Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole.
Welcome to episode 20. Welcome to DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We are so happy that you can join us. We're 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.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. We're going to start out like we always do, with the concept of the week. So the concept of the week this week is Latin roots. So a Latin root is a word part that comes from the Latin layer and is used to create new words by either adding prefix and suffix.
General rule of thumb, a Latin root cannot stand alone as a word, but we can add a prefix, suffix, or both sometimes to make it into a real English word. So an example is the root ject. J, E, C, T, ject. It means to throw.
We could add a prefix to that and make it inject to throw in. We could add a suffix to that word. Right. Injection. Now it's a noun. So lots of fun play with Latin roots.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yes. Our students like out their roots.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: They do. They do. A lot of our academic text language comes from the Latin layer of language, and that's why we teach it. And it's a lot of fun. It's like building words with Legos is kind of how I teach it to students.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Who doesn't like Legos?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Who doesn't like Legos?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: All right, guess what our topic is today? The importance of writing instruction.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah. After our last episode where we discussed skills that are lacking, we really felt it was very important to address this writing instruction piece.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: So reading and writing are reciprocal processes. That means that when we target a skill for reading, we also target the skill for writing.
Because growing research shows that when we improve writing skills, we also improve reading comprehension.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's think about what is the purpose of writing.
So the purpose of writing, obviously, lots of purposes here.
To increase the student understanding of the content, to increase reading skills, and to increase skills across all content areas.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: We love this quote from the reading Revolution, page 5. When done in a systematic and sequenced way, teaching students to write is equivalent to teaching them how to think.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yes, there is. And maybe we can Find some way to post it, maybe on social.
But one of the ways that we think about reading, there's a model out there called the reading rope. And it's basically a picture of a rope, right? And it's got letter strings coming together and they're kind of intertwined. There is also a writing rope. And so some of those individual components that make up skilled writing, critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing, craft and transcription.
These can be modeled explicitly and taught to students.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: And as a rule of thumb, the more active a student is engaged with writing, the more the student will understand and remember.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: So we thought it would be a good idea to break down those critical writing components or skilled writing components. So first up, critical thinking. So what are some critical thinking skills that would be associated with writing?
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Generalizing ideas, gathering information, being able to identify important information in the reading and writing processes, such as the organization part of writing, drafting, writing, and also revising.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
So what about syntax?
That's probably. Yeah, it's probably a vocab word worth diving into.
So syntax is the rules for organizing words and phrases. It includes grammar, also sentence structure, punctuation, and word usage. So it's really. How do we use these words and phrases in our language?
[00:05:31] Speaker B: So another strand is text structure.
So what are the different text structures?
[00:05:39] Speaker A: So different text structures, Right. So narrative writing, informative writing, and opinion writing.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Okay, and what's the difference between those three?
[00:05:51] Speaker A: So narrative writing, right. Could be fiction or non fiction, but it's like we're telling a story. Basically informative text is we're giving information, we might be doing a how to kind of writing. We might be just giving information about a topic, but either way we're informing the reader. That's our purpose.
And then of course, an opinion. Right? You're stating a claim, you're making your opinion known to others.
Also included in text structure. Right. Is the paragraph structure itself. What makes a good paragraph? Right. Keeping things cohesive. We're just not slapping sentences together willy nilly, hoping it makes sense. We actually. There's a structure to those paragraphs.
Patterns of organization too. So they have to fit what we're trying to do. Right. If we're writing an informational text and we're trying to describe something, what kinds of words are we using to describe that?
If we're telling a story, are our elements in the right sequence? Does our story make sense?
Is there a cause and effect here?
Are we trying to compare and contrast things or is there a problem and we're trying to solve it?
[00:07:34] Speaker B: And some of Those things, we really need to use those linking or transition words correctly so that the organization flows well.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and that if we're. If we're doing a cause and effect kind of paper, then we're using those cause and effect kind of words. So that's all the structure.
And then there's writing craft.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Writing craft.
What does that mean?
[00:08:06] Speaker A: So writing craft. Right. Here's. Here's the artsy part of writing. Right. We're talking about word choice. We're paying attention to what kind of writing we're doing. What is my audience thinking or feeling? What is this purpose? How can I change these sentences around? Am I starting every single sentence with I, blah, blah, blah, I, blah, blah, blah? Right. Or am I varying how I start my sentences? Am I using some literary devices, things like simile or metaphor or. One of the. My favorite to teach, and I think kids really love it, is alliteration. Right. Where we start every word with the same letter.
Kids love that one. I love that one.
