Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We are so happy you could join us. We are both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone, and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 23 of Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast.
We like to start our episodes with the concept of the week. So concept of the week is our opportunity to let you all into an intervention session and teach about the topics that we are teaching in our intervention.
So this week's concept of the week is a. Is digraph CK generalization.
So this is digraph CK says K and it is only used at the end of a word right after a short vowel. So example duck, D, U, C K stuck, S, T, U, C, K and rock, R, O, C, K.
This one generally we teach kind of early on to our students.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: It was also one that I thought you just had to memorize.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yes, same, same. I have really no idea.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: There was a rule that we talked about last week.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yep, same. This is another one that. Wow, okay. That actually has a rule.
You know, the other thing too about that one is generally it's in a one syllable word.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: So generally at the end of a word, if it's one syllable and then right after a short vowel.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Right?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: But still didn't know that before. I know.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: This is. It's fun. That's usually kind of like right after or right before phos really depends on the student. But yeah, usually it's like, oh, light bulbs go off and it's a fun one to teach.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: It is.
So our topic today is a structured literacy lesson.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: All right, cool.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: So what should parents expect to see it with? An experienced instructor's structured literacy. C. And yes.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I think this is such an important topic because if you're not a person who has been trained in this, how would you really know what should be present and what you should be looking for?
So if you don't see the topics and the concepts in some way in a structured literacy lesson, then your student is probably not getting the benefits of a true structured literacy approach.
So we're going to kind of tell us tell, walk through what is a structured literacy approach first and then talk about, okay, seriously, how does a lesson look?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Correct.
So is a structured literacy approach a program?
[00:03:34] Speaker A: No, no. There are some programs out there that are based on a structured literacy approach, but approach is not a program.
So some tenants of the structured literacy approach are that explicit and direct instruction. So key concepts are clearly taught and explained, information is broken down into manageable chunks, and students are provided extensive practice. We are not assuming our students know anything when they come to us. We are teaching everything brick by brick based on some informal assessments that we've done.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Right. We know the skills they have based on those assessments and everything else we're.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Building in and we don't move on until when?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Until they've got it. Right. So until they have mastered it. Usually that means between 85 and 90% depends on the threshold that you're using.
But we're not moving on until we see, see that mastery. We should point out that what we're talking about today really is the one on one experience.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: This is going to be a little different if we're talking about it in a whole classroom or even a small group.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: So full disclosure, we're talking about literally what we do, our one on one instruction.
So the other tenet here is that it's systematic. What does it mean if instruction is systematic, the lessons have a clear procedure.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: And routine and they don't really change.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah, right. The structure doesn't really change.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: They're also sequential, which means the lessons move from a simpler to a more complex material.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: They are also cumulative. That means lessons follow a scope and sequence and then they build upon previously taught materials. So if I have already taught a student digraph sh, Right. When I. I'm not leaving that behind, I'm taking that forward. Right. So if I've taught them diagraph sh and then I teach the floss rule, I might use the word shell.
And then when I go on and teach diagraph ck, I might use the word shock. Right. We're not leaving anything behind. We're bringing all those concepts forward. That's cumulative.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Multi sensory activities incorporate the visual, auditory and tactile concept pathways.
Our last episode really talked very in depth about multi sensory.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yes. Such a fun topic. It is.
Lessons are also diagnostic and prescriptive. Interventionists take assessment data to determine the student's areas of need. Right. And then we tailor those lessons appropriately. So we do a phonics survey, we do some initial assessments, and then every Single lesson, we're taking data.
When I give a student a reading list and there's 20 words on it, if they get 4 incorrect, they are not ready. And I know that because that's not mastery level. So I'm writing that down and I'm taking that forward. I'm not moving on because they're not ready. So we're going to keep going on those same concepts, not necessarily the same words, but we're staying right there on that concept until they're getting, you know, no less than two wrong. Out of 20.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Advanced instruction that includes morphology. Morphology is the meeting of language, pretty much. So the roots, prefixes and suffixes, we teach those explicitly and how they relate to each other and how they make more words together.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: So, yeah, generally students are enrolled in this kind of instruction somewhere between 90 and 100 lessons over the course of one to two years. This varies widely. It does by students. I have students that I see well past 100 lessons and I have students that I've seen for less than less, you know, somewhere between 60 and 80. And they are getting ready to exit. Yeah, so it really depends. This is a one on one. The type of instruction we are talking about is one on one.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: So it's very tailored to the student and depending on the students how mild or severe the dyslexia is versus if there's another diagnosis that we have to address in with the dyslexia. All those things cause it to vary.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and sometimes we have students who I. We've gone through the entirety of a scope and sequence and they stay with us to work on either other skills or we dive a lot deeper into things like morphology.
