Tag: teaching

Everyone has to work hard!

Everyone has to work hard!

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“The only thing I’ve found that works is to keep on working and not to expect that you will get it right the first time.” ~ Kate deCamillo

Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn Dixie and several other children’s chapter books, gives this outstanding advice in her interview for Scholastic Publishers.  My 4/5 grade dyslexic students just finished reading “Winn Dixie,” and they were amazed and enlightened to read that the author had to work hard to turn out the story they came to love so dearly.  It is good for them to know that they are not alone in having to revise and rewrite to achieve a great story!

Welcome to Holland

Welcome to Holland

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This is one of my favorite stories to share with parents who have a child that is just being diagnosed with dyslexia.  It seems to help put into perspective how their journey in child rearing will be different from parents of a nondyslexic child. 

Welcome to Holland

by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared this unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel, what it’s like.

When you’re going to have a baby, its like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make wonderful plans.  The Coliseum.  The Michelangelo David.  The gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some phrases in Italian.  It’s all very exciting.

After many months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.  You pack your bags, and off you go.  Several hours later, the plane lands.  The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?”  you say.  “What do you mean, Holland?!?  I signed up for Italy.  I’m supposed to be in Italy.  All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan.  They’ve landed in Holland, and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease.  It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guidebooks.  And you must learn a whole new language.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place.  It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.  But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice Holland has windmills…Holland has tulips…Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going fro Italy…and they’re all bragging about what  a wonderful time time they have had there.  And the rest of your life you’ll say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go.  That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things…about Holland.

Dancing Brains

Dancing Brains

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Valentine’s Day dinner out put my husband and I at a table with a front row seat to the kitchen of our local Macaroni Grill.  Although it was an incredibly busy night, they seemed smooth, efficient and unmoved by the avalanche of orders they were asked to fill. As we observed the kitchen, we could see there was a method to the meal prep that prevented chaos and kept the correct meals coming out of the kitchen with the regularity of doughnuts dropping out of the chute at Krispy Kreme.

An expediter stood at his command post across a gleaming stainless steel counter from the chefs, feeding one order at a time to each of the half dozen chefs.  Chefs  concentrated on making one dish at a time, allowing the perfect meals to roll out. Plates passed hands for added garnishes, spills wiped from edges and meals grouped together by table, ready to be delivered by a runner. Each job done with incredible efficiency and concentration in the kitchen resulted in wonderful experiences for those of us in the dining room.

The Brain’s Reading Dance

That seamless Macaroni Grill kitchen made me think of what goes on in brains as reading takes place. I have already admitted to my teacher geekiness, so this mental leap of mine should not come as a surprise.

*DISCLAIMER*  I am not a brain researcher, and my version of the brain dance reflects my understanding of what I read from acutal researchers about what happens in the brain during the millisecond between the time our eyes view a word and our mouth pronounces it. It is amazing to me, but don’t site me as a source on your next research paper.

In the brain, the expediter is called Executive Function. He assigns tasks to brain centers based on what needs to be done.  New word?  Send it off to be decoded. Familiar word?  Long-term memory will quickly bring up the link between those letters and the word with its meaning.  Has this word been introduced recently, but is not yet stored in long-term memory?  Send to short-term memory.  Other brain centers put the words together in the sentence, assign meaning to the words and sentence, and decide on the correct vocal inflection based on that meaning. Speech centers serve as the runner, delivering the sentence or passage to be read.

So What Happens in a Dyslexic Brain During Reading?

Dyslexia is characterized by brain wiring gone wrong.  In the dyslexic brain, the messages from executive function may go missing before they are carried out because the work is not done in the most efficient manner.

Go back to the kitchen analogy and imagine one poor chef who has his work station behind the swinging door that hides the dishwashing area and the food pantry.  He comes to the front to get his orders, gathers his ingredients, then rushes back to the nether regions of the kitchen to assemble his assigned meal.  Along the way, he is asked to hold a tray of silverware for the dishwasher, has to thread his way past someone restocking the pantry shelves, and must unpile a stack of plates from his workspace before he can begin his task.  He realizes he left one ingredient on the silverware station when he stopped to help out there, and spilled a little bit of another ingredient as he avoided the boxes being unloaded near the pantry.  After he reassembles all his ingredients, he is not sure if this order called for extra sauce or no sauce.  Heading back to check on that, he begins to feel anxious, knowing the other 4 plates of food which accompany the order he is working on are probably finished and cooling at the runner’s counter.  The anxiety causes him to be clumsy, and a crash and clatter signal the result of his latest disaster. The dish is reassigned to another chef, and our former chef now manages mop duty.

