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Join Kathy Binner of the Freestyle Living podcast as she interviews Cheri. They discuss Cheri's journey and work in understanding dysgraphia and other learning challenges. As a pioneer in the field of dysgraphia, Cheri explains the neuroscience behind learning disabilities and shares practical strategies for educators and parents. From the creation of her renowned Handwriting Brain Body DisConnect to her IMPACT framework, Cheri’s passion for revolutionizing learning shines through. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of dysgraphia and discover interventions that support all types of learners.
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DisabilityLabs.com sponsors this video podcast. We are committed to IMPACT the journey of 200K teachers (3M students) by 2030 so they can reignite their passion for teaching.
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RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE
Dysgraphia Checklist https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/dysgraphia-checklist
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TIMESTAMPS
3:05 Free dysgraphia checklist
5:00 Explanation of Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, and Dyscalculia
9:26 Cheri’s journey to becoming an author and dysgraphia advocate
15:00 Intervention Types of dysgraphia
19:28 Challenges of working memory and strategies for spelling and writing
25:00 Cheri’s approach to sensory processing in writing
36:19 Importance of positive psychology in lesson planning
42:06 Engaging bilateral integration activities for learning
50:33 Subscription box details for teachers and parents
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BOOKS
Handwriting Brain Body DISconnect Digital Version: https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/hwbbd
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Handwriting-Br...
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SUBSCRIBE and LISTEN to the Audio version of the podcast here on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
AMAZON MUSIC/AUDIBLE: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/894b3ab2-3b1c-4a97-af60-b1f2589d271f
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWritingGlitchPodcast
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MISSION
Dotterer Educational Consulting, a Therapy Services, LLC company: To provide professional development to improve writing skills through efficient lesson planning for regular education classrooms.
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WORK WITH US:
Self Study Dysgraphia Course: Dotterer Dysgraphia Method: https://disabilitylabs.com/courses/dotterer-dysgraphia-method
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Other ways to connect with Cheri
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheridott...
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QUESTION
What is your biggest struggle in your classroom right now? Include grade level and your role. Share in the comments or email us at:
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HASHTAGS
#thewritingglitch #cheri #dysgraphia #dyslexia #SpecificLearningDisability #successdespitedisability #tier1interventions #DysgraphiaAwareness #UnderstandingDysgraphia #LearningDisabilities #SupportingNeurodiversity #InclusiveEducation #IMPACTLearning
- (03:05) - Free dysgraphia checklist
- (05:00) - Explanation of Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, and Dyscalculia
- (09:26) - Cheri’s journey to becoming an author and dysgraphia advocate
- (15:00) - Intervention Types of dysgraphia
- (19:28) - Challenges of working memory and strategies for spelling and writing
- (25:00) - Cheri’s approach to sensory processing in writing
- (36:19) - Importance of positive psychology in lesson planning
- (42:06) - Engaging bilateral integration activities for learning
- (50:33) - Subscription box details for teachers and parents
Creators & Guests
Host
Cheri Dotterer
Cheri is an international speaker, author, and consultant who helps teachers, therapists, and parents build clarity, community, and competency around the barriers to writing success. Her book, Handwriting Brain-Body DisConnect, has remained in the Top 100 on Amazon since publication in Handwriting Reference and Learning Disabilities. It was also a Top 10 Finalist in the Author Academy Awards in 2019. In addition, she was nominated the USA 2022 Dysgraphia Expert of the Year by Global Health and Pharma Magazine. She has worked in many concentration areas as an occupational therapist for 30 years. However, it wasn't until starting her private practice that she found her passion for helping others understand this disability. In addition, she has been an adjunct instructor at several universities. She lives with her husband of 32 years. They have two adult children. Her heroes are Evelyn Yerger, her grandmother, and Esther, Queen of Susa. Together, we can grow 110 million leaders and hack dysgraphia by building skills, applying knowledge, and transcending futures.
What is The Writing Glitch: Hack Dysgraphia No Pencil Required?
The Writing Glitch is brought to you by Dotterer Educational Consulting. Our Founder and Owner, Cheri Dotterer, is the host.
