A student traces a word card for “they.” The word is written in glitter glue, which makes a scratchy, interesting surface to trace over. (Once it hardens overnight. Hide the cards until they get really set!) Tracing, saying the letters aloud as one traces, and then sweeping a finger under the whole word as it is said orally is a multi-sensory way to glue those sight words into the brain.
The small groups at school are participating in our school library’s fundraiser. It involves each classroom at school producing a book with text and pictures written by the students. Inspired by Big Elephant, we chose to write a book of mnemonics for remembering how to spell what we call “puzzle words.” Words like could and again. The kind which defy sounding out. We wrote crazy back stories for each mnemonic, to make it more memorable. I share with you the story my second grade small group wrote. It is a perfect second grade story, because it mentions each person’s favorite food and their moms’ first names.
Sally’s Oven Might Explode!
A story to help us remember how to spell the word “some.”
Sally is a wonderful cook! Everyone wants her to bake delicious food for their special events. On Friday Sally’s daughter is turning eight years old. She wants Sally to make her a cookie cake. Sally says she will make it. On Friday Sally’s friend is getting married. She asked Sally to make her wedding cake. Sally says she would be glad to bake it. On Friday Sally is competing in a baking contest. For the contest, she has to make homemade bread for a chicken sandwich, sugar cookies, and a perfectly roasted turkey.
Sally was so busy on Thursday getting the decorations set up for her daughter’s birthday that she went to bed very late. She set five alarms to wake her up in the morning, but she slept through all of them. By the time Sally did wake up, it was quite late.
Sally leaped from her bed, shoved her feet into flip flops, and dashed to the kitchen in her pajamas. She tripped over a skateboard, rolled down the hallway, flipped over the cat and fell down the stairs. The ambulance took her to the hospital where they put her arm in a cast.
On the way home, Sally stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients. She saw her friend, Theresa, and told her about all the troubles of the day, and how she still had to bake a ton of food. Theresa called their other friends, Brenda, Carla, Brooke, another Teresa and Meagon. The friends all say they will come to Sally’s kitchen to help her bake.
Soon the friends are all busy mixing and baking. Each lady carries the pans of batter and dough to Sally’s oven and all the pans are somehow fitted in. The oven door is closed and the timer is set.
Strange sounds begin to come from the oven, then little wisps of steam escape from the cracks around the oven door. The ladies looked at the strangely hissing oven, then at each other. “Run,” they all scream. “Sally’s oven might explode!”
Actor Henry Winkler, author Agatha Christie, race car driver Jackie Stewart, basketball player Magic Johnson, former president Woodrow Wilson and business CEO Charles Schwab are all creative and inventive and talented individuals – with dyslexia. These people had to learn to excel despite dyslexia, learn to channel their talents and creativity and to dare to take on big tasks by learning to break them into small tasks.
Dyslexic students do not lack in the creative thinking department! I love their embellished, inventive stories. I don’t love when the story ends with, “And that is why I don’t have my work done today.” Creativity they had, follow through, they needed.
My young charges needed to learn the lessons successful dyslexic people have already mastered. They needed to learn to break a big project into small tasks, then set a schedule for completing small jobs which leads to completing the entire assignment. I was scouting for a great idea. True to form, the kids provided the idea for me.
Patrick came into 4/5 small group one morning, brimming with the story of a hilarious dream he had the night before. He dreamed our Dyslexia Center was the cover for a cell of spies responsible for keeping our world free from The Really Bad Guys. The kids enjoyed adding their own spin to Patrick’s idea, and we all had a lot of fun imagining it was true before turning to the lessons for the day.
After school, I found myself turning over the idea of Patrick’s dream in my mind. At dinner, I discussed with my husband and resident video editor the idea of making the dream into a short film. Assured of his assistance, I could hardly wait to see what the kids thought of the idea of making a movie together.