But that all is that writing craft, the art part of the writing process.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: And another strand is transcription, which is basically spelling, handwriting, or keyboarding. So it's actual. The mechanics.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. That's okay. It's in my brain and now it's on the page. But how did it get there? Right. And that's that transcription process from the brain to the page.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Correct.
So those are the strands of the writing rope.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Something related, too, and that Nicole and I got to talking about. Right.
It's really important that we're teaching all of these different elements of writing to our students. It is alarming to me that a lot of this is not being explicitly taught in school.
We're going to kind of get into some of the nitty gritty a little bit later.
But another form of really important writing that needs to be taught is note taking.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yes.
I mean, and it should be explicitly taught also. It shouldn't be modeled. It should be something that you do together and then they can try on their own. It's something that really needs to be taught because it's not a skill that is automatically something that they will just have.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and one of the things that is a recommendation for students with dyslexia is that they have a note taker. So either a peer or they have access to a teacher's notes or they're able to get online notes somehow.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: And that's very needed.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: It's very needed.
But if that student is also not expected to at least try taking their own notes.
We know from research that a lot of that information is being lost. We know that note taking leads to better retention of information and even the pure kinesthetic exercise. Right. Of actually physically moving your hand. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that, you know, writing like a pen to paper is somewhat preferable to keyboarding. But keyboarding still does provide that kinesthetic input.
You know, that's not.
It's not surprising to me as someone who does this for a living and knows the importance of that input, that that really does make a difference.
But I worry about the students who get those notes, provided that is an absolute recommended accommodation. But if we're not also teaching them how to try to take their own notes, I worry that that really puts them at a disadvantage even further.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: On tests. It also weakens their study skills because when you can go back and read your own notes, you have an idea of, oh, I really understood what the professor was saying there or the teacher was saying there or yep, I really got that off of that slide. Or ooh, that section of my notes is a little weak. I wonder what I missed.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: So writing notes also help students establish essential from non essential material, which is important.
It boosts their comprehension, it boosts retention of the material, and it promotes analytical thinking, and it enables students the ability to outline a paragraph, which again, taking notes on paragraphs and books and what you're studying and getting the important information out is also a very important study skill.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
You know, and life skill. I mean, even I hear a lot from adults in my life who I love very dearly, I get some pushback sometimes.
Listeners will be very surprised about this, but I get a little passionate when I'm talking about what I do for a living.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: I think they get that.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Might be a little surprised to hear that.
Right. But I sometimes get a little pushback and like, well, I don't really use that skill on a daily basis. And I kind of relish a little bit going, really? When you sign the papers for your mortgage, you didn't want to know a little bit more information about XYZ or if you're taking a new job, you don't want to know exactly what your job tasks are gonna be.
I think it might be a little more important than you think.
I'm real fun at parties. Yeah.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: When we teach writing, though, we also need to teach proofreading.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Why is that?
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Well, I mean, for a lot of reasons. Right. I mean, one, proofreading, also a very important skill in and of itself.
But A lot of our students, they go back and read their writing. Remember that they're. They're struggling to read, and our brain is really good at inserting things that aren't there.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: I have students all the time, or I will give them a dictated sentence, they will write it, but they'll miss a whole phrase.
And then when I ask them to go back and read it really slowly, then that's when they'll catch that sometimes. Sometimes I have to point it out to them.
But it's important to be able to read your own writing. If you can't, you're not going to be able to effectively study or retain any information out of that, you know, And I do not like this or agree with this stigma at all, but we do know that people tend to judge a person's intelligence by their ability to spell and to write.
That's all kinds of wrong. And I do not like that.
But we do know that to be true.
So the better we can prepare the students that we see here and, you know, our own children to be competent writers.
That will bode very well for them in life.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: So how do we teach proofreading?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah, how do we teach any of this? Right.
So we teach proofreading by modeling it, by breaking it down, by using checklists for the students. One of the common ones we use here, it's called chops. So CHOPS stands for capitalization, handwriting, organization, punctuation, and spelling.
We like our students to be very automatic with that.
I thought it would be a good use of our time to get a little bit in the nitty gritty and kind of go back over. Okay, so these elements of the writing rope, how do we teach these things? Or what are some activities that we use to reinforce critical thinking in a writing context? So what are some of the activities that we do? Drills that we do, parts of our lesson that are aimed at increasing critical thinking that we need for writing.
So some of mine are plain old brainstorming, Right. Generally generating a lot of ideas and writing all of those ideas down and then from there, whittling down. Oh, okay. I might actually have a lot to say about this story. Less to say about story number B. Maybe I will try story number A first. What about you? What are some things that you do in your practice?
[00:18:07] Speaker B: I think I use graphic organizers a lot, kind of in the same way to get them to start brainstorming about what we just read.