The dyslexic brain can be as inefficient in the language areas as the chef from our story.   Information gets lost, activity is too far apart to be efficient, too much time passes and the job is not successfully completed – resulting in uncompleted tasks.

Can a Dyslexic Brain Learn the Reading Dance?

Proven methods are available to teach a dyslexic person to read and spell better.  They are reliant on retraining the brain, creating new pathways between the language centers in the brain, which tend to be scattered for a dyslexic person.  Orton-Gillingham is the method we use, and is considered the gold standard for dyslexia instruction.  It combines kinesthetic methods, prescriptive and diagnostic teaching that targets what each individual student needs, and sequentially layers knowledge on knowledge.  The younger the student, the better the result from remediation.

Rather quickly, teachers, parents and the students themselves see the improvement, as the steps solidify and the reading dance begins, growing more sure and steady with each lesson.

There is a reason for that…

There is a reason for that…

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Patrick has become a speedy and a good writer through the time we have worked together.  He has a razor sharp wit, and has learned to express it in writing.  Yesterday he finished his journal story in record time, made the few corrections I suggested, and needed another productive task to fill his time until the others in his small group finished their journals.

I suggested he and another early finisher get manipulatives from the closet and call out spelling words to each other to spell using the magnet letters, letter tiles or Upwords tiles.  His face screwed up, and he said, “You know, I never really know what you mean when you tell us to use …..” and his mouth went through a hilarious round of gyrations as he struggled to get out the word manipulatives.  I smiled and said it by syllables so he could hear it in parts, then put the whole word together.  The word came out successfully enough for my satisfaction, and after telling him I meant letter tiles or magnet letters, I turned to assist another student, thinking he was moving to the closet for supplies.

I heard Patrick’s question, phrased to the room in general. “Why do I do that?  Why do words get all twisted in my mouth when I try to say them?”  His voice carried a hint of humor, not frustration, so I let a student sitting near him give our standard answer.

Neil turned to Patrick with a smile and said, “I don’t want to shock you, but you have dyslexia!  That means sometimes the words get mixed around.”  Good natured laughter followed, and we all smiled before turning back to the tasks at hand.

It helps my students to know when their struggles are from dyslexia.  They benefit from knowing what they wrestle with is not their fault, and be able to joke about it and move on. Teaching them methods to overcome the difficulties is my daily mission and why I go to work each day, but the ability to laugh at themselves is a lesson that will carry them, and all of us, into a happier daily life.  After all, we all like to know there is a reason for that!

The Little Red Toolbox

The Little Red Toolbox

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Too cool for school

In teaching children, there are a lot of wonderful moments of honesty. The way a child can cut right to the heart of a matter by an unvarnished version of life as he sees it is one of the things I love about teaching.

One of my students from several years ago, HD, was transferring to my school to be part of the Dyslexia Center program. He voiced his concerns the first time we met, about three weeks before school was set to start. He worried that no one at the new school would know what he could do, and that he was way too cool to have a reading problem. Unedited and forthright, he let me know right then that this was probably not the place for him, and encouraged me to share that news with his mom before it was too late for him to get back into his former school.

Great at building things

Prospective student interviews are really about making sure a student has what I call a teachable spirit, so we cover all kinds of topics during our time together. One thing that is usually very interesting is to ask a child what they are good at. People with dyslexia have areas of strength that are generally just as deep as their areas of weakness, and I like to know what those areas are for each of my students so our staff can be aware and build confidence by pointing out natural talent areas and using them in our lessons whenever possible.

HD told me he could build things. He named several projects he and his engineer dad had going out at their farm. Confidence filled his voice and his fifth grade shoulders squared as he detailed for me their fencing project. I was reminded of the importance of letting people shine as he filled me in on the key factors of wire tautness and post alignment. If ever I needed a fence, HD would be top of my list to call.

Desk chair pieces

While my classroom was free from fences to be erected, what I did truly need was someone to assemble my new desk chair. My confidence in being able to build it myself was shaken as soon as I opened the box and saw the great number of parts into which a chair can be disassembled so it fits into a small box. I asked HD’s mom if he could come one afternoon the next week and help me with the chair. A day and time were set, and HD advised me on the tools I would need to bring to get the job done.