A unanimous yes vote from everyone in the 4/5 small group told me they were on board with the movie idea. Even if it meant they had to write, which they did. Even if it meant they had to plan, which they did. Even if it meant they had to follow through and do what they said they would do.
Excitement was high.
Expectations were higher.
Then reality set in. This was work! A lot of work! I was intent on them doing most of it. Still, the promise of one’s face on the silver screen is a strong draw, so they settled into the schedule and began to produce some of their best work.
Characters were mainly secret agents, each with a super power. I pointed out that since this was part of Dyslexia Small Group, we should look for a tie-in to what they had learned. Modeling the secret agents after spelling rules and assistance techniques, the kids launched into character development mode. Soon Agents Schwa possessed amazing karate abilities, always accompanied by the “ugh” sound associated with both karate blows and the short u sound all schwa vowels make. Agent -ed carried the ability to go back in time and change past events. Some agents worked as teams, such as Agents Apostrophe, who were blessed with the ability to shape shift into smaller creatures to get a job done. Tee shirts for each agent were created, and we were living the dream. The kindergarten’s guinea pig was cast in the role of the villain, and our long suffering school secretary willingly took on the role of the victim.
The whiteboard was a mass of ideas as we brainstormed the plot outline. We were able to distill the ideas into a manageable script. Snacks gone missing from the snack cart was the crime to be solved, and each agent’s super powers would be required to untangle the clues and solve the mystery.
The kids made great suggestions for various scenes and special effects they wanted to include. High points were the ninja fighting scene (ninjas were balloons with masks drawn on them and weighted by bags of beans), shape shifting agents transformed into toy bugs pulled under the kindergarten door with a string, and discovery of the evil guinea pig with his cache of stolen snacks.
Shooting the movie was a real test of my ability to multi-task and the kids’ willingness at do-overs because of my mistakes. Directing people with poor short-term memory was a challenge all its own. A lot of potential blooper footage was created by everyone involved.
Patience was stretched thin while the editing process happened. A trailer let everyone know this was going to be great, and a movie really was coming. Finally the waiting was over, and it was Premier Day. You could hear a pin drop as the 4/5 grade small group sat facing the smart board, watching themselves on the screen. A cheer erupted as the final credits rolled, and they realized they had done it. They had made a movie, and it was funny and great. Finishing a big project proved worth the effort!
A showing to all the classes in our building was arranged for the following Friday afternoon. Supportive students filed in to watch, not sure what they would be seeing. The response from fellow students was more than any of us could have dreamed. A standing ovation shook the room as the movie finished. Non-dyslexic students purchased copies of the DVD. Favorite actors were sought out for autographs.
The kids from the special classroom were now special kids out of the classroom.
Mark Twain wrote, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” The book of Proverbs says of the ideal woman that “Her mouth is full of wisdom, and kindness is on her tongue.” Kindness may not be in vogue in the current political climate of self-positioning and getting ahead by any means, but we are all drawn to kind people who affirm us. Compliments, like thin January sunshine after a week of gray skies, lift our spirits.
My dyslexic students work very hard and often have very little to show for it. That doesn’t mean their efforts should go unnoticed or unpraised. They, like Twain, will work much harder after an honest compliment. I try to daily find an accomplishment from each student that can be noted without being patronizing. Kids can spot a fake a mile away. They hold me to the truth standard when I am giving out praise.
Handwriting is often a bone of contention for dyslexic people. There is a condition called dysgraphia which may co-exist with dyslexia. It is basically confusion about the process of writing. Writing on the line, or even close to the line is a challenge in itself; let alone forming the letters correctly, spelling correctly AND remembering to slide the pencil over enough to leave space between the words.
I have two students whom I am sure have dysgraphia. One is toward the end of his time with me. I have been part of his educational life for 4 years, nearly all of his school life. Today I graded one of his writing assignments. A smile of pleasure bloomed across my face as I noted the neat, tight cursive writing, the excellent spacing, and the overall readability of the assignment. Expectantly watching me look over his work, the same smile crossed Patrick’s young face. This guy is out-of-the-park talented when it comes to story telling, and the content of his writing was superb, but that has never been the issue with him. Creativity oozes out of his every pore, and now he can write in a way that others can see that talent. I passed a reward tag across the table to him, and we shared a look of satisfaction as I praised his efforts. When a student does well, we both celebrate.