Build courage, compassion, and collaboration to help students thrive and grow leaders that transcend a lifetime, regardless of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, using sensory-motor processing and neuroscience-based instructional interventions. No Pencil Required!
We interview teachers, therapists, and parents about how they have seen a transformation in children having these disabilities and co-morbid conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). They share how they help students grow and prosper.
We believe we can grow 110 million leaders together by building skills, applying knowledge, and transcending futures. Join us to hack dysgraphia. No Pencil Required.
Each episode contains one intervention to help you support students with writing challenges the next day you are in your classroom. These interventions are explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory. They are designed to support ALL students through targeted, daily visual-perceptual, visual-motor, and memory interventions. These interventions benefit all students and harm none.
All students have access to writing regardless of their status in the classroom. The interventions were created to take up to 30 seconds to 2 minutes of your classroom time. Strategic lesson planning increases classroom engagement.
All interventions can be adapted for students with physical disabilities because they support the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and well-being of all students. In addition, these interventions impact all subject matter classrooms. Whether you are teaching English language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, music, or art, these interventions will benefit your classroom atmosphere across ALL grade levels.
You have put your blood, sweat, and tears into investing in your education and children. Don’t let a misunderstanding about this disability stop you from providing best practices.
In case you don’t know me. I’m Cheri Dotterer, 2022 Dysgraphia Expert of the Year. This honor was bestowed on me by Global Health and Pharma Magazine. In 2023, they awarded my company the Best Dysgraphia Professional Development Program.
It took challenges at home and on the job to wake me up to the impact dysgraphia has on all students. Struggling my entire life with communication issues, I was mistaken that only students with learning disabilities could have dysgraphia.
My thoughts shifted when my gifted daughter asked for help with spelling. My son struggles with handwriting. Then, a parent asked me why her child could read and have trouble writing. Finding answers became the drive that gets me out of bed in the morning.
It’s a big shock when you discover how pervasive writing difficulties are and how little people know about how to help–even OTs. I used to think I was the only OT who struggled with understanding dysgraphia. It turns out many have questions.
Occupational, physical, and speech therapists are not trained to teach. Teachers are.
Occupational, speech, and physical therapists are trained in neuroscience. Teachers are not.
Let this podcast be your first line of defense to help your students transcend their learning disabilities. Show your school district how much you genuinely care about all of your students by sharing it with your colleagues.
After each episode, I challenge you to share your key takeaway from the podcast in our FREE yet private community. Share your student wins. Get support on the challenges.
Join The Writing Glitch Community. https://thewritingglitch.com/
Connect with Cheri at www.cheridotterer.com or info@thewritingglitch.com
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hey, everyone. You are here with Cheri Dotterer, host of the writing glitch. Join her as she is interviewed by Kathy binner of the freestyle living podcast.
Unknown Speaker 0:10
Welcome to fit as a fiddle. Plus, today we have Cheri Dotterer. Now, Cheri and I go way back. Gosh, Cheri, how many years ago have we met than an 18 oh, you pulled that right out of the top of your head. How did you remember that? Because it was a year before my book came out. Okay, I do remember the whole book thing. I love it, and we're going to talk about your book today. Now, Cheri has battled writing challenges firsthand. She's emerged as a global authority, pioneering innovative neuroscience back strategies to overcome dysgraphia. And I know all of you were wondering what that is. She's overcome dysgraphia seamlessly within classroom settings. She is the author of handwriting, brain, body disconnect, and that was the book that she was talking about. And we met the year before that came out. Yep, there it is. I have a beautiful bookcase in my home, and her book is prominently displayed right there in my bookcase. We run a guest house, and some of my guests are also they pick that up and go, What is this? Because it's something they've not seen that word before, and we're going to talk about that. She is a contributor to several works. She's set to release math and is it DYS connected? Is that an acronym the DYS she's co authored that with Jonna Lee, and she owns daughter educational consulting and the writing glitch podcast. She lives with her husband and son, and she experiences her passion to revolutionize learning, and they also have a daughter in grad school. Wow, you're busy. I get it very so I've added one more thing onto that list of busyness. Is I with Jonna Lee. We also are publishing tier one interventions podcast. I did see that. Yes, wow. Anyway, if you're on social media, you'll find her all over Facebook and all over Instagram. I see her every time I jump on there. I scroll past and it's either her or Jonily, and I see them all the time on there. So yes, your word is spreading, and am I right? You just got back from Texas. Tell us about your Texas trip. Yes, I spoke at the Council for educators of students with disabilities. It is in Austin, Texas area, and it was the 24th conference.