So, like, what is the main idea? Who's the main characters?
Why are they important? Why? What is the problem? Maybe what is the solution that they came with and how does it all relate in kind of put it together that way?
I think that's important to those critical thinking skills, being able to kind of look deeper into what's being said. Because we all know people don't always just say what they mean. Sometimes you have to figure that out on your own. So practicing that in reading and verbally is very important.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
So what about for syntax? So as a reminder, syntax, right. It's the rules for organizing words and phrases. It includes grammar.
I think grammar is very critical.
Some of the really important things that I remain surprised by is students not having a grasp on what are the components that make a sentence. A true sentence. Right. A full and complete sentence must have a subject and a predicate, meaning a subject and a verb. Right. A noun and a verb minimum.
But also teaching them that there are different rules. Right. If we have a question, we have to have a question mark.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Yes, that's a very important.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really important.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Commas are always something that I have to go over explicitly because even if they were taught at school, a lot of our students don't remember them.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: I mean, it's just. You need a lot of practice with commas and comma.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Rules are complicated.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: They are.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: There's a lot of rules and lots of uses and non uses for commas.
I find apostrophes as well.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: A lot of my students overuse apostrophes. Yes. Once they've learned that they exist, they like.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah, they make them.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: They like to have everything.
Same goes for exclamation marks. Once my students learn that exclamations are a thing, they love everything to be really excited. Some of that is kind of developmentally normal. The exclamation for sure. That's. That's developmentally normal because our kids are excited about a lot of things.
So that's. That's one of those things.
Lots and lots of practice. Explicit work on what is a noun? What is a verb? What's an adjective? Adverb, prepositional phrases.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: And we also use those a lot in our reviews. Yes. Because we always write a sentence, usually in our reviews, and then we just verbally sometimes just go, okay, where's the noun? Where's the verb? Where's the.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Where does the period? Does it have the correct punctuation? Does it have correct capitalization in it?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Yeah. All of those skills, pretty important.
And the more practice, the better.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: In terms of text structure, what are some Activities that we use to teach text structure.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Well, I think definitely identifying fragments and sentences which are. They're very different and why they're different. I love your way of having bits of pieces of sentences and then on cards or papers and then you mix them up and then they have to tell you if it's a fragment or a sentence and then put them together to make a full sentence.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: It's a very good way to teach that, I think.
Plus it's a fun way, I think, for them.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think students really like it. It's multisensory.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: It's moving things around and it's also. It's a good way to teach. Sometimes I'll just take one of those and we'll do some sentence expansion and then sometimes we'll do some.
Right. Once you've taught them how to expand a sentence. We also need to be careful that every sentence for them is not a run on.
That kind of goes back a little bit to syntax. And that's. That is one of the things that makes both reading and writing, but I think especially writing a little bit difficult is when we start really going off of one of these elements. Right. We really still need to be conscious of, okay, there is still syntax and grammar under there. There's still critical thinking happening. It's not that we can isolate all of these skills, it's that they all work together. But there are activities that are aimed here, like in text structure, giving them lots of examples and having them talk about, is this a narrative? What kind of story do you think we're going to read based on maybe just the title, Maybe just based on what the text looks like and then go, okay, were we right about that? Were we not right about that? Right. What are some clues having them really highlight important words. Right. That can be a good way to teach note taking skills.
Keywords and phrases, all those kinds of things.
I do like having kids work a lot with transition words.
A lot of our students hang on to a favorite. Right. It could be next. It could be first. Yeah. I had a kid get really attached to therefore and everything was therefore, therefore this and therefore that.
And it's a great word. It is a great word. But we need to. Or furthermore. He also liked furthermore. He liked therefore and furthermore, which is great.
But having them work on there's purposes for those kinds of words.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Correct.
So what about writing craft?
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah, writing craft, I think can be a lot of fun if a student has a lot of foundational work. Right. If we are to a point where they're pretty confident in a lot of their basic grammar skills.
It's time to have some fun picking out different words. Right. Ways to use words that we wouldn't think of. This is picking out a really cool author and having students think about their word choices. I often like to have them kind of compare their word choices to an author's word choices and talk about, why do you think it is that they even chose that word. What do you think the author was thinking here? That helps them get into the mindset of, oh, I. If I'm a writer, I have to think about my audience, too. Who's reading this?
Having them play around with literary devices. This can be also very fun. Right. Mentioned alliteration. Kids like that one a lot.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: I think it's also giving them a lot of different samples of different purposes and different audiences so they can hear the difference. Yeah.
