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Sassarini pilots acclaimed reading program

Valeria Lorenzana and Alexa Oliveros, two of Morgan Garcia’s 20 first-grade students, are enjoying a new reading program that is being tried out at Sassarini in the kindergarten through second-grade classrooms. The reading program is based on the Orton-Gillingham methodology, which was developed for dyslexic students but has been found to be effective in teaching all students to read. The approach is multi-sensory, kinesthetic and phonics based. For details, go to orton-gillingham.com. Principal Leticia Bhatia (now on maternity leave) was so inspired by reports on the program’s effectiveness that she arranged for a dozen Sassarini teachers to be professionally trained prior to the start of the 2011-12 school year, and now all classrooms in those grades use some version of the system in their reading lessons.