My second dysgraphic/dyslexic student is at the beginning of his journey with me. We have traveled together only a few weeks, and he is just learning that I can be trusted, that I will never knowingly embarrass or put him on the spot, that I have a prize box in the cupboard which is not reserved only for kids who make A’s.
Today brought dictation sentences to his small group lesson, and as in the past, he was great at remembering the words to be written down. It was getting them onto the paper in a way I could read that was the issue. We have been working on it, and already there is improvement. Today as I rolled my chair to his spot across the table from me, he gave me a gap-toothed grin as my eyes slid to his work. There were spaces between the words today! And, for the most part, the words sat on the lines. A capital adorned the front of the sentence and a bowling ball of a period marked the end. WOW! I asked him if he knew how good his work was. He shyly said he knew, but that he liked to hear me tell him. Not holding back, I happily pointed out all the good things he had done on that sentence. He basked in the warmth of the words, affirming that his hard work was recognized and acknowledged.
He wrote his name on the reward tag with a flourish and dropped it into the box, half filled with other tags kids had earned for good work during that small group session. A small snowfall of white tags with initials penciled onto them. Each tag representing good work acknowledged, rewarded and praised. Each compliment a step toward building up a child so he or she can continue with the daunting task of working harder at reading and spelling than any of we non-dyslexic individuals can even imagine.
Today’s blog is written by a parent of one of my dyslexic students. She shares her heart and the struggles and triumphs her family has seen in their journey with their daughter’s dyslexia.
“A feeling of overwhelming helplessness consumed me as my wonderfully creative and talented second grade daughter continued to get more and more behind in school. Every day was a challenge. Our whole life revolved around how to get through homework and studying for tests. We would spend hours upon hours practicing and memorizing only to have to start from scratch the next day because all of it was forgotten. Hardly a day went by without my daughter crying from frustration, headaches, stomachaches, and frankly exhaustion, which would lead to occasional tant and screaming. It seemed I was constantly saying things like “just focus” and “try harder.”
Dyslexia had been in the back of my mind since my daughter’s kindergarten year, but you hear so many times that school struggles are common at that age and children will usually grow out of them, so we waited to see improvement as we continued to work with her.
One day after school Bella cried all the way home because SHE, a normally very outgoing and confident child, suddenly had a very bad case of low self-esteem and was calling herself things like “dumb” and “stupid.” That, as you can imagine, absolutely broke this mother’s heart! I was determined to find the root of her learning problems and scheduled an array of testing.
I actually felt relief at the diagnosis because at least now we knew we could do something about it. We enrolled our daughter at the school where Mrs. Cindy is the director of the Dyslexia Intervention Center. From day one we knew it was the right place. The school staff makes learning so much fun and enjoyable and the kids feel like they are all part of a little family. The entire staff is so warm and caring and passionate about teaching our children. Mrs. Cindy, Mrs. Sally (her school tutor), and Mrs. Z (her regular classroom teacher) work with Bella each week and have made such a difference in the quality of not only Bella’s life but our entire family.
Now Bella is reading at a much higher level than before and there is actually time to stop and enjoy the small things together. The Dyslexia Center staff have even helped me learn how to make homework super fun! My little girl’s confidence is revived, and she is gaining more confidence every day. Sometimes when my daughter reads a long word out correctly, she looks up at me with astonished eyes and smiles as if she’s thinking, “Did I really do that???!!!”
~David Boies, Lawyer/Dyslexic
I have taught some real wigglers in my time. Kids who need to move, climb, see what their neighbor is up to, do just about anything besides get down to the task at hand and stay there. Having been a restless child myself, I sympathize with kids who tend that way. Today we know that ADD and ADHD can interrupt thoughts and actions, and that there is a medical solution for this problem. A lot of research and progress has been made in the area in the past several years, and stigmas associated with medicating children for ADD or ADHD have fallen away.
