Highly experienced reading and dyslexia tutors with 10+ years of experience
Evidence-based Orton-Gillingham reading tutoring
Live 1:1 online and in-person OG tutoring sessions
Joanna Brown, M.S. Ed, C-SLDS, is the founder and CEO of The Reading Guru, and also a master Orton-Gillingham reading tutor with 15 years of experience. She and her team have helped hundreds of children crack the reading code. The Reading Guru offers one-on-one, live, online, individualized Orton-Gillingham-based reading tutoring to students worldwide, including those with dyslexia. We also offer in-person reading tutoring in NYC / Brooklyn, Queens, Denver, and Austin.
Joanna and her team have helped Alexa with all the reading areas where she was falling behind. Joanna makes a careful assessment of the gaps and relentlessly addressed those with the lessons. We’ve seen extraordinary progress in our daughter’s reading and just as importantly, her confidence, because of her lessons with The Reading Guru.
Below you’ll find answers to the most common questions parents ask about Orton-Gillingham tutoring, dyslexia intervention, and how The Reading Guru supports struggling readers. Whether you’re exploring online or in-person reading tutoring, wondering about dyslexia signs, or looking for effective, research-based reading help, we’re here to help.
Orton-Gillingham is the gold standard for teaching phonics and spelling to struggling readers and those with dyslexia. The Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach emphasizes the explicit, systematic instruction of phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling rules. As a company providing Orton-Gillingham reading tutoring, The Reading Guru uses an individualized approach that helps students catch up to their peers and build confidence with reading and writing. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, our Orton-Gillingham tutors carefully tailor each reading tutoring session to fit the student’s needs, current skills, personality and interests, and they don’t move on until skills are mastered.
Ordinary reading tutors focus on general reading practice but don’t have specialized training. In contrast, an OG tutor uses a specialized, structured, and multisensory approach designed specifically for students with dyslexia or significant reading gaps. At The Reading Guru, our tutors are not just ordinary teachers or “homework helpers”; they are OG-certified or deeply experienced reading specialists who teach the mechanics of reading (decoding, phonics, and phonemic awareness), which is what schools unfortunately often miss.
Yes! Online dyslexia tutoring is highly effective when delivered by a skilled specialist. At The Reading Guru, our online OG tutors only teach online, and our in person tutors only teach in person. This allows for tutors who are not only skilled in teaching the OG method, but who have almost mastered the use of digital materials in order to engage students from afar. They use interactive digital tools that replicate the multisensory experience—allowing students to manipulate letter tiles, trace sounds, and engage visually on screen. For many families, online tutoring is actually better because it allows you to access the highest-quality specialist regardless of where you live. When we hire remote OG specialists, we do a national search for the best of the best! If you want more info, you can check out our blog post on how to pick the right online reading tutor.
The “Science of Reading” is a body of research that has shown how the human brain learns to read. Orton-Gillingham is the direct application of that science. While many schools are just now catching up to these methods, The Reading Guru has been using this evidence-based approach for over 15 years. We teach explicitly and systematically, ensuring your child masters one concept before moving to the next. This is the only proven method for remediation. Even if you don’t work with us, we encourage you to find a Science of Reading-based tutor for your child. This can include Orton-Gillingham (the overall category), or specific programs or approaches like Barton, Lindamood-Bell, or Wilson.
Dyslexia looks different at different ages, but in our experience at The Reading Guru, common red flags include:
Reading intervention is critical to help resolve these issues. For more information on this topic, check out our blog post, “Is my child dyslexic?“
Not all tutors are the same. You wouldn’t hire a person off the street to perform surgery, and you shouldn’t hire a random person to help your dyslexic child learn to read. Learning to teach reading using the Orton-Gillingham approach requires hundreds of hours of specialized training. That’s the training our tutors have at The Reading Guru. It’s not something a parent can easily do, and online games, worksheets, and basic tutors are not enough. With specialized one-on-one Orton-Gillingham tutoring, children can make dramatic progress.
No. You do not need a formal dyslexia diagnosis or neuropsychological evaluation to begin tutoring with us. If your child has difficulty reading, he or she would benefit from our specialized Orton-Gillingham tutoring. Our experienced tutors at The Reading Guru perform their own comprehensive assessments to identify exactly where your child’s reading gaps are. Whether your child has a formal dyslexia diagnosis, ADHD, or simply “unexplained” reading struggles, our diagnostic model allows us to start helping them immediately.
Our Orton-Gillingham tutoring starts at $79 per session. At The Reading Guru, our rates reflect the elite level of our staff—most of whom hold master’s degrees and top-tier certifications. While this is an investment, getting effective reading help often means fewer total months of support than cheaper, non-specialized tutoring that doesn’t address root causes. Please see our Rates & Availability page for specific pricing. If you want to learn more, you can also read our study about the costs of Orton-Gillingham tutoring across the U.S.
While every child is unique, remediation of dyslexia is a marathon, not a sprint. Most students require 1-2 sessions per week to see consistent progress. Parents typically see a boost in confidence within the first month, and measurable improvements in reading fluency and decoding often appear within 3 to 6 months of consistent work with one of our Orton-Gillingham tutors. Our goal at The Reading Guru is to make ourselves obsolete. We want your child to become an independent reader as quickly as possible.
Absolutely. In fact, private tutoring is often the “missing piece” that accelerates IEP goals set for your child by the local school district. School “reading specialists” often have large caseloads and may not use true Orton-Gillingham methods. Our tutors at The Reading Guru happily collaborate with your child’s classroom teachers and learning specialists to ensure our private reading intervention complements their school day, providing the intensity and 1:1 focus that schools rarely have the resources to offer.
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