Unknown Speaker 2:34
It is sponsored by the language therapists
Unknown Speaker 2:41
in that area,
Unknown Speaker 2:45
and they've brought me in and had me do two keynote speeches on dysgraphia. One was, what is it? How do you assess it? And then what was one? The second one was, what are some interventions? And the first thing I did when I
Unknown Speaker 3:05
got there, even before I even started the presentations, I gave them a QR code to download a free checklist about what dysgraphia is, and I'm going to offer that to your
Unknown Speaker 3:19
audience as well. It's a free checklist that tells some strengths and weaknesses about dysgraphia, and we'll go into a little bit more detail about what that is here in a little bit. But Don't let me forget to share that link with you Kathy, but it's definitely but it's at Disability labs.com
Unknown Speaker 3:39
and I don't think that you can find it on your own. I have it behind the password wall, so you have to have, you have to have a direct connection with me somehow or another two would be able to get that link. But I have about one person a day, two people a day, three people a day, tapping into that, because I'm sharing that on both podcasts, and I'm also sharing some other things about math and the impact that writing has on math disability. So we're going to get into that. But when I record, I'm recording this, and so when I upload the replay, I'll make sure that I include that somewhere in the replay. Is it a QR code? Do you have a link as well, possibly, because I'm not sure that my that the QR code will copy into the type. We'll get you the link, but I know the link will So anyhow, we'll get that for all the listeners. Now, Cheri, the big question, what is dysgraphia? I know everybody asked you that. Yes, everybody asked me that. So we're going to go and do a little bit morphology here. So dyslexia is something that everybody has heard of. One of the parts of dyslexia is breaking the words down into parts. Isn't that what we do in the medical world? We break things down into parts, and we come up with the the Latin found.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Foundation. A lot of words in the English language have their foundation in either Latin or Greek.
Unknown Speaker 5:09
It just so happens that dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalcia have their foundation in Greek, D, y, s, you had asked me if that's an acronym, no, that's just this little beginning of Axia, dysgraphia. Dyscalcia means
Unknown Speaker 5:28
disability, okay, so disconnected, I get it. Okay. I means condition so the IA is condition of So, okay, all of those words have those on the the insides. So then you only need that morphology of what's in the middle. Okay, what's the middle of Lexi? Dyslexia. Lexi means to read
Unknown Speaker 5:57
graph. Dysgraphia means to write dyscalcia. Guess mathematics, yes, hence the how we get the name for calculus. Okay, well, I'm not sure what the ending of the calculus stands for. That's the high level math. So
Unknown Speaker 6:20
how I got started here was
Unknown Speaker 6:24
I could tell when I was evaluating the students that I was seeing that they were having struggles. And there was a lot of questions coming to me from teachers, does he have dyscalculia? Does he have dyscalculia? And I'm like,
Unknown Speaker 6:41
You do NiP. I am not sure what the designation is for that. I will tell you this,
Unknown Speaker 6:48
the designation and really the the the medical, clinical diagnosis of dysgraphia,
Unknown Speaker 6:56
one of the things I've confirmed at this event that I was at this weekend, because I had spent about a half an hour, 45 minutes talking to a psychologist. There is no test for dysgraphia. It is all really appearance based and struggle. So really it's illegible handwriting if you want to get it to its simplest terms. But there's more to the story. Because if you look in the Bible of mental health disorders, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders, and we are now on the fifth edition,
Unknown Speaker 7:40
okay, say that one fast. I had to slow down and make sure I did that, but that is where they get all the diagnostic criteria for all the mental health disorders that there are in the world.
