Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're 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 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 voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having.
This is a safe place to learn more about how to keep our children grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. We're gonna start our episode like we always do with the concept of the week. The concept of the week is our opportunity as practitioners to kind of peel back the curtain and let you all into an intervention session. We like to talk about things that we would be teaching in intervention.
Today's concept of the week is continuous blending.
So as listeners will recall, blending is the ability to take individual sounds in words and then blend them together to make a whole word. For example, the word cat, right? We would segment out to K out, and then we'd blend that back together.
Cat.
Continuous blending is a reading strategy that teaches students to smoothly connect individual sounds in a word without pausing.
So, for example, if we're trying to read the word map, right, we would stretch it out M app instead of that really staccato.
It's because it's easier when we're stretching out those sounds. First of all, it sounds way more like our oral speech.
And second of all, it's easier on our working memory.
So by the time a kid who's really staccato gets to the end of a word, they've kind of forgotten the beginning sound.
A lot of our students, especially in those early phases, they'll go sat, right?
And that'll be the word. I mean, just nothing to do with the actual word because they've forgotten. They can't keep that in their brains for that long.
So this method is very effective.
It's way more effective for sounds that can be held out, like beginning sounds like S, and less effective for sounds like K or G.
But what we can do with those words, like cat is a great example. We could have a student go K and then at, right? So we're still trying the best we can to smooth out that blending as early as we can.
So we want our kids to transition to continuous blending as soon as we really do understand that they have that segmentation skill.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yes.
Well, welcome to episode 62. We're going to talk about the conference we went to last week.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yes. So in podcast land, this happened for us just a week ago. A couple weeks ago.
Was it a week ago? Oh, my God. It's been the longest October on record.
The longest October on record.
So this was just last week for us. When this comes out, it will be probably about mid November or so.
But it was the Turning the Tide conference, which was put on by the Reading League of Wisconsin.
We were one of the sponsors of that event and one of the vendors there. And we got to listen to some great speakers because we were there and able to participate in the conference as well as be a vendor. So we're just going to kind of talk about some key takeaways for us as practitioners.
So some things that I think really kind of stood out for me.
Our first presenter that we got to see was a representative from ufly, which is a big deal.
It's a big deal program.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: University Florida Literacy Something Institute, I believe.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Institute, yes.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: And it's a really good thing to look up because it's got lots of.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Resources on there and lots and lots of free resources, which is great.
And they do make their website very user friendly. I have directed parents to that website many, many times and they do find it easy to use and easy to understand. You do not have to be an advanced parent practitioner to be able to access the resources that they provide. So it's a great program. It's in a lot, a lot, a lot of schools.
I think a lot of things that I took away from this presenter were just a lot of reinforcing of things I already do.
So it was kind of one of those made me feel good as a practitioner.
Presentations that, oh yeah, these are things that I really believe in strongly. And now here you are with all this evidence that what I am doing actually does work.
So I was appreciating that one of the things that this presenter in particular was talking about was having kids apply the knowledge of their grapheme and phoneme correspondence as soon as they possibly can.
So even if they only have two relationships, like if they understand A says A like Apple and they understand T, you know, T says T, they can be applying that to words in real time. Right. They can now decode at and they can expand their knowledge from there.
Again, that's something I've always really incorporated into my practice.
But it felt good to have that reinforcement of actually. Yes, that is what is supposed to be happening.
Because One of the things that always bugs me about, like, the reading wars, right. Where there's this phonics camp and then there's this, you know, other camp was kind of the attack of phonics.
The kids aren't making meaning from those skills.
And that is a definite myth.
You know, phonics instruction does not interfere with kids making meaning from words unless you're waiting way too long. Like, if you are making them wait to incorporate meaning work until they have all their letters and sounds, that's. That is way too late.
You have now missed the boat and missed all these opportunities for kids to read and write meaningful words.
So that was one thing that I kind of took away from that.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then the reinforcement of automaticity and how important it is to teach to that.
I think we do that every day.
But it was really nice to hear that.
Yeah. That is what we need to be doing.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: It was like, oh, okay. That feels good.
Sometimes just, I think no matter what line of work you are. Right.
Sometimes what you do day in and day out can kind of feel a little bit like a grind. And you're kind of like, am I doing the right things?
And it was just really reinforcing to be like, no, I am doing the right things.