IMG_0780.jpg

The little red toolbox

That afternoon at home, I related my idea of having HD build the desk chair to my usual go-to guys for assembly, my husband and three sons. My middle son, a college sophomore at the time, suggested I get a school tool box and stock it with the basics.  He recalled how he had liked using one of his teacher’s tools to fix stuff around school. A toolbox was ordered that evening, along with two screwdrivers, a hammer, pliers, a level and some allen wrenches. It arrived just in time for chair assembly day.

From a pile of pieces to a chair

On chair assembly afternoon, HD was a different boy from the one who let me know he was way too cool to need reading help. He was not too cool to help me, in fact he was interested in getting right down to work on that chair. The red metal toolbox met with his approval, although I had omitted an old baby food jar to keep loose screws in. Clearly I was fortunate to have HD to advise me on things mechanical, if I was such a novice that I hadn’t known I would need an old jar.

In a surprisingly short time, a working desk chair emerged from the random items included in the box from Staples. Since no desks had yet arrived in my classroom, and my teacher desk filled only a small corner of the room, we decided a few trial runs of how far each of us could propel the chair powered by only one push of our feet were in order. HD was a skinny kid, but he could bury me at desk chair rolling.

The right tools for the job

A new bond was forged that day. He was willing to let me help him with reading since I was willing to let him do my projects requiring tools. It was an agreement that served us both well, built on mutual respect and a willingness to let each other shine in our talent areas. All we needed were the right tools for the job.

Jeremy, the Jeep Guy

Jeremy, the Jeep Guy

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Jeremy came to my private tutoring practice through the friend of a friend. Two moms were chatting at a baseball game. One mom was telling how her dyslexic son was now able to read better after starting with me and the Orton-Gillingham method; the other mom was telling how her teen-aged son had just told her he could not read and had been faking all these years. Faced with college coming up soon, he was ready and motivated to learn to read. After hearing how one boy had improved through tutoring, Jeremy’s mom called me, got Jeremy tested for dyslexia and we began tutoring.

Jeremy walked in my door ready to learn. He arrived at his sophomore year of high school getting by on charm and the help of a lot of cheerleaders. He was a star athlete at his school, and a lot of books had been read to him by friends and fans. But now colleges were beginning to make noises about athletic scholarships, and he knew he had to learn to read on his own and stop relying on the help of his network of groupies.

In our first session we did an evaluation, part of which was Jeremy reading the back cover of his summer reading book. He stumbled and stammered through the text, and I could tell it was an embarrassing experience for him. Then I asked him what the book was going to be about. His look of incredulity was priceless. I might have just as well  asked him to turn straw into gold. He had no idea what the words he had just labored to read actually said. Our work was laid out for us.

Never having tutored a student this old, I went with my instinct and began at the beginning. Jeremy, like most dyslexic people, had a lot of language information in his mind, but it was not readily available enough to be useful. Our first task was to help him learn that information well enough for it to be called up at will.

Multiple repetitions of material to be mastered are a key for people with weak memory for language. During tutoring lessons, we create a drill ring of small flashcards with material presented but not yet mastered. The student is to go through these cards daily with a parent or adult. In the summer, it takes a mighty well stocked prize box to coax a reluctant reader through phonics practice. Jeremy’s motivation was more tantalizing than prizes. He was thinking of his own future, knowing it was pretty grim unless his reading improved greatly.

Calling on the same self discipline that made him great at sports, Jeremy gave himself to mastering every card in his drill ring. I could see him sitting in his Jeep in front of my house 30 minutes before his lesson started, baking in the hot Alabama summer sun, and flipping through memory cards. He knew what it took to succeed, and was prepared to do it.

The work paid off. As the lessons built his skills, Jeremy could tell his reading was improving. By the end of the summer, he was daring to hope the dream of self-reliance in his school subjects would be a reality. That fall we moved lessons to his school library, and the intensity ratcheted up. He thrived on it. Teachers began to comment on the change they saw in his school performance. His mom was thrilled. His efforts redoubled.

One cold, rainy, winter afternoon I passed him a gift to commemorate a milestone that seemed a distant dream six short months before. It was a signed copy of the first book he had ever read cover to cover all on his own. The author had kindly inscribed a sentiment appropriate for the occasion. “Let this be the first of many steps in a long and successful life of reading.”

Jeremy is now a junior in college, preparing for a career as a physical therapist. On his college bookshelf sits the autographed book, a beacon of hope and a testament to the value of the right path, and determination to reach the reward at the end of the road.

Irregular word practice technique

Irregular word practice technique

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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.

Mnemonic Stories

Mnemonic Stories

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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!”

Lights, Camera, Action!

Lights, Camera, Action!

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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’s Dream

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.

This is work!

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.

Worth the effort

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.