Unknown Speaker 7:52
Okay, listeners, can you tell that Cheri is a teacher. I've learned so much in what five minutes already? Wow. But in that book, it says that dysgraphia is a disability that is continuously difficult to overcome. Okay, so there might be moments in your life where I'm having a dysgraphia day, but when it becomes to the point where it's almost like this pathological difficulty with writing. That's when it really becomes the disability. Okay, okay, so it's a disability in punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, sentence structure and paragraph organization. Now, what did I tell you a little bit ago is simply, it's like illegible handwriting. Where was that word in that definition, in the it wasn't there. So I went back and I tried to find out more and more about this disability, and the more I found, the more the stack of papers was getting it thicker and thicker. I'm going, Okay, I need to share this with the worlds, because
Unknown Speaker 9:06
not even the my fellow occupational therapist had a clue what it was really
Unknown Speaker 9:15
now, when was it that you started getting interested in it? How long ago was it that you went through this that you said, Wow, this needs to be in a more usable
Unknown Speaker 9:26
format so that people can understand what this is. How long ago was that? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 9:33
I decided I wanted to write a book. I did not know what the book was going to be on. At first, I had a couple different directions that I could have gone.
Unknown Speaker 9:46
And somehow sometimes I feel like I went the easy route,
Unknown Speaker 9:52
because I wrote something that was an offshoot of what I was already doing. Okay. Okay, do.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
So I have some other things and thoughts of things that that I have thought about in the past and really tried to
Unknown Speaker 10:10
align them over time here. And sometimes things align, sometimes they don't, but that's beside the point. So I chose to write about this topic that I felt was going to be an easy put it together into a book, okay? Because researching it already, because I'd be been researching it already, okay, part of that process, when I made that decision that, uh, I wanted my name on a book, was around 2016
Unknown Speaker 10:42
Okay, forward that collection of material time to 2018
Unknown Speaker 10:52
when school got over.
Unknown Speaker 10:56
Our mutual business coach
Unknown Speaker 10:59
Oh held meetings one Wednesday. I think it was a Wednesday. It was a Tuesday of the month. Once a month, he would help. Held these meetings at a church near you.
Unknown Speaker 11:16
He started off on Friday mornings, and then he switched it to Wednesday mornings because he got this free space inside a church. They donated the space for his meetups and and I drove to a few but they were still about an hour away from me.
Unknown Speaker 11:32
And I had already been planning on coming to the 2018
Unknown Speaker 11:36
conference that he has in October, but I wanted to meet him ahead of time and through the post on Facebook,
Unknown Speaker 11:48
I had met you, and I had already booked to be in your to stay at your facility, at our guest house, your guest house For the conference, and I was like, this is an opportunity to get to meet the people I'm going to stay with, also I'm going to at their home.
Unknown Speaker 12:11
And I arrived on a Tuesday night.
Unknown Speaker 12:15
You went met me
Unknown Speaker 12:19
for Sam's Club and left me there, and I'm going, where am I going to find something to eat? And I couldn't figure out where, in this little town I was even going to be able to find something to eat. For anybody who knows where Kathy lives, there isn't much. There isn't a McDonald's, let's just put it that way. They're outside of the area. But I did have a car so I could have driven, but I had already been on the out the road eight hours.
Unknown Speaker 12:45
And if I remember right, that night, it was questionable rain, so I didn't want to go too far, long and short of it is I got food to go and I came back, and I was eating upstairs when you returned, and I came downstairs, and then we had a little bit of a conversation, and then I went on my way the next morning, I got up, went to Carrie's event, went to where we were going to have the conference. So I had a visual of where the conference was going to be, found a place in the parking lot, and I fell asleep for an hour, then drove home. So I started driving home around one o'clock in the afternoon, and I got home at 10 o'clock Wednesday night. So that was like a 248 hour trip. That was my first 48 hour trip. I've done one since then. Actually, that one actually was a little bit longer, but I'd done that kind of thing, and I'm starting to do those kind of trips more often.
