Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole.
Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia in Coffee Podcast. We are so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children.
What dyslexia is, how to fix our kids, strategies to help, and topics related to other learning disabilities will also 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 we help our children grow and succeed in school and the world.
Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Hi, everybody.
So we're going to start, like we do every time, with the concept of the week. So concept of the week is our opportunity as practitioners to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit and let our listeners into an intervention session. So we like to teach about things that we would be teaching to either our students or to our parents.
So today's concept of the week is actually two.
So the first one is intellectual disability.
So an intellectual disability is a significant limitation in both intellectual functioning, like reasoning, learning, problem solving, and adaptive behavior. So everyday social and practical skills.
The onset of an intellectual disability must begin in childhood. So before the age of 13.
Some examples, right. Communication, self care, social skills.
A developmental disability, on the other hand, is a little bit different than that. A developmental disability also does begin during development before the age of 22, and causes significant limitations in one or more life activities.
So this could include.
Could include an intellectual disability, but also other conditions.
So something more physical in nature, where the primary presenting problem is something more physical, would be a developmental disability, but it would not be an intellectual disability.
Often these two terms, developmentally disability, developmental disability, and intellectual disability, they get interchanged a lot. I mean, I've even seen it in literature, like professional literature, that these two terms are being kind of conflated and intertwined with each other. And I think it is pretty important that we do understand they actually are different.
To be an intellectual disability, it does have to significantly impact that cognitive and intellectual functioning, where that's not true of a developmental disability.
[00:03:04] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: And I would say for the developmental disability, sometimes that's the first thing that a doctor will give because it's so broad. It's like an umbrella term when they don't know if there's a genetic component or if there's another thing that they can't test it for.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: It's kind of like right in geometry.
[00:03:27] Speaker D: Right.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. If you do have an intellectual disability, that falls under the category of developmental disability.
[00:03:38] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: But not the other way around.
Nicole looked real scared when I went towards geometry. She was like, no, no, no, no, man.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Oh my goodness.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: So Today's episode, episode 57, by the way. Yay us.
Episode 57. We're going to talk about structured literacy for students with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: So we're excited for this topic because this is a bit specific.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities often require us to think very differently about who's in front of us and how we're going to approach how we're going to approach literacy for the student.
It is the belief and mission and values of dyslexia Achievement center that all people, all individuals have the right to be able to gain literacy.
And if that means we have to approach things very differently, then yeah, we do have to think very differently.
Historically, this has been a real issue for people with intellectual disabilities and developmentally disabilities.
In kind of broader historical context.
Many people with those diagnoses are dismissed as not being able to learn and therefore not being able to read.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: And in the past, that has meant a focus on only functional sight words and kind of calling that reading and.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Literacy, which it really is not because they can't actually read at that point.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
Research shows.
[00:06:05] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: That students with intellectual disabilities and developmental learning disabilities can learn to decode, comprehend and write, not just memorize sight words.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Foundational principle, which is the belief of our clinic, is that we presume competence, meaning we presume any child can learn literacy skills and is capable of higher order think thinking and higher order learning.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: So to touch on the basis of the social versus medical model of disability.
So there's differences.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: On what kind of that looks like. Society creates more barriers by limiting exits to learning experiences for some students.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Which obviously is something that has been around for many, many years. I mean, I don't even know. Was that even in still in the 20s and 30s when they would literally institutionalize students?
[00:07:31] Speaker A: I mean, all the way up into the 60s, like, look at the Kennedys, right?
Yeah, definitely.
It is something, I mean, a very, like, personal side story.
I am a person who has a disability. It has nothing to do with learning at all.
It is a physical disability only.
I was born in the late 80s and my parents were told by medical professionals that I would be lucky if I graduated from high school.
So, yeah, this is, this is still pretty pervasive.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: And it is the medical model of disability, because what they are trying to do is diagnose and categorize. The medical model focuses on deficit only.
[00:08:29] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: What this person cannot do.
[00:08:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Where a social model and an educational model has to take medical data into account.
However, what they are more looking for is like what they can do.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: And here in lies some gaps and, and some very interesting approaches.
[00:08:58] Speaker D: Right.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: So a medical model is going to very much focus on what this person cannot do, what is the deficit, and then therefore reads like very negatively.
[00:09:10] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: If anybody's ever poked around in the dsm, it's not very cheery language. No, it is very much deficit only kind of language.
But which is necessary for diagnostic purposes.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: We do have to be able to put a label on certain things in order to get services and in order to understand what it is we're supposed to accommodate or modify.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: So, but in education and social models, we don't want to stop there either.