You know, I think another thing that really stuck out to me was incorporating so many opportunities for response. Right.
In math.
Right. We do very discreet, explicit instruction. Right. In almost anything. We give them very concrete things to do, and we make them do it over and over and over and over again. But all of a sudden, when it comes to reading, that gets this bad name, and we call it, like, drill and kill.
Like, all we're doing is being explicit and systematic.
So actually, it is. Again, it's the right thing to do.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Right.
I also liked that reminder to incorporate different fonts.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Because, you know, our students get really good at what our cards look like.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And then they look at something else, and maybe the font is different and maybe the T looks with a hook. Well, it's still a T, but to them, if they've never seen it before, they might not associate it with the T. Yeah, right.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Yep.
You know, and like, A's especially.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. A's can be very different.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Very different.
And, yeah, it's really. It's important to incorporate multiple fonts into the work we do.
You know, I did appreciate, too, the emphasis on letter formation and how really important letter formation is.
You know, listeners will know that it's something that we are passionate about.
It's really important to teach that handwriting for so many reasons.
It's not just the legibility of the handwriting. It's the fine motor skills, it's the directionality.
It's understanding that we do read.
And right, from left to right, we go from the top of the page to the bottom of the page. There is a system in place.
I liked how much they were talking about the. Probably the worst thing you could do is have a student just sit and work on letter formation independently without someone checking their work.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Because they're going to be doing it the wrong way.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: They're going to be doing it the wrong way. Right. And it's like just the old practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent.
So the more we're allowing those students who are not forming those letters correctly, the more we're allowing that without correction, the worse off those kids are going to be in the long run because they're not going to be fluid and automatic. They're not going to be able to increase their stamina.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Right.
And when they get older, note taking is going to be really difficult.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: It's going to be really difficult.
I see it every day. Right. I see the consequence of this daily.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: You know, and just kind of that idea too, of like independent worksheets, which have always bugged me.
They do not teach phonics.
You can't sit and learn phonics from an individual worksheet with no teacher interaction or no, you know, instructional assistant overseeing them.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Those are. That's not good phonics practice. There's a lot of other things kids could. Could be doing independently, but those are garbage. Throw them away unless you're doing them with the kids.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: This was pretty interesting when they were talking about the most skilled person should be providing the intervention.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Yes, Yes.
I felt really validated in that moment too.
You know, when you have a classroom, it is often they will send the instructional assistant to be with, like, the small, most intense group of students who need the most help. And that person likely is the least skilled in structured literacy. That person has likely not had as much training as the classroom teacher and. Or the reading specialist.
What you could do is flip it on its head. That instructional assistant could be responsible for the bigger group or the kids that are trucking along. They're getting what they need to be getting.
They're your high flyers. They're doing what they're supposed to do.
You could have your instructional assistant be in charge of their instruction. And then the more skilled individuals are with the kids that need the most help because they have the most knowledge and skill to do that. It makes all the sense, but it isn't what's happening, by and large. Correct.
It felt good too, because that really ties into here at dac, we have a partnership with some schools where we actually go in, our practitioners go in and provide one on one instruction to the tier three level. And as part of that, we're also working with those classroom teachers and working with individuals at those other tiers to share our knowledge.
It helps open up those conversations.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
Also, routine is a very important and. And not to change programs midstream, right?
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: So like, if you're following a scope and sequence, you're not going to jump scope and sequence to a different thing in the middle because you're gonna miss something or lose something.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: And it's not beneficial at all.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. Probably One of the biggest pain points of the question I get asked a lot by parents is, you know, my kid is in X intervention, you know, insert name of small group intervention here at school.
Is that different than what you provide? And my answer is always yes.
What would be better given the fact that your kid is here? What would be better is if I provided my scope in sequence and I offered whoever is working with them at school or at home more practice on the things I am already working on with that student. Because I'm going to explain things one way, another person is going to explain things a little bit differently.
And those two things can be in conflict with each other. Even if we are speaking the same language.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: So even if we are speaking the same language, let's say everyone's using structured literacy, everyone's on the same page with that.
If we're using slightly different language, that can be really confusing to a kid.
So again, it felt validating and reinforcing to what my advice is to parents in that situation, which is always.
It would be much better if that wasn't happening, I think. Another.