Unknown Speaker 13:50
But one of the things that happened at the 2018
Unknown Speaker 13:53
is I met Joni, and she and I have paired up to learn more about
Unknown Speaker 14:00
how do can I help kids with math? And she needed was learning more about the cognitive sciences, and we and she actually knew more about some of the positive psychology, which is some of the things that I've learned are some of the ways to help kids overcome the barriers to writing, and I see that we have another person online. Hello, Chris. How are you welcome? Chris, you can unmute and say hi if you'd like. I didn't want to interrupt Cheri, but yes, Chris, welcome. How you doing? Chris? Desal here, nice to meet you all. Yes, thank you for joining us today. We're talking with Cheri Dotterer, and she is the lesson plan whisperer. I saw that somewhere on her website, and I love that she's talking about a topic called dysgraphia. So my next question Cheri is, are there different types of.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Of dysgraphia. If you remember what I said, where there's not really much of testing, that is for it,
Unknown Speaker 15:07
when I went looking the International Dyslexia Association had three types. One was visual, spatial, one was motor, and one was dyslexic. Dysgraphia.
Unknown Speaker 15:22
It didn't make any sense to me, so I created my own based on intervention planning. So as I'm intervention planning, I am looking at
Unknown Speaker 15:36
what is the big driver behind what's happening with that child and that barrier,
Unknown Speaker 15:43
what I what I've discovered as I'm looking at all the students over time here is
Unknown Speaker 15:51
if there is a comorbid which a lot of times there are, if there is a comorbid diagnosis,
Unknown Speaker 16:02
a lot of those kids demonstrate the illegible handwriting because they have some motor issues. Those co morbidities are typically
Unknown Speaker 16:14
ADHD so Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder,
Unknown Speaker 16:23
yes, dyslexia and dyscalculia can go with them as well. But the thing that totally surprised me is gifted kids. You wouldn't even think this gifted kids. 6.4%
Unknown Speaker 16:37
of the gifted kids have a disability in writing, and it's because of two different theirs is because of one of her but there's two areas when we take and we overcome like the disabilities with the other come over diagnoses. There's two more areas that really impact these kids, and that one is images, visual, spatial. They don't know how to interpret images. So for example, if I were to put up a diagonal line in front of them, there's nothing else on the paper, just on the board, a diagonal line. And I asked the kids, tell me about
Unknown Speaker 17:24
what in front of you.
Unknown Speaker 17:27
They don't know how to describe a diagonal line.
Unknown Speaker 17:31
They they don't understand what that visual is. They don't understand parentheses,
Unknown Speaker 17:39
whether it's in math or in literacy, they don't understand what these are for.
Unknown Speaker 17:46
So they don't understand a lot of visuals. They get a there's a lot of mix up with letters like BBP and Q to write them. So we do little activities to help them, and I fall back then on motor activities to help them. And we do an activity with our arms and our feet for BDP Q. I will put up on the board BDP Q. I put up four or five lines, and I mix them up. So if the first line is BDP Q, they're going to put up their left hand for B, because if you write it, you're going to start on the left, and then you make this circle. So B D, you have the circle on the left side and the line on the right. So to reinforce where the line goes between B and D, we put that arm up as they're coming to that letter, and then with P, we use the left leg, and Q, we use the right leg. So I start it, and I might sound horrible on the recording, but I'm going to click my fingers. We start with A, B,
Unknown Speaker 18:56
okay, so each Friday, get them on the beat to answer the B, Q, okay. And all these kids with things like ADHD, ASD and all those motor errors that they also have, they can't stay on the beat. The other thing that happens with these kids is working memory, so being able to hold something here in their memory and be able to work with it and then use it
Unknown Speaker 19:28
they and depending on where they fall in, this checklist that I have created for people, some kids can Recall worldly everything they go to write it on paper, and it's like everything just goes blank. But you gotta remember neurologically
Unknown Speaker 19:51
reading, bringing something into your eyes and interpreting it in your brain.
Unknown Speaker 19:58
That is the reading part. That's.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Sensory that's bringing it in once you manipulate it around up there and you try to pull it back out orally, is one neurological track. Writing is a third neurological track. So some Mo, many of them have great oral narration.
Unknown Speaker 20:20
They just fall apart because half the thing is they can't remember
Unknown Speaker 20:28
how to write the letters.
Unknown Speaker 20:31
And it can't they have difficulty with spelling. It can't remember how to put let word letters together to make words properly.