[00:09:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: That is becoming a bigger voice.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: And just so that we're clear, literacy might look different for different students based on goals.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: Right?
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Exactly.
You know, so for example, right. You might have a student who interacts with books in a very different way than a typically developing person.
You may have a young child with autism or something else that their interaction with books involves them spinning the pages or holding the book in a different way.
You may have a child who's very sensory sensitive and the texture of pages is a big thing for them. They may be averse to touching books.
[00:10:59] Speaker D: Right.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: So it's thinking differently. It's thinking like, okay, how are they interacting with that book?
How can we use where they are to bring them to where we want them to be?
[00:11:15] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: We may have kind of a knee jerk reaction to a child who's on the spectrum spinning a book and looking at the pages all funky.
We might have a knee jerk reaction to be like, that's not reading, that's not literacy.
What are we doing? We need to stop that.
[00:11:36] Speaker D: Right.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: But if we take a step back and go, okay, but how are they using this book in this moment? And how do we get them closer to reading the book in a more traditional way?
That's where a very structured approach can be beneficial for these kids.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Because maybe they picked up that book because of an interest, maybe a picture on the front, and maybe you can use that interest to start as a starting point for that literacy growth.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Like, my daughter loves trees, so we started with tree books.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that is absolutely one way which speaks to the broader Principles. This is where I get myself in trouble as a special education teacher because I. I zoom out and go, this actually isn't different than what we would do for a typically developing reader. What would we do for a typically developing reader who has a high interest in, I don't know, cars. Right. We would find books and passages and things having to do with that topic, and we would very slowly build their skills.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: The same principle is going to apply here. Right.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: And it might just take longer to get through some things.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Other things like read alouds and shared reading, you know, those model fluent reading and opportunities for engagement with the student, even if they're not actual reading yet.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Right, exactly.
You know, introducing something like an AAC device, which is an augmentative and alternative communication.
You know, those students who have that unreliable speech and they need that support of communication.
You know, we don't want to limit that. We want to use that in our instruction.
You know, one of the pieces that often is skipped or missed. And again, no surprise to me here, given our balanced literacy history.
[00:13:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: One of the things that kind of gets skipped and missed often is that foundational phonemic awareness piece.
You know, understanding that words are made up of individual sounds and phonemes.
That is really important to all readers. And there's a lot of ways that we could modify that kind of activity for someone with an intellectual or developmental disability.
We can use picture cards or toys to make things very concrete.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: And just remember, if you don't remember from our previous episodes what a phoneme is, you know, breaking down those sounds, you know, the cat goes into, and then blending it together as cat, you know, those are the things that we're talking about right now.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And sometimes it does take a. Okay, we're going to look at that developmental span.
[00:15:02] Speaker D: Right.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: We're going to take a look at. Okay.
Where do we want this student to get to?
And what are those little steps along the way? And if it's introducing that activity one sound at a time, if we have to sit and isolate just the first sound for a really long time, then we are going to do that, but we're not going to ever go.
That student's just never going to be a reader.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Although that's what they told us. Yeah, the school told us that. And she is reading now, isn't she?
[00:15:38] Speaker A: She sure is. With blends.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:39] Speaker D: Ha ha.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: So the other thing, playing games, you know, with sounds, I mean, hello. Kids love games. Developmentally, that's how everybody learns, right. When they're a child.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Play. Absolutely so incorpor, you know, once we're kind of not through, because we are always working on phonemic awareness. But as soon as we can, just like we would do in structured literacy, we're going to pair then those sounds with letters and work on that phonics system.
[00:16:22] Speaker D: Right.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: So phonics is when we pair our sounds with that. With those letters or other representatives.
[00:16:31] Speaker D: Right.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Something like a digraph would count here.
So when we can, we're going to pair that and make it very explicit and systematic, just like we would do in any other context.
[00:16:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: You know, and so for parents at home, using simple two foaming words like that, you can break down easy and then generally increase that complexity.
I did not say that.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: It's been a day.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: It has.
And then, you know, additional sound and sound by sound blending and support their memory on that.
Incorporate that visual, tactile, and digital support that we've been talking about.
You know, there's apps, there's using big letters at your house.
Help them point to letters. All those things help learners in many different ways.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Not everybody.
Some people are visual learners, some people are auditory learners. So you're getting to all those different senses.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. You're.
We want it multi sensory and we want it explicit and systematic. Yep.
I think a huge area that is missed, not just with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, but even in regular instruction, is the focus on vocabulary that leads to comprehension.
Reading is not just decoding. Students have to understand the meaning of a text if they are not pairing right.
