Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to Dac Dyslexia and Coffee podcast. We are so happy you could join us. We are 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 also be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone, and we want to give a voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our students and children grow and succeed in school and the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. So it's time for the concept of the week. Concept of the week is how we like to start our show. That is our opportunity as practitioners to kind of pull back the curtain and talk about the things that we would be talking about in intervention. So, this week's concept of the week is digraph, sometimes known as a consonant digraph. So, a digraph is where we use two letters to represent one sound. For example, in English, the digraph, sh, is, says sh.
A digraph cannot be broken up into two sounds.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: So, for this week, we are going to discuss ADHD again. Last week, we talked about ADHD. We gave some background information on it, and we talked about the subcategories of ADHD. We also discussed some of the difficulties students have with ADHD that they may face when they're at school.
In this episode, we will discuss some of the supports we can put in place to help our students with ADHD.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: So, like we discussed last week, there is a large overlap between dyslexia and ADHD. It is estimated that between 20 and 40% of people with dyslexia also have ADHD.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: We also know that in regards of a diagnosis of ADHD, many people with dyslexia really struggle with executive functioning. In fact, that will be part of the diagnostic criteria for dyslexia in the future and is a big area of research right now. We kind of talked about that a little bit in our last podcast, how that's new research and how that research is growing a lot right now in that research world.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: So. And then today's episode, we're gonna mainly focus on academic support. This is a really big topic, and we're gonna be discussing this a lot more in the future.
Home support and other kinds of support. We're definitely gonna dig into that. It's just not our focus for today.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: So, students with dyslexia and ADHD both need extra time for all academic projects, tests and papers.
Sometimes students do not think they need that extra time. So support staff should encourage students to use this extra time.
Students are still learning how to use the extra time and how to apply it in different situations. This is how they will grow and become an advocate for themselves as they continue through the higher grades, the harder the material will require extra time. And if a student already knows how to use this accommodation, they will be much more successful. So really we have to explicitly teach our students with dyslexia and ADHD how to use their extra time.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Yes.
Really can't express to you guys enough that this is one of the biggest, I don't know, bones of contention for me with accommodations in general, and especially this one. This is one I hear all the time where a teacher will report, oh, he doesn't even need his extra time. As if that's a good thing, guys. It's not. That's not good, right? That means that we're really not actually supporting the student well enough.
Our goal is to teach these guys about themselves as learners. And part of that is reinforcing, nope, you do need the extra time, even if it is just to slow your brain down. And for our hyper processors, our really, really fast thinkers, to make sure we're not making a whole bunch of mistakes, because that is, that's like classic trap.
So, yeah, please, that's not a good thing. If your teachers are saying, oh, they're not even using their extra time, isn't that great? No, not great. That means that we're not doing our job.
So next kind of big area is organizational supports.
Organizational support is really, really important.
This is also really wide.
We're going to talk kind of both physical materials and also organization of processes. Those are kind of two different things, but both organizational related.
Teaching a student to use an academic planner, that's a big one. This will help the student plan their assignments and prepare for longer term projects. Students with dyslexia and ADHD both have difficulty with understanding time. We talked about a little bit that last episode.
They can both over and underestimate the amount of time something takes. So having some kind of concrete, written down plan can really help them succeed.
Another way to do this is a visual timer.
The visual timers, you can pretty much buy them anywhere now, but they're a timer that physically shows the amount of time you have left to do something.
So it's going to show that in a different color.
That one.
I'm a big fan of that support, especially for younger kids, this also can help them be prepared to transition to another subject. Right. So they're kind of seeing that time, their understanding, I'm going to have to transition. They might have their feelings about that, but they're able to kind of do that.
It can also be helpful to give students a five minute warning between transitions during the class, like to lunch or to recess or the next subject.
This can really decrease the frustration when they're doing a preferred activity and they need to stop and get to a less preferred activity.
Another great support is teaching a student how to use a paragraph or, excuse me, paragraph or graphic organizer for writing.
Writing down your thoughts in an organized manner is hard for these students.
Visual schedules can also be a really good way for students to understand in a concrete way what their day or their week is going to look like. It helps them understand what's coming next and when they have their preferred activities. So it can be also kind of motivational.
I think maybe we can stop here and talk about some of these organizational supports and give some good examples of how these can look. Or what are some organizational supports that, you know, have worked for your kids or students that you have had in the past?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: The academic planner is a really good support because they know they have to look at it every day.
Our daughter's teacher was really good at explaining to her, you know, this is your whole week. You look back if you have a test on Friday.
