. No single branded programme is required. Orton-Gillingham is the best known form of structured literacy, but what actually makes any method work is the combination underneath it: explicit teaching, multisensory input, decodable practice, and diagnostic, mastery-based pacing, whatever the programme happens to be called.

Do these methods only help children with a diagnosed learning disability?

No. They help any child with a gap in reading or spelling skills, diagnosed or not. Good remedial teaching starts from where the child actually is, not from a diagnosis, so a child who simply fell behind benefits from exactly the same approach as a child with dyslexia.

Can these methods be delivered in online one-to-one sessions?

Yes. Everything that makes a method work, explicit teaching, immediate correction, mastery-based pacing, survives the screen when sessions stay one to one. See can remedial classes be done online for the details of what that looks like.

How can a parent tell if a teacher is really using evidence-based methods?

Ask what specific structured or research-based method they are trained in, whether they run a diagnostic assessment before teaching begins, whether the reading material is decodable, and whether pacing is set by mastery rather than by the calendar. Those four questions separate a trained practitioner from tuition with a new label on it.

Dr. V.S. Gayathri is a Certified Dyslexia Therapist, an Orton-Gillingham trained literacy specialist, and the founder of Flourishing Kids. She has delivered over 4,000 hours of one-to-one reading and spelling intervention, helping children across multiple countries build stronger literacy skills. If you would like help working out which of these methods your child actually needs, get in touch for a free 15-minute conversation.