To the word cat. Oh, and then, look, this is a cat.
We're not supporting that student the best we can. So. So it is a very big challenge when one of the hallmarks of intellectual disabilities is that working memory piece. It's often very, very limited. So they can't remember what they read, even if it was just one word.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Especially if they're working still hard on that decoding piece.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: And then also with these students, language delays. Right. They have difficulty understanding words that are spoken.
So giving them what it looks like on paper doesn't help if they don't understand language too.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Exactly.
And the very literal thinking that often accompanies someone who's on the autism spectrum, that makes it very difficult for them to make an inference about a text.
So things like idioms that are used very commonly, we have to teach those things explicitly.
[00:19:48] Speaker D: Right.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: If we say even simple things.
[00:19:54] Speaker D: Right.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Like, well, you know, don't run away. They mean literally run away.
They don't. They often can't make the distinction of like. That actually doesn't literally mean run. It just means walk away slowly.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: That has to often be very explicitly taught and tied together nicely for them, which is a hard job because we can't do that with every single idiom. So how do we teach them to develop that instinct of, like, huh? That doesn't make sense. I wonder if there's more than one meaning to this word.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: So some strategies for parents and interventionists. You know, think aloud.
[00:20:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: When you're reading it and you start thinking, you're, like, talking about the passage you're reading, predicting what's going on. Maybe explaining the words as you read those type of things will really help students be able to develop that.
You know, interactive discussions, you know, ask questions about the characters, the events, and the vocabulary. Make sure that they're understanding what they're listening to or reading about.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and understanding that oral language has a huge role to play in literacy.
Being a literate person does not only mean I can pick up a book and read it, I can also discuss it. I can also have a conversation.
I can bring in my prior knowledge.
All of those things are literacy.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: And because it doesn't look exactly the same, sometimes those abilities get dismissed.
[00:21:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Or, well, they can't really do it if they're reading, so it's not enough. Like, well, that's unfair.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: You know, use visuals, like graphic organizers. You know, help organize those concepts in the story for them and the vocabulary.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: You know, have them draw some pictures.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, they, you know, pictures are awesome.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Pictures are awesome. And getting a student to explain their thinking, if they have drawn something, that is a literacy skill.
That is a way that they are.
[00:22:32] Speaker D: Right.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Writing is thinking. If that means that they are drawing and then explaining their drawing, that is writing guys like, that is a representation of what they are thinking.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: And then definitely teach all new words concrete to leak.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Use examples. Use non examples. Explain it. Use it in a sentence.
You know, relate it to something that you know that they know.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Yes.
You know, it's one of the things that.
And I too, am very much in the camp of when we have a learner in front of us that has a degree of special need.
[00:23:18] Speaker D: Right.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: We have to be very functional. What is the functionality of teaching this skill?
What is our expectation and what are they going to need to do with this skill?
It has been a practice in the past of, okay, we need to explicitly teach a word like danger, right? Yes. It's very important.
That is a word everyone needs to know and be able to recognize from a sign. But it's not enough to just say, that's the word danger. Memorize the word danger.
They need to understand what does that mean.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: What is danger?
[00:24:00] Speaker B: It means don't touch that or don't go there or avoid that area.
But, you know, if you don't teach them that meaning behind that word, it's just another thing to look at. They're not gonna stop. They're not going to avoid whatever that danger is.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: And they really need to use that word as well.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: It's got to be part of something they're spoken and. Or written vocabulary, if that is accessible to that student.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
Another major part of literacy instruction and structured literacy instruction is that fluency part.
So fluency is being able to read with automatic word recognition, the proper pace, expression, and stamina.
[00:24:55] Speaker D: Right.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Stamina means like we can sustain reading for a while.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: And there's oral and silent fluency.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Sometimes children that have like, speech difficulties can develop a silent reading fluency, but may not be able to develop the oral or vice versa, depending on.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: And that happens a lot even with our profoundly dyslexic learners.
Often they have really broken the code. They have mastered a lot of the phonics rules.
But when that translates to oral fluency, that sometimes they remain a quite choppy reader.
[00:25:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: But when they read things to themselves, they comprehend the text.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Well, that would be the point, folks. Right?
Yes.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Why do we need to read?
[00:25:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: To be able to understand, you know, fluency, especially oral reading fluency, I think is so often misunderstood.
We want to aim for a certain words correct per minute and. And that's kind of our only goal there.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: And that number to me is like the least interesting thing about oral reading fluency. I don't really spend a lot of time in my own practice tracking only that number.
It is about the quality of that reading, which can include that silent reading. Some of these students with these intellectual and developmental disabilities, some of them, this would include not even really being able to speak. So how do we measure this in a different way?