Unknown Speaker 20:42
One thing that one of my students, and my adult students, my ot students, did with a kiddo that was struggling with spelling
Unknown Speaker 20:52
was she made a multiple choice test, and she gave her work four different variations on the word say, receive, because you got the I before E and except after C. That's a very difficult one, because they have to think through as they're writing the word, okay, it's is. And
Unknown Speaker 21:16
she got 100%
Unknown Speaker 21:19
if she didn't have to think about how to write it. If she could see it, she could write it. So there are some kids whose visual spatial is very well intact. They don't have that working memory to put it down on paper. We have these other kids who have the motor issues. They go crazy. So what I kept finding was there are different activities, different interventions for a visual, spatial kid, a motor kid, a memory kid, but I was determined to be able to help those kids with spelling, sentence structure and paragraph organization as well. So that I have three additional intervention areas, they those areas really translate more to the dyslexia therapist, the speech therapist, the reading specialist, but if I have a student, I will bring those interventions in to my sessions
Unknown Speaker 22:23
at times, depending on the situation.
Unknown Speaker 22:27
Cheri, I've watched you put this whole business together, and it's just amazing on how it has grown into what it is today, and with all of your knowledge and background, my guess is that you're getting even more and more attraction from teachers and parents, because there's no one else out there with this information. No, I actually have a client from Bahrain. He said, I I've been looking around the world trying to find somebody to help me with this around the pool. Can you, let's say that I have a child that's struggling? Can you evaluate my child or my student who may have dysgraphia
Unknown Speaker 23:05
up until the end of June? I could why? Why up until the end of June? Because, as of July, 1 I am retired as a direct therapist, and the week I had to retire is my shoulders just can't take working with the kids anymore. There are things that we do that entail hands on with the kids, and the pain from the rotator cuffs was just getting to really overwhelming. And so I ended up getting myself some physical therapy and that for an occupational therapist is a big deal. Yes, we try. I tried, but one of the things I needed was some of the manipulative, manipulating that she's able to do on my back that I was unable to do myself. And she says teaching me some things, I really appreciate everything that you're doing and how you're doing it. I love that. If I were the parent or a teacher that had not really explored your topic at all, what are some of the symptoms that I might be noticing that would give me a little pause to say, I need to figure out what's going on with this child. Putting it down on paper. What does it look like? Can you read it? If you can't read it, I would find an occupational therapist to screen first. There are, there is a free screening that you can download as a homeschool parent or an occupational therapist or or a classroom teacher
Unknown Speaker 24:49
from learning without tears.com. So l, l, w, T, E, A, R, S, but learning without tears is the name in the company. They have a hand, right?
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Reading screener. Okay, I sent out theirs is they don't. You don't need full memory of what letters are going to have to be, right? You're writing. They have a picture of an apple, and they have you write the A, they might have the b there, and then you have to write the other B, so they're looking at
Unknown Speaker 25:25
those letters, and we're looking at legibility. So our screen is looking at legibility. When an OT goes in and dives into the evaluation, we are seeing much more than what is on the surface and what you might see as a parent, we are seeing difficulty with the three additional senses. Oh, really, yes, so I bet you thought you had five senses as well such a world school, right? There's specific nerves inside your body that tell give information to your brain. One of them is proprioception. The second one is vestibular and the third one is interoception. Let's go back, because I'm sure you're going to ask me what they are. Yeah, what are those? Basically, proprioception is
Unknown Speaker 26:29
go as simple as this joint. It could be the knee, it could be the shoulder. There's nerve endings inside every joint that send information to the brain.