I digress to tell one story from the long-ago of my teaching career. I had a class of second graders, and the boys’ favorite recess game was to reenact favorite episodes of A-Team, a popular TV show of that era.
One slender boy from that class struggled to make friends enough to be included in the fun and games. Justin made himself an outsider at recess by his in-class behavior. The boy could not sit down and stay on task! His behavior got on the nerves of the entire class. His mom and I conferenced and schemed, tried behavior modification until we were the modified ones. The strategy which worked better than others was giving Justin three rocks on his desktop at the beginning of the morning, and three in the afternoon. He could ask an unrelated question or get out of his seat for no reason, but he had to give me one of his rocks each time. When the rocks were gone, so were his “free passes.” The getting out of his seat and asking unrelated questions improved, but I can’t say that we ever addressed the underlying problem that caused the behavior issues. We never did get him to the place he longed to be but didn’t know how to achieve. Justin was never chosen to be “Face” in the A-Team recess game. They always invited him to be “Murdock.” The crazy, annoying team member. Justin’s behavior affected not only his learning life, but also his social interactions.
Fast forward 30 years, and as you were telling me through your computer while you read about Justin, he probably was ADHD. There was little he could do to control his behavior or the effect it had on those around him. Happily, today there are choices to help the Justins of the world. Many of the choices are pharmaceutical ones. That is a Huge Deal.
Let me tell you what I see in my classroom when one of my students who normally takes medication for ADD or ADHD comes in without a dose of the medication that morning. I cannot effectively teach him or her, and he or she cannot effectively focus on what is being presented. The medication allows learning to take place in a way that it cannot in the absence of the medication. I am not a doctor, nor a psychologist, nor a pharmacist, only a teacher in a classroom. All I know is what I see. I see that kids who have ADD or ADHD learn better when they are appropriately helped, and that help may be medication.
Dyslexia and ADD or ADHD do not always go together. Dr. Eric Tridas has an excellent book, The ABC’s of ADHD. He estimates that about 30% of children with dyslexia also have ADD or ADHD. If you or your child falls into that 30%, I urge you to follow your child’s best interest, and not to rely on outdated information or old ways of thinking. Get a copy of Dr. Tridas’ book and read up on the newest information available.
One of my tutors gives an example about ADD or ADHD medications that I think succinctly sums up the issue. She relates that Stacy was discussing with Tammy how she did not give her child the prescription for ADD or ADHD medication all the time. Stacy complained that the medication didn’t seem to do much for her child anyway. Incredulous, Tammy asked Stacy if she wore her glasses all the time. The answer was a surprised yes. Stacy couldn’t see to read or drive without the glasses. She needed them all the time to make her path clear. Your child, Tammy said, needs the medication all the time too, so her path is clear. Medication is to an ADD or ADHD child what glasses are to a near or farsighted individual. A tool that helps overcome a medical obstacle. Nothing more, and nothing less.
~Dorothy Blosser Whitehead
Sam, a new second grader started at my school and in my dyslexia classroom this week. It is hard for little guys to leave their familiar school behind, especially at semester break. That was the challenge Sam was taking on. His new mainstream classroom teacher and classmates were fabulous at welcoming Sam to their room. They made him cards, elected him “mayor” of his pod of 6 desks, and showed him where things were. I wanted him to have the same warm welcome in the Dyslexia Center, where I knew that I would be prodding Sam to work on the very things that are hardest for him. I needed him to like coming there.
This year began with two students in my second grade small group. The addition of Sam swelled the crowd to six, and filled the last available slot in that small group. The other three new students remembered how it felt the first week in my room. No hiding from confusing concepts like vowels and blends. Using new tools like finger sounding and airplane writing. Strange ways to practice words, like tracing sight words on a fur covered board that doesn’t let you see what you have written, only feel it. The experience is certainly different from any other classroom, and takes some adjustment to get used to.