We could stay on that for a long, long time.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: We could, yes.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, so now what we want to do is walk our listeners through what happens when your student walks through our door. What does a lesson look like?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: So the first one part of the lesson is phonemic awareness.
So in early stages, students do segmenting and blending and then later adding or subtracting phonemes. So an example like boat, that is kind of an early segmenting stage versus cap change the A to a would be cup. That's either adding or that's adding and subtracting the middle sound, right?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's substituting and that's like an advanced skill.
We would not jump from segmenting to substituting that fast.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Something to keep in mind too, a general guideline for a practitioner. How do we know if a student is ready for the structured literacy approach? A Student who is ready for a full on structured literacy lesson should be able to segment and blend a word with three sounds with some degree of accuracy. They might take a while to do it, but that should be accurate.
Otherwise they're probably not ready for a full on structured literacy lesson. We probably need to do some pre reading skills first, which is going to look different and kind of is its own episode. So for the purposes of this episode, our students coming to us with the ability to segment and blend those three sound kind of words, even if it's not quite automatic.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Correct. And the phonemic awareness, it typically takes between one to three minutes. So it's really short and fast.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Yes. We don't want to be spending tons and tons of time on this task.
Research tells us that it's important to do it, but it is not something that we should be bogged down. And typically this drill is all auditory. And so what we know is to be effective, we need to also now bring in our visual and kinesthetic cues.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: So good way to warm up.
Somewhere between one and three minutes is the general guidelines for this.
Before we go on further too, we're going to kind of run through our order how we would do things in our lessons.
These drills can be done really in any order. So it isn't that you have to.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Follow this, but the content is usually pretty similar.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Depending on the order.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: That's right. That's exactly right.
So the next drill that we would usually do is something called the visual drill.
In a visual drill, I would have a stack of cards and I would flip through them. Those stacks of cards would have graphemes on them that represent sound. And I would expect my student to give me the sound that those cards make. So for example, if I'm showing Nicole the card with the sh, she would say sh. Good. Okay. Now I'm going to show her a vowel card and it's vowel, the grapheme, A Nice. Nice.
With a younger student, I would have them go, maybe give me a keyword too for that. Like I might have them go a apple, ah for that short sound. Always going to start with the short sound, move our way up to the long sound.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: And then we go to the auditory drill.
So this is where the student will hear a sound that we say and they will write down the letter or letters that they've already learned.
So it depends, like if, like if we said K, if they're still early, they would just put C.
But if they knew all of them, they'd say K. They'd put C comma K comma, ck, because all those phonemes can say the K sound.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yep. And we're always going to look for most to least common. So we want them to specifically put C then K, then ck, because C is the most common, and CK has a very specific rule.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Correct.
So if I said A, what would you say?
[00:14:36] Speaker A: So vowel sound A. Our possible spellings are A, a consonant, E, a I, and a Y.
Those are common spellings for those ones. There are several more spellings for that sound.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Correct. And so the student is saying them out loud, writing them at the same time, and then saying the sound at the same time too. So they repeat the sound, then they say the letter that goes with the sound as they're writing it.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Yep. And this is a good opportunity for error correction, too.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: If a student is forgetting one of those, we're making note of it, and we're making sure we're bringing that in in the next lesson.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: So next we would do something called a blending drill. There are a lot of different ways to do a blending drill. We're going to give one example, one way that we do it. Usually a blending drill is going to start with three phone phonemes and then move to longer words in a later blending drill. We could use morphemes here as well.
In early stages, we have students segment each sound, and then we want to move them towards automaticity. So in the beginning, I might show them three phoneme cards.
This is generally what I would do is I would put cards in three piles. One for initial sounds, one for middle sounds, one for ending sounds. And I would have the student segment each sound, point to each card individually, say that sound, and then blend all the way through it.
So it might sound like something like cap, with the student really touching each card and blending on through that. And then I might change either the first or last sound, maybe the middle sound.