Unknown Speaker 26:42
There's very similar, like, they're connected into the muscles around that digit, that joint that are sending messages to the brain. The brain interprets those messages and sends information back. How much pressure do you need? So let's go with running, because the knee joints much easier to comprehend than a little finger joint. Okay? When you're running, you're having that push and pull on the knee. You're going a little bit side to side, depending on if it's rocky road or not, okay, so you gotta keep yourself standing up, right? All those messages about proprioception, or keeping that knee, keeping yourself solid to the ground. Okay, so all those messages. Now, the motor part is when the information comes back, okay, but the sensory stuff is the messages that are going to the brain, okay. Number two is a little bit more complicated. But have you ever heard of vertigo? Yes, oh, yes. And so Vertigo is when, like, you're all dizzy and you can't stand up and you're walking around over here, it's because your vestibular system isn't doing its job. The purpose of the vestibular system, simply, is to keep your head vertical to the earth. Okay, so Vertigo is one of those disabilities that goes along with the vestibular system, and not it. There's a lot of complicated details that go with it. But if you want to make it simple, it's all it is. It's trying to keep your head perpendicular to the ground. Okay, so on a roller coaster, your head's moving up and down. It's moving too fast. You get off and you're like a little bit ugly, and until you get your head back where it lands. When you're on roller skates, your your head and your legs get have to get used to being back on dry land at okay, when you're swimming,
Unknown Speaker 28:49
the brain has a different sensation because of the water around it, but when you come back up, it's going, Oh, Amen, where's the earth again? So that's the simplest
Unknown Speaker 29:03
part of the vestibular system. When we're looking at
Unknown Speaker 29:09
proprioception and the vestibular system with writing,
Unknown Speaker 29:14
it's how much pressure do they these little joints, your wrist joints, your elbow joints and your shoulder joint. Need to make that letter. Okay, see it all makes sense. Now, when you're copying off the board, you have to look up. You have to look down. Look up, look down. What's happening to your head? It's not perpendicular to the ground, but you have an adjustment and
Unknown Speaker 29:41
your body needs to know how far to move back and forth. Okay with writing challenges
Unknown Speaker 29:50
their sensation of the vestibular system,
Unknown Speaker 29:55
their eyes get confused, because part of the vestibular system is your ears and your eyes.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Eyes work together to keep your neck together. They too easily. They can't find their place on the board because they're their heads kind of bobbling around. It doesn't, may not look it, but that's what's happening inside when they come down, their heads kind of bubbling around. And they can't find their place when they're looking down. And so they have delays in in writing. They write really slow because they can't
Unknown Speaker 30:29
add memory issues to that. And it's K,
Unknown Speaker 30:33
okay, A, A, they have to do like your name, one letter at a time. They can't look at it, group it together and say, Oh, that's Kathy.
Unknown Speaker 30:46
Okay. Now I mentioned a third one
Unknown Speaker 30:50
perception.
Unknown Speaker 30:53
It is just before supper here in the East Coast when we're recording this.
Unknown Speaker 31:01
Can you feel that stomach in here starting to growl a little bit? Oh, yeah. Can you feel your heart when it's pumping real hard or slow down? Can you feel yourself breathing? That's all your interoceptive system. It is taking all those messages that are going on in your torso, especially all your internal organs, sending messages to the brain and the brain sending feedback back down, okay, hence the growling stomach.
Unknown Speaker 31:33
There's a little bit more involved with the intersection,
Unknown Speaker 31:37
but interesting. Okay, one of the things that that one of the extra things that's involved, is that intuition and so anxiety and fear and all of those emotion feeling partners.
Unknown Speaker 32:01
They're all attached to the interoception,
Unknown Speaker 32:05
looking at interception
Unknown Speaker 32:08
and looking at somebody who's having trouble with writing, okay. What happens over time
Unknown Speaker 32:16
is those memories that are getting put up into your brain about, Oh, I gotta write again.
Unknown Speaker 32:24
Okay, so that moment of the day got put into a file I called the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet gets filled up throughout your day. Okay? On the outside of that filing cabinet, on that file for that moment you could have, yes, I'm going to do that again,
Unknown Speaker 32:43
or no way am I ever going to do that again. Okay, Now, granted, we have 4000 feelings. There's a big it's not my like a plain old stoplight. It's much more detailed than that, inside out too. Really, did a nice job of explaining all of that intuitiony kind and that feeling and and knows how those emotions work together, okay, which is in your interoception system,
Unknown Speaker 33:15
it's also body awareness. Kids that don't know where their joints are have difficult time understanding what where their body is. So they're bumping into walls. They're bumping into their neighbor. They can't hold the pencil. We'll see if I can the pencils like going like this all the time, and they can't hold it still. Okay? So all those things are those three systems work together in addition to
Unknown Speaker 33:47
the five that we know of, so even those five that we know of can get in the way of writing. How in the world, as a parent or a teacher, keep, keep on top of all of this, when they've got 30 kids in the classroom, and they see that these kids are struggling. How in the world do they navigate that? That's what I'm here for. It is to help them problem solve that. And we go one kid at a time, and parents are really good.