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Right.
You know, being able to.
Some strategies might be repeat readings and give feedback.
Model fluent reading, either read aloud or after you do a reading passage, maybe you're going to talk about the. What you both read and discuss the different aspects of what you read and see if they understand it.
And then, you know, there's text to speech tools. So when the text gets too difficult, maybe they can use that to help them Kind of get through some of those words that they cannot get through.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Yeah. You know.
[00:27:32] Speaker D: There is.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: If we really zoom out here, what are we looking for? My lens as a practitioner and as a parent, I'm always looking for. What do I want this student in front of me to be able to do?
And if we're not including that student in that discussion, this is a real problem.
That is another thing faced often by students with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities.
Everybody's making all these decisions for them all day, every day, and we don't often stop and go, okay, but what does. What is this student thinking and feeling?
Because we kind of just all think we know better.
I think it's kind of our.
It's like our own bias.
[00:28:29] Speaker D: Right.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Because we think we know these students better than they know themselves.
And part of it is. Is necessary when you have a student with a severe impairment.
Yes, there is an element of they do need some things done for them, and they do need someone to help guide their thinking. But if we're not keeping them at the center, that's when we have all kinds of problems, you know? And in a previous life, I have been a vocational trainer, so someone who's taught job skills to individuals with pretty severe needs.
And I was working with one person.
We were training them on a certain job, and it wasn't going very smoothly.
And finally I was like, I'm wondering what's happening here?
And really what was happening as that individual was kind of like sabotaging his own self? Like he was. It was not going well at all. And I finally was like, what is happening here? I feel like we've tried this, We've tried that. What do you think? And he's like, I hate this job that everybody keeps telling me that I should do.
And I was like, oh, okay, well, what would you like? And it was a totally different job, something he could totally be trained to do. And guess what? It went well. This is a person who I have known a long time, and they have been at the job that we placed him in for seven and a half years.
It took, what do you need from us? And what do you want?
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: And that's kind of one of, you know, the goals of why we talked about goals with the student and with the parent and the whole team sometimes, because we need to get to that.
What is it that they need to be able to do exactly or want.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: To do, you know, and just being creative.
[00:30:31] Speaker D: Right.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Structured literacy. I think it's a bad reputation for being. Because it's in the name structured for being rigid.
[00:30:40] Speaker D: Right.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Structured does not mean rigid.
It means exactly that. It means that it's structured and systematic. It does not mean that we get stuck in our own thinking and refuse to accept other forms of literacy. I think it could be quite rewarding and really fun to work with students with some more severe disabilities.
I've had the privilege of doing that a lot over the course of my career and it is taking a step back and having a more creative lens. What is the purpose of this kind of instruction?
Accepting that not all students are going to be writing long form essays.
It is our belief here at the clinic that literacy is way beyond academics.
Do I care about academics? Absolutely.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: But it's also a life skill.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: It's also a life skill and that's going to be different person to person.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: So what can parents take away?
Presume competence.
Have high expectations.
Encourage interaction with texts in enjoyable ways.
Support learning through multisensory approaches like the visual, the tactile, the auditory, using those acc, aac, oh my goodness. Apps and assistive technology if needed.
And you know, both focus both on the skill building like the phonics and phonemic, awareness and enjoyment and meaning, like stories and discussion and, you know, family time.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: So when we give a appropriate supports, students with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities can learn meaningful literacy skills.
[00:32:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: You know, and we have to celebrate the progress that we do make.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yes.
No matter how big or how small.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: So, Maggie, what's happening beyond dyslexia?
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
So it is as we record this, the end of September. And we have a lot coming up.
We have a lot coming up. We are, I think we mentioned in previous episodes, we have a fairly new contract at DAC where we are now sending our practitioners into schools, which has been extremely exciting and it's new. So we are navigating, you know, bumps and detours and being extremely flexible. Being extremely flexible. Thank goodness we did that summer series on flexibility because we are practicing every day being flexible every day. Every day. What's going on with you, Nicole?
[00:33:49] Speaker B: You know, I agree we've been very busy here, working a lot, trying to get everything settled and off and.
And also our kids are kind of really into that first quarter at school, so we're starting to pick up at the centers too.
So. Yeah, it's just been a very busy time for us.
[00:34:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Well, everybody, if you like our show, please follow us on social media and reach out if you have questions or you would like us to discuss a topic.
Be sure to give us a rating and follow us on your favorite podcast player. That's really how we reach more listeners and then we get to help more families. So thank you, everybody.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Thank you.