They taught them a couple days before to start studying, not just the day before, like being able to see, oh, I have to be able to have this project done by this date. So part one is due this day. Part two is due the second day. Part three is due the third day. So it makes it right in front of them in a concrete way of how they can organize their project or when to study for their tests. And it kind of gives it back to the academic setting and not the parent to kind of have that fight of, okay, we really need to study because you really have a test.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That sounds like that was a teacher who did that. Right, right.
Any of these supports are only as good as our ability to teach them.
A lot of times I see this written into ieps that a student will carry an academic planner. And then if I ask that student, hey, where's your planner? They're like, no, no, I don't have it. And it's. That was one of those, as a former high school teacher, a lot of those students, right, they had that written in their ip since they were maybe third or fourth grade, they maybe weren't taught to use it. I don't want to assume that, but they definitely weren't reminded and supported. And, you know, we have to teach these kids how to use those tools, and we also have to be flexible about how we use those tools. That's going to change over time. That's, in my opinion, that's one of the biggest reasons we see students with ADHD. They go off to college and they struggle so much their first year because in a high school context, most of their or most of their day was organized for them, whether or not they were using their own planner.
But then once you get to college, you have to kind of do all.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: That stuff on your own.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: On your own, without mom. Mom's not coming to live in your dorm room. And thank you. So you're gonna have to do it on your own. You're gonna have. Or you're gonna have to know where to go get the support if you're truly not ready to make that leap, which some kids aren't.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Right?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. I think on the organization part here, a good example that I like, I did kind of talk about that visual timer.
I really like that tool, especially for younger kids.
That is something that my son's teacher has in the classroom for all students, and it's just part of her classroom routine. It's on. It's a magnet on the whiteboard, and every time they start a subject, she starts that timer. And the kids all know exactly how long they have to complete a task. They know what's coming up next. It's all built in for them, for everybody.
I know that.
That's one that Nicole and I have had a conversation about. Right.
That your kids kind of have felt like they've outgrown the timer.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: The timer, they do not like it anymore.
Now they prefer to have an electronic device go off instead of mom and dad's voice or a timer to remind them to do things.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: And actually, if that's because they're a little bit older now, if that really helps them, which it seems to be really helping them, they know when to line up at the door because the timer goes off, the alarm goes off, and it's time for school, the tv goes off, there's stuff is at the door.
Everybody is ready to go.
We have alarms for a lot of different things in our.
And those just. It just works for them. So sometimes you have to try a couple things before you find that sweet spot.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. None of these supports are one size fits all, right? So that is something that's working for my kid right now, and it might not work for every kid. I also have seen at a high school level, some of those supports that worked early on kind of stop working in middle school. We kind of start getting that middle school attitude involved, like, I don't need this, it's not working, blah, blah, blah. Right. That kind of thing. But then not all kids, but a lot of kids kind of come back when they're a little bit more mature. They've got their, you know, our juniors and seniors are starting to understand that they will have to be doing this stuff on their own, and they start coming back around to, you know, that actually really worked for me when I was younger.
I'd be willing to try something like that. In our accommodations episode, we talked about the importance of looking at these accommodations on an annual basis, not just skipping over that part of the IEP.
I'm going to just gently remind us that we talked about that, right. That we really need to be looking at what's working, what's not working, what we can put in place, what we can take away.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
So our next area is testing supports. So another accommodation is having tests in a quiet area without distractions or. And. Or being able to take breaks during the test. This prevents fatigue and gives students an opportunity to reset.
So just a little bit about this part of it, that distraction free zone is really important for them to stay on task, some of our kids. And so that's that quiet area they need. And then think about if your brain is working ten times harder than everybody else's brain, you're gonna need a break. I mean, honestly.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, and here again, this is another area, right. That it's like, oh, well, they didn't use their extended time. It's like, well, then what were we doing that wasn't supportive of them using that extended time?
They really need it. Their brains are working harder than a neurotypical brain.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Having questions read to the students so they can comprehend the questions is also an accommodation that you can have for testing.
And that's really good, especially if.
For staying on tasks still, too. And also for any reading concerns.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Allowing oral answers if they're not being tested on writing.
You know, our kids are pretty dang smart and they know the answers, but sometimes to put that organization piece into the writing, they can't do it. And so it doesn't really test their knowledge of a subject if you're looking at the writing piece for those kids.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Absolutely. And also another one that helps them stay on task. If you're reading and then they're talking. Right. Like that is keeping them engaged in the, the test in a different way.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: And then giving students a chance to correct a question, like in a guided way. So if the student, if the teacher notices that the answer is wrong because of a small detail and not because they didn't know the answer, they can maybe guide the student back to relook at the question and answer and see and check their selves because, you know, these kids are impulsive, so they're going to go fast and then they might just miss a small detail, or they might go too fast and miss putting down part of the answer because their brain was already ten times ahead of the answer and so they're writing down as fast as they can. So that's a way for those students to kind of catch themselves.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yep. Even sometimes changing formatting of a test to that.