This one is a pretty quick drill, too. This one generally, you know, three minutes or so that we're spending on this blending drill. We're trying to get them to be automatic.
Key thing with this drill, too, is that often what we're creating is actually not real words.
Often we're creating nonsense words with this drill, and that is a good way to test. Okay, is the student really understanding the concept here, or are they just so dang smart that they know all of the words we're presenting in word lists?
[00:17:23] Speaker B: So then we do a review.
And this could include quizzing, having the students ask questions, answer questions, using errors from Previous lessons, dividing previous learned syllables. So it kind of depends on what was just taught kind. Because usually your review has things that have been taught in the previous lesson, but then maybe some things that they had errors in another lesson. So you kind of bring those back too.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Yep.
Then we're going to go ahead and teach something new. And I just kind of want to double click on this idea of new concept. Okay. Not every single lesson we're doing something quote unquote new.
But let's say our current concept is digraph ck and they were not automatic with it last time. This is still considered their new concept. So we're still really kind of teaching that.
And we are making sure that the model here, right. Is I do like the teacher. So teacher does, then we do together and then student does. So we're making sure that we're demonstrating explicitly, then working together with the student. And then the student is doing the bulk of the practice.
Lots and lots of independent opportunities for them. We want them reading words in isolation.
The instructor is providing immediate feedback. So if the word is rack, but my student says rock right away I'm stopping them and I'm going, I'm waiting. Right. And if they are not getting it, I'm saying, what? What letter is that? What does it say? What is the sound we hear in the middle? Having them re tap that sound and smooth through it. I'm not letting them get away with those reading mistakes here in this, in this part of the lesson, for sure.
And the student is rereading any errors that they made.
We're also making sure that we're providing lots of independent practice with spelling.
So the procedure here, right. Student taps out the sound.
Students say says the letter out loud as they spell.
And again, that instructor is fighting, providing that feedback immediately. So we're not letting them have lots of practice with incorrect spelling. We really want them independently practicing correct spelling so that they are building that orthographic maps for themselves.
We're having the student rewrite the whole world word.
Some general guidance here. Not everybody does this.
However, one of the things that I find kind of important is that my students generally are writing with pen when they're doing this so that they really can see those errors. We want the students to see their errors.
That can be really tricky sometimes with our students who are really emotional. Right. Sometimes our students are really very sheepish about making mistakes. But mistakes is how we grow here.
And so I'm always reinforcing that, like, no, that's good, that's good. Now we know now we know that I need to teach that again.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: And instead of pen, some people use a pencil with no eraser, so they have to cross it out.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: So that's another way you could do it.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: We're also providing practice with what we would call dictated sentences or phrases. So we want the kids spelling independent words. And then I'm going to give a sentence, Right. Did Bill catch the ball? And they're going to say it back to me. Did Bill catch the ball? Then they're going to write that whole sentence, and we're going to. Together look at. Okay. All the things that go along with this sentence. So that's our application. Is the student getting those concepts correct in a sentence that they have written.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And then we usually do oral reading. So this at first, when you're early with the students, it would be a decodable text, which means using a new topic. So let's say you're doing ck.
Your decodable would have ck and whatever was taught before CK in it. And so the student would have a lot of the. The words already, and they're just practicing using it in, like a story.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
This also could be sentences.
It depends on the level of the student.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be a whole passage. That's really what we want to get to because we want to be also answering questions. We want to stop and model asking questions as we read. We're providing immediate feedback to our students when they're reading.
We're having them go back and reread. We're playing with phrasing and fluency. We're doing a lot of those things. Right. This would be an application activity.
And in later lessons, we want to move away from decodable text when that student is ready. So we want to move away once we really have taught a lot of foundational skills, we want to move away from decodable books and into what are referred to as trade books or just any book that's not decodable. Right.
So this could be something that students interested in.
Often with my older students, I have them bring something in.
Sometimes it's a history book that they have to read for school anyway, so might as well bring it in and we can work with it.
It's a good way to tell, too. If I have a student who is rocking it with decodables, but then as soon as they go to a trade book, they're doing the same old guessing behaviors. They're not really as automatic as they were with the decodables. That's telling me as an instructor I've got a little bit more work to do. I really have to figure out those places that they're still stuck and not quite automatic. So that oral reading part of the lesson, even though we're really only doing that maybe eight to 10 minutes, so it's not.