Another thing that I've actually slightly changed my tune on. And I think this maybe comes from. I have a lot of experience with older kids.
That really was my primary background.
And I find myself more and more leaning into. So the idea of a phoneme, right. So a phoneme is the smallest unit of meaning. It's the unit of sound.
Right. So but it is also a vocal gesture, Right. It's also that kinesthetic piece. This is the physical movement we make when we're making a particular sound. And how when we teach those phonemes, we have to teach that vocal gesture at the same Time.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Correct.
There's lots of pictures of this. Of a big mouth.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: And where all the letters are in the mouth. It's kind of a cool picture.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: It is a cool picture. And it is.
It's really important to incorporate when we're teaching that we're teaching it at the same time and not really missing that step. I think sometimes I think we're good at doing this with little kids.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: When we are first teaching them how to make this sound, we're good at teaching that part. But with our older students, I think I'll speak for myself. I'll raise my hand here. I am less good at explaining that to an older student.
Sometimes I'm like, oh, they're going to really not appreciate me teaching them this.
But actually, it is really important.
And there are ways to make that not babyish. Right, right.
You know, and the idea of teaching them that. The grapheme, the physic, the picture of that sound, and the number of phonemes, that's always going to match. But letters are almost random because we only have 26 letters in our Alphabet. Right, right. We have 40 or more phonemes, but we have. So, like, the number of, like, the letter pictures and the phonemes are going to match, but the letters. That's almost random.
Yeah. So it's hard because it is hard.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
So I think this next piece is something we really do well with our center because we really teach this to the team members that are new to us.
Teaching decoding, which is reading and encoding, which is spelling together, is what leads to the orthographic mapping, which gets those words in that brain, so they become automatic.
We do that in every lesson here.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: So it was really interesting to hear some of the discussion on that because we already subscribed to that.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. I've been on that train a long time now, and I'm really happy it is even more talked about. I think spelling is good. Kind of getting its day right now, and I'm really appreciating that because it is really, really important.
Reciprocal processes. Right. We had the one you can't.
The more we're emphasizing the encoding piece, the better our decoding will be, period, you know, and kind of getting deep, too, in that method of decoding.
Kind of a call back to the concept of the week this week, that continuous blending.
We want our students to be able to do that as quickly as they can.
Once we do under. Once they do have, you know, these are separate sounds. We want them to be able to blend them continuously so that we are right away working on even that word level fluency.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: That will lead to sentence level fluency and passage level fluency.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: You know, you can't skip that part. It's important, you know, teaching them the onset rhyme kind of decoding too. Right. The onset is the part of the word that does not include the vowel and the rhyme is the part that does. So like in the word nat. Right. M is the. On site at is the rhyme.
We want them to be able to separate that out, you know, and if it's. If your word starts with a stop sound, being able to kind of put that stop sound and that the vowel together is a good way to get that student over that continuous blending hump, which can be really hard for a lot of our students, those who struggle with that working memory piece.
It's really hard. And we can't move on to sentence and passage level work with fluency until they have that down.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: And also, the concept of using decodable text is only decodable if you've already taught what's in the scope and sequence for decodable text.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Yes.
Yeah. I think I've been a little frustrated lately with just the amount of. I am glad to see that decodable text is having its day.
Yay.
That's great.
However, if you're using a decodable series and it has nothing to do with your scope and sequence, it's no longer decodable.
And every series is going to have its own scope and sequence. So you can't just go pick something off the shelf without thinking about how it aligns to what it is you're doing.
And they also reinforced how it is really important that we're practicing with decodable text.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: However, we want to move to not decodable text kind of as soon as we can. We want both.
It is important to work on decodable things.
It is also just as important to move away from that when we can so that we can practice. You know, one of my beefs. And some decodables are better than others for sure.
And it's not their fault at the early stages. But decodable text in the early stages, they do not lend themselves to fluency work. You. You can't do good phrasing and fluency work with decodable text at the early stages because they're worded weird.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: And they are really repetitive and staccato because we're trying to work on those sound skills and we have to. That is an important step. But they also have to hear even if it's not the student Reading, not decodable text. They have to be exposed to it. Lots and lots and lots and lots of reading out loud was reinforced, which I was happy about.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: I agree.
And then obviously, comprehension, right.