If, let's say you're testing math, right, and you have a word problem, often they appear as a paragraph. Often just that block of text is so overwhelming that just breaking it up instead of same question, we're not modifying necessarily, but if we just break it up into bullet points instead of a whole paragraph, sometimes that alone is enough to allow that ADHD brain to go, oh, okay, I understand what to do. I can now.
Now that sequencing part is done for me. So sometimes it's understanding what we want the student to be able to demonstrate.
And accommodations should follow that, right? The accommodations should follow. Okay, what do we want the student to be able to demonstrate their knowledge on and how?
Let's accommodate for that.
A third kind of big area for supports for students with ADHD is the environment.
This is a big one.
This is a big one. This is the environment that your student spends 8 hours a day in.
I'm going to put another plug in here for visual timers having that available or a visual schedule, something, a reminder of how their day is broken up at a high school level. This doesn't have to take place on a whiteboard, right. Those guys are changing classes, but having something taped to their notebook that just tells them, yeah, this is what is expected of me every day. This is where I'm going can be a really helpful tool.
A quiet area to take tests, seating in the classroom that is either closer to the teacher so they can focus on the teacher or in some cases farther away from the teacher. If this is the kind of class that requires the teacher to be in constant motion and there's a lot of traffic around that. Sometimes it's more beneficial for a student to be farther away from the teacher or board, then closer to the board.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: And this really depends on the student. Absolutely. You really have to know the student to see. And sometimes, again, we need to try different times, different things to see what helps the most.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, on a way, I guess, for all the parents listening. Right. So, okay, how are we going to know what works? Well, we're, one, going to have to try it, you know, and two, okay, so how do we write that into an IEP? We can say something like preferential treat or nothing treatment. Not preferential treatment. Please don't write that into a kid's IEP. That would be terrible.
Bad, bad, bad, bad. No, not preferential treatment. Preferential seating. You can just say that.
That could mean closer. That could mean farther away.
Yeah. Sometimes giving a student fidget that does not disturb the teacher and other students.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: And that helps them focus on, like, the teacher or their work.
And it should be quiet, like, the fidget shouldn't be making noises.
And you might need to try different fidgets to find the one that works best for your student.
And as the student grows, you might have to change the items we really want to stress here. The fidgets are not toys.
They are a tool for the student to be able to focus their attention on what needs to be focused on in an academic setting.
So we are also going to talk about this in another episode because there are so, so many things about fidgets out there.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: This really could be a whole episode or more. Or more. Yeah, I. I am pro fidget as a tool, but again, they are not. They are not toys, and they should not be used to distract from learning.
And that requires teaching.
That requires us to actually talk about. Not here. I'm just giving you the spin it like the spinner thing to play with, which is often what we're saying to kids when we're giving them those things.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Here.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Here's this toy to play with so that you pay attention better. Well, come on, guys.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: That's not working.
When should they use it? When should they not use it?
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: You need to really teach the student how to use it in a way that's appropriate.
Because there are ways to do that.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
You know, there are also some stools or chairs that allow students to move at their desk to help them stay focused. Just the ability to stand up throughout the day.
I used to see this a lot with my high school students. Right. That being able to just transition between classes really actually helped them sometimes. Right. It came at a cost, too.
But we used to have, you know, some of our periods were 40 minutes and some of them were 80.
Yeah. There's a big difference between a 40 hours class period at 40 hours. Wow, that would be terrible.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: I don't know if I could do.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: A 40 hours class. I certainly couldn't do a 40 hours class. Awful.
40 minutes class. There's a big difference between 40 minutes and 80 minutes and those 80 minutes class periods. Come on. You've got to allow some movement there for neurotypical kids, let alone somebody with ADHD.
That is crazy pants.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: And maybe if you have a student that goes to the bathroom a lot, you might want to think about why they're going to the bathroom a lot.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Often.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: That's a good way for a lot of our students to be, like, to get up. Well, if they need to get up that much, maybe that should be something written into their plan.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, we see it a lot. Even our students, who we have one on one. Right.
A lot of my students come to me right after school, and they are not able to sit in a chair and work with me for 50 minutes. So that's not something they're able to do. But they can stand and they can do. There are a lot of drills that we can do where they can stand. They can have movement. They can demonstrate what they know in a different way that isn't sitting facing me all nice and straight with their pencil in their hand. Do you have any students that do that, Nicole? Because I sure don't.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: So either all over the room and moving around and, you know, going back to that falling off the chair thing, that's usually when you probably need a different type of chair, by the way, is if you see them falling out of their chair a lot at you in their classrooms, that's something they should probably be looking at.