It's not a long time. It's giving me lots of information as an instructor. I get a lot of that from hearing the student read.
If you're not seeing that in an instructional period of time, that's not good. That's really important that the instructor is hearing that student read out loud. Something connected.
So whether that be sentences or a passage.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Correct. And there's really. Even with sentences, you can do comprehension questions. Yeah. What did he mean by that? Or who's the main person in the sentence? Or you could even go to who's the. Where's the noun and where's the verb and Exactly. Anything that kind of pretty brings them back to that sentence and makes it so that they can understand it and they explain it to you.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Exactly. This is also the part of the lesson that I would start to working on those writing pieces. So I would have the student start paying attention to the grammatical elements in a sentence. Where is the noun? Where is the verb? Then we're going to move on adjective and adverbs. I'm also going to have students start to write their own sentences.
I might have them write a very simple summary of the passage they read, and it might start with bullet points. That's good scaffolding into taking notes.
But what you should be seeing from an instructor. So if I'm a parent who has a student that is seeing a practitioner, what are some questions that that practitioner should be able to easily answer? First of all, what is the concept we're working on with your kid right now? How automatic are they?
What. Where are you concerned about their fluency? Where are they with those grammatical concepts? They should be able to answer that very quickly and not have to really hem and haw about it too much. Correct. This is not right. It's not like the question, when is my kid going to be done?
[00:27:24] Speaker B: That one. That one we don't know.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: That one we don't know. That one's a lot harder. But what that pregnant or should be able to say is, listen, I don't really know when we're going to be done, but this is about the pace we've been going so far. This is what they have learned so far. This is how accurate they are. Here are my remaining concerns that should really Be a very quick answer. And if it's not, that's concerning to me. That's telling me perhaps that practitioner isn't as adherent to structured literacy principles as they need to be to have students make the most progress.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Anything else you would add to that, Nicole? For parents out there, I mean, I.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Think too, they should also be able to tell you, are they using a decodable yes or not?
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: And if they're not using a decodable what type of books should you look for?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Like, if you're going to the library with your child, how do you know you're at the right type of book for your child? Because they should know that already because that's something that they should be looking at every single lesson.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. For sure. That's a really good one. That's a really good one.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: So, Maggie, what's going on? Beyond dyslexia?
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm actually really excited tonight. I am going out for pizza with a group of moms that we are not bringing our children or our spouses.
So there will be adult conversation.
Real. With real live adults in real life.
Can you tell it's been a while for me that this has happened?
Yeah. I don't actually remember the last time I was just out with a group of people that I was not related to in any way. And I'm very excited about it.
What's going on with you?
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Oh, well, in our house right now, we are having ADHD and grooming issues. Oh, no.
So, yeah, so executive functioning is definitely a skill that students with ADHD are impacted a lot. And one of those skills is initiation, which is, you know, starting a task.
And lately in our house, it's becoming a very hard thing to do.
V.
Our son is amazing, but initiation right now is tough for him. So, like, just even he has to be told many times by many people to start a task. Or we have to set it out in front of him so that he'll do it, not that he doesn't get distracted by food or toys or something else going on in the house. So it's always kind of a interesting thing to see where the grooming things end up in our house. Sometimes on the dining room table, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the bathroom in place that you wouldn't want them to be.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: I once found a comb on the toilet seat. Yeah, that comb went into the garbage. So just so you know, these are.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: The things don't tell you.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: They don't tell you these things.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: So here we are being real with all of you.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yes. So you just don't know where you're gonna find that thing. The toothbrush, the toilet seat. That was fun.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: I was like, why? Yeah, the toilet seat.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: And I guess the other thing is, like, how, like, they don't even register that. That is disgusting.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: I know.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Like, if you don't intervene and throw that away, they use it. They would use that. Like, that has. Like. Like. Like somebody's bottom has touched that, and now you're going to put it in your hair.
Gross.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: It is very gross. So anyways, it's been kind of an interesting month with us trying to figure out how to get him to initiate things a little bit and stay in one area while he's doing the task.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. No advice, because that's my real life as well.
So empathy, but not advice right now.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: So. Yeah.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Yay.
Well, thank you, everybody, for listening.
We're happy that you're with us. If you like our show, please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic. We really, really would love your ideas. If you like our show, please be sure to follow us and rate us on your favorite podcast player. That's how we reach more listeners. So thank you, everybody.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Thank you.
