The Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching reading and writing was founded in the 1930's. Originally created as a way of remediating reading difficulties among dyslexic students, it is now widely accepted as a suitable method for teaching all children to read.

Because students are taught concepts in a sequential and structured manner, their lexicon of word knowledge grows in a predictable way. For example, once a student knows that "ch" can spell /k/, they can read words like school and chemistry with less difficulty.

The word search tool is designed to help educators identify words that a student can read and/or spell. Each lesson the teacher or tutor updates the concepts to be taught, and the word search tool returns a list of words that can be used in that day's lesson. Unlike other word search tools, this tool filters out any words with concepts that have not yet been taught.