Being able to use deductive reasoning when you're reading so that you can build your comprehension, your understanding of the reading is. Right. That's why we want to learn to read.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Exactly.
And being able to.
I thought it was interesting. The presenter that was speaking here, his name is Hugh Katz. He is from. From the University of Florida.
He's been in this space a really, really long time.
He's a speech and language pathologist by background.
But his kind of whole thing is the way we talk about comprehension is that it's like the purpose of reading. But actually most of the time what we're reading for is to just learn and glean information, not necessarily comprehension, which is an extra step.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: So I thought that was actually kind of an interesting take because that's kind of what I usually say to kids as well. The point of reading is comprehension, but actually not always.
Often the point of reading this is to learn it. Comprehension is an additional step where we have to access the learning many, many, many times to make meaning of it.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: I liked how much emphasis he was putting on kind of not just science of reading, but science of learning.
He was really talking a lot about building schemas in our brain, which is like our brain's ability to categorize information.
So if I know something about, you know, an animal, I can put that in my bank of knowledge on animals, and I can also put it in my bank of knowledge on a specific area of the world. Right. So being able to kind of put things in multiple buckets in our brain is really important. And deep reading for learning is one of the ways that. That we can do that.
I think my kind of last big takeaway from that particular presentation was retrieving information is one of the best ways to strengthen knowledge.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: The way our brain works is that we take in a lot of things and then actually being able to recall and bring it back up is a way where we make that kind of groove better.
One of the analogies I think that helps my brain think about this is kind of.
When I was growing up, one of my best friends lived in my.
Like, our yards butted up to each other. So, like, my backyard and his backyard were like, butted up next to each other and we went to each other's houses a lot. Right. So there was like a track of grass that was like, very well Worn. We knew that that was where we were going. And our brains are kind of like that. We take in lots and lots of information and then the more we're using it, that is how we strengthen.
So it. Right, It. Exactly. It's tracks. Right.
That's, that's why they say that. Right?
[00:27:50] Speaker B: It's tracks.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: But it's, it's important because being able to pull information up, like quizzing a student, even when we think it's just surface knowledge, is actually really important for their brain.
We think of those questions sometimes as like less important, but they're not.
Being able to just straight recall information is how we strengthen that pathway. We are not going to be able to get to deeper levels if we can't get to that level, which includes just letters and sounds. If we're not forcing that student to bring it up many, many times, it's not going to get grooved. Right. Like it's not going to be a deep cut pathway.
And I think it was just a good reinforcement. Right. Having just access to the information, like having Google around, doesn't mean that you actually have the knowledge.
Just means you can pull up on Google. Which, don't get me wrong, I do it too.
But it has, it kind of has the tendency to over overestimate what our brains are actually capable of knowing. Which I thought was really interesting.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, Maggie, what's happening beyond dyslexia?
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
Okay, so what is happening for us outside of dyslexia?
Some cool news for dac.
Those of you who are listening, right. And kind of following along with us for a while, you will recall that we have started a scholarship program for students that cannot afford our services.
And we had our first fundraiser this month and it was really exciting. It was a golf outing at one of our local public golf courses, Western Lakes in Poja. Thank you so much for hosting us.
If you're listening, thank you so much.
But it was, it was great. It was beautiful weather.
We had a lot of people who were not actually part of our group stop by and talk to us.
I thought that was really great. I think above and beyond raising some funds, which we did. Yay.
Above and beyond raising some funds, I think we got to talk to a lot of people in the community and get our name out there in a really meaningful away. So that felt pretty good.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: What about you?
[00:30:24] Speaker A: What's going on with you?
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah, let's see. Outside dyslexia, I mean, I think you took the one piece of it.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: But.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: The other piece is, you know, it's October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, and we always have things out for Dyslexia Awareness Month. And if you follow us on Facebook, you'll be seeing lots of posts about dyslexia, some facts. So definitely follow us on Facebook if you want to. Kind of check that out this month, because obviously, that's what the month is for, right? To bring awareness to dyslexia.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. And, you know, listen to our episode about Dyslexia Awareness Month, because that one was of fun to do.
Well, thank you, everybody. Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or you would like us to discuss a topic. If you do like our show, be sure to follow us and rate our show on your favorite podcast player. This is how we reach more listeners and we get to help our families. Thank you, everybody.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Thank you.