That makes them more aware of what it should sound like if they're writing for a certain audience or for a certain purpose.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Even having them play around with it. I. I do an activity sometimes where I have a student pretend that they're a reporter and they're writing a story for a newspaper. Right. And then we might write it one way. And then I say, okay, now you're going to pretend that you're telling that same story, but you're telling it to your best friend and wow, very different.
That's going to sound really different. You're going to use different words. And that's a fun one. Right. It's the same story.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: So kind of taking some of that, oh, my gosh, I have to generate more ideas out of it and making it pretty. Writing, craft focused.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: That sounds fun.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: So transcription, handwriting. Correct letter formations, knowing when things. Spacing.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: If writing is a big thing that we teach here, either there's too much space or there's too little space. So then you don't know where the sentence ends, if it's too little space. And sometimes you don't know if the words are in the same sentences, if there's too much space. So that's important to kind of.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Spacing between letters, between words.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Understanding that a paragraph, you know, you go down, you go a line down.
Sometimes our students don't do that.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Indenture.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Indenting.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: Ooh.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: That's like a whole.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: That's a new thing.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: That's a whole thing.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: That's a whole thing.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: You know, and that spelling piece, I mean, there is not a lesson that goes by that we are not working on spelling, everything that we do for reading, we turn around immediately, and we do for spelling.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And in the summers here, we do keyboarding club because a lot of the schools around us don't teach it explicitly anymore. I remember when I was younger and they put the cardboard under over my hand, and I had to put my fingers in the right spots and actually had to do that. Well, they don't do that.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: We had to turn our screens off. We had to cover our hands, and we had to turn our screens off.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we did that, too. And that was a while ago, but.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't do that, apparently. Apparently. Yeah. So.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: But I mean, the students that were in that club loved it. And I think because it makes it so much easier to be able to write when you don't have to think about where every letter is when you're typing.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is.
It's. It's just like, why do we spend a long time on those decoding skills? All right. It's the same reason we want that to be really automatic for them if they're having to hen pack around and they don't really know where those letters are on the keyboard.
Let's be real. A lot of our students have trouble even identifying those letters in the first place.
So teaching them keyboarding skills is really important.
Even in the world of text to speech, which I am for.
Sometimes I think listeners might get the impression that I'm against that technology. I am not. I am not. I just think that it is a tool.
And we also have to make sure that we're addressing those foundations.
And I think we do a lot of expecting our students, because they've had access to technology since they've been babies, that they just know how to keyboard. And that's not intuitive at all.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: It needs to be explicitly taught.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: And just like we do for reading, we address the most foundational skills first, and then we make sure that the student is automatic and independent before we move on with writing.
So what's going on? Beyond dyslexia this week.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: So beyond dyslexia. So we thought for this episode, since we're explicitly talking about writing, we thought it would be kind of fun to talk about an experience we've had writing something.
I will just fully disclose to listeners that I tend to be actually a poor speller, even though I've done this for a really long time and I know these rules and all the things I.
I tend to not have great spelling. I definitely have to be very careful about what I'm turning in. I have to be making sure my spell check is on and that I've really proofread my work. And even then, it's not always. It's not always perfect. And I do share that with my students too.
So a good example for me, the word accommodation, you would think as a special education teacher, that should be a very easy one for me to spell. I have to write it several times a day, even still, but I spell it wrong often. The first time I had to hand in an iep as an actual full fledged special education teacher, I was very confident in my skills, Having read many IEPs over the years, having sat in on them, that I knew what I was doing.
My boss was significantly less impressed.
I. This was. I loved this boss. She was great.
But she, she sent it back with quite a lot of revisions to make and a lot of them had to do with the word accommodation.
So I'm real careful when I spell that word because I know it's tricky for me.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: So my story is I went back for my doctorate about 10 years after I graduated college for the first time, and there was this big capstone project that we had to do that was, I think it was like 500 or more pages. I can't even remember how many pages it was.
So we started in writing it almost right away in the beginning of our program, and I was told by my professor that maybe I need to refresh my grammar rules in order to continue on in the program.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: So I actually went back and I took a grammar class between semesters at a two year college and luckily that helped me succeed in my capstone.
But yeah, because those are skills that you can lose if you don't use them all the time.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was embarrassing at the time, but looking back, it was a great learning experience for me just knowing that, yeah, if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And I think it's. I think that's a great story to be able to share with the students, you know, even your own kids. And yeah, some of those things that, like, that was the time I really skinned my knee, but I feel like it did actually learn something. So there you go.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you for joining us today about writing.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Please be sure to follow us on social media, reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic if you like our show. And please do, please be sure to follow us and give us a rating on your favorite podcast. Players. That's how we read more listeners. So thank you, everybody.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Thank you.