The five “old timer” students were up to the task of helping me make Sam feel at ease. They offered to sit near him, told him where important supplies like erasers and the pencil sharpener are, got him his own small white board and a “juicy” marker when it was time for dictation practice. And it helped. Sam visibly relaxed by the second or third day. He could tell the new tools were helping him already.
When Sam relaxed, his curiosity about our way of doing things caused him to ask about the reasons behind our methods. That is always a turning point. When a student understands that learning a different way from his or her non-dyslexic classmates is not only ok, but it is fun, that knowledge is the first step on the path of owning their dyslexia.
We told Sam how fuzzy board tracing will help glue to spelling of sight words into his brain. He knew that was true, because by Friday he was spelling the mysterious sight word “does” correctly.
The girls demonstrated how airplane writing a new cursive letter’s formation helps when it is time to write it on paper with a pencil. Sam knew they were right. He compared his efforts at the cursive letter e from Monday with the page of cursive e, l, i, t and m he wrote by Friday. Airplanes helped alright!
The funniest method explanation came from the other boy in small group. He drew upon his success of the past three months in the dyslexia program when he told Sam that dividing longer words into syllables mattered. Leaning in close, he divulged the secret to successful reading for a dyslexic person of any age. “Syllables,” he whispered with the wisdom of an aged sage, “are your life.”
Sam will do well. His reading and spelling will continue to improve, and language tasks will seem less confusing to him.
Especially now that he knows the secret.
Syllables are your life.
Great ideas come from everywhere. It’s just a matter of being ready and willing to grab an idea, modify it to your needs, and go with it.
We had a need in my classroom. We needed great mnemonics to help the kids remember how to correctly spell frequently used but creatively spelled words. Like the word “because.” Most students had settled into spelling it “bicuz,” but we had more variations on the spelling of that one word than Paula Deen has ways to cook with butter. I was on the hunt for a great idea alright.
The idea came from a comment made by character Patrick Jayne on an episode of the TV show The Mentalist. It was intended as a wise crack, but I took it for the gift it was. Jayne snidely remarked to another character on the show “Big elephants can always understand small elephants.”
He had just smirked a mnemonic for the word “because.”
Thank you, writers of The Mentalist!
In the classroom, I created a backstory for the phrase, “Big elephants can always understand small elephants.” It needed a memory link, or the students wouldn’t remember what it was that could help them remember how to spell “because.” I borrowed heavily from Babar and other wise old elephants in children’s literature and came up with this yarn.
The little elephants of the village had tangled their trunks and tails playing soccer. Again. This time none of them could get free to help the others. So they did what they always did when in a fix of their own making. They called for Granddaddy Elephant. He laid aside his pipe, kindly lumbered over, sorted out kinks in tails and knots in trunks, telling stories of his boyhood escapades to keep the little elephants from wiggling as he worked. When they thanked him for his kindness to them, he looked fondly from one to another and told them, “That’s ok. Big elephants can always understand small elephants. I was a small once too, you know.”
Now for some artwork to glue the story on its mental peg in each young brain. Grey elephants were cut from construction paper to be Granddaddy and glued to yellow construction paper. Small elephants in all manner of tangles were stamped onto the page, with speech bubbles asking for help. Down the side, in big letters, “because” was spelled out, and written across from each letter was the word from the mnemonic phrase, “Big elephants can always understand small elephants.”
Yup, they still remember it! We went through that exercise about a year ago. Recently the students were writing journal stories, and I could hear one softly whispering to himself, “Big elephants can always understand small elephants” as he wrote. His neighbor smiled and commented how much he loved that story, and it helped him spell the word correctly. A girl who is new to the group asked to be told the story, and her classmates happily obliged.
Why did this work? Because. Because small stories can be used to solve big problems.
Tales from the Dyslexia Center 