Some of these tools. You can consult an occupational therapist to help you find the correct tools for your students. They're experts at environmental modification and equipment needed for sensory things, attention.
So these type of things are all lumped into that. So even if the teacher can consult the OT at the school to kind of say, this student may need something, and then what could it look like? And how can we make this a plan?
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, you know, and as a parent, you have a right to ask that question, you know, okay, if we're having this, then we had a difficult year last year. We had a teacher student relationship between my son and the teacher that just it wasn't working. It was very difficult.
And a lot of it was like the teacher's rigidity around what was allowed and what wasn't allowed. And we did have the OT at the school just make some suggestions that really helped. And I have found in my personal experience, my background is in special education.
In my personal experience, those occupational therapists at school, they like to be asked those questions and it doesn't have to be, your kid will qualify for occupational services at school. That's probably not going to happen unless there's a lot of other needs happening. That occupational therapist is probably nothing. Seeing your student for sessions at school, but they can provide resources. That's all allowed. They can't sit down with just your kid and do a thing without your consent, but they can take a look at. Okay, in general, these are the things I might recommend. Here are some things you could try. All of that is allowed in fully regular ed settings, right.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Because they observe the entire class and they might see other students too, that might also need some sort of environmental modification or equipment that might keep them on task.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And. Yeah. And it's helpful. So shout out to OT's. I like them, they're smart.
Cause I'm talking to an OT right now.
Yeah, I think another point I wanna make here, if we're talking about academic supports, I was recently having a conversation with another colleague, so another colleague of mine, another sped background person.
And one of the things that has been frustrating to us in the last couple of years, I'd say inside of. Inside the last seven years, there has been a lot of talk about kind of clamping down on accommodations and.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: There'S.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Been a lot of discussion about, okay, if your student has dyslexia, why are they getting accommodations in math?
And that is very frustrating because that is also kind of extended to the ADHD part. Right. So I have heard. I have had a lot of students on my caseload over the years with ADHD and admin was putting pressure on me to write a lot of these accommodations out, a lot of the reading accommodations out.
That's very frustrating because actually what these supports are designed to do is even that playing field. So we're going to get into the dysgraphia, dyscalculia, all of that stuff in an upcoming episode.
But as far as parents are concerned, I just want parents to be empowered to say, these are the academic supports that my child needs to be successful in school to even the playing field. And no, we're not writing them out unless it's actually making sense to write some of this stuff out.
It's being very careful and not just caving to administrative pressure of writing things out just because we don't, quote, have the time or have the budget.
Too bad. So sad.
We're doing what makes sense for this kid. The end.
All right, so at the end of our episode, we like to talk about what is going on in our life outside of dyslexia.
Today I'm going to share yet again. Wow, I sound like a salesperson. Today I'm just going to share something that's a. That we've been using at home.
So I'm a big fan of the visual timer at home. It allows both of my kids to see how much time we have left for getting ready or transitioning to another activity. I use it when my son really doesn't want to do something because it also shows him that it will end eventually and it kind of keeps him motivated. Like, if I'm making him do something he doesn't want to do, I show him, this is how much time you have, and then it's over. And that really kind of has helped reduce that battle. It's also like, no, no, no. The timer is telling you that it's a thing, right?
[00:32:02] Speaker B: It's a mom, it's not me.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: It's not me. It's a timer.
I don't know. Anytime I can take that responsibility off, it's great.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Yes.
So I'm going to do a little plug, too.
So we were talking about alarms and how our kids thought visual timers. We used them all the time when they were small, but now they decided they're too old for that. So we actually use our Alexa dot, especially for our oldest daughter. It goes off when we need to leave for school, take their medicine, get ready for school, and when to go to bed.
This makes it so much easier for our kids to get ready. They also use a five minute warning before we transition to another thing so that my kids can't get as frustrated with going to the next activity. But things that are technology based, like the Alexa dots and things that you can set up that make it so that they know what they need to do next is a really good tool to use for our kids, especially when they do get frustrated with parents saying all the time, go do this, go do that, go do this, go do that. And they're starting to become a teenager and they don't want you to do that anymore.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Just the teenagers, though.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: I don't know. That's what it feels like anyways.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
All right, well, thank you for listening to DAC, dyslexia and coffee podcast. Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic. If you like our show and you want to follow us, please, please follow us. Please rate us that tells us that helps us, right? That gets out our podcast to other people that might want to listen, and that's how we get to help more people. So thanks for listening.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: I can't talk.