Unknown Speaker 34:16
If you've got a parent who has been researching sensory processing for a while they know more than the teacher does. Okay, sometimes it's intimidating to the teacher. Is that my buddy, Mark? Hi, Mark, yeah, Mark, just just came home from working all day. And those of you who can't see him,
Unknown Speaker 34:39
she just turned her face, and I could tell that she was talking to somebody. It had to be my buddy, Mark, yep, no. Just came through. So
Unknown Speaker 34:49
what we do, what what I am teaching with, especially through tier one interventions, one of the shifts that I've made, and.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
I am leaving. I actually have another friend who does a lot of
Unknown Speaker 35:05
handwriting adaptations. I'm leaving her take that ball and I'm shifting and I'm doing a different ball at this point. And that is, how can we overcome that negative barrier to get kids to be able to write again and be successful, and I use an acronym when I am teaching called impact. Impact stands for inclusion, metacognition, perseverance, adaptability, confidence and transcendence. And what we're looking at is that positive psychology bringing it in, and how are those words and positive psychology, how can we restructure our lesson planning so that we are accommodating those kids, but not letting them realize it like exercises, so that they don't feel separated out. You're trying to include them. Okay? Yep, that hence the first one. Inclusion, inclusion, yes, okay, metacognition, where,
Unknown Speaker 36:19
by the instructional delivery.
Unknown Speaker 36:23
We create thinking and we don't, and we don't solve the problem for them. We let them solve their own problem. Okay, so go back to the diagonal. Put that up, tell me about
Unknown Speaker 36:37
and we see what they have to say. I put up a vertical line while I was teaching this to a bunch of adults, there was a vertical line on the page. The rest of the page was blank, right? She says, it's a domino. It's it is? That was why I was thinking when I was making it, but she didn't, yeah, that her perspective.
Unknown Speaker 37:01
And then we went on and we went from there, and we created the conversation based on it being a domino, and how can that domino
Unknown Speaker 37:12
yield the result that we want in our lesson planning? And that's where the idea of lesson planning whisperer comes in. Is we take that child's perspective, and how are we going to get them over the hump so that when they go to pick up a pencil, they feel freedom to write,
Unknown Speaker 37:34
so you're meeting the child where the child is not expecting them to try to meet you where you are, and that can be difficult when you got a class of 30. Absolutely, absolutely, one of our, one of our math based students. She's a seventh grade teacher. She does one of the exercises that I teach with her students, and she sent me some video, some pictures of it.
Unknown Speaker 38:01
One of the things I've discovered is, one of the things I knew back in college, okay, was a term called bilateral integration, where both hands are doing something to get the task done, like when you're knitting, you need both hands. When you're crocheting, you need both hands. But if you think about it, when you are crocheting. Specifically, you've got the needle in one hand, you've got the yarn in the other hand. They're not doing the same thing, okay? Whereas back when, if you look at karate kid, he had wax on, wax off, where the they were either they were doing the sin both hands, we're doing the same motion. Yes, both hands, we're doing the same motion. That's symmetrical.
Unknown Speaker 38:49
When we're writing,
Unknown Speaker 38:53
we have a lot of asymmetrical stuff going on,
Unknown Speaker 38:57
but
Unknown Speaker 38:59
when we're writing. The dominant hand that is holding the utensil is affecting the opposite side of the brain, because that's the way our brains are situated. And then the other hand is the helper hand is
Unknown Speaker 39:14
doing the opposite side of the brain. I'm left handed, so everybody. That's why we're doing it this way. It might look backwards to you, or might look right because now you're seeing a mirror image, but I'm left handed. One of the things that
Unknown Speaker 39:31
I was concerned about is if we are constantly reinforcing the side of the brain that is not going to benefit from what we're doing.
Unknown Speaker 39:44
How are we going to reinforce that?
Unknown Speaker 39:47
I probably just can totally confuse you. So one side of the brain is going to say, it's round, it's red, it has a stem, it has a leaf. The other side of the brain is going, oh.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
It's an apple.
Unknown Speaker 40:02
Okay? If we're constantly only reinforcing the side of the brain that says it's round, it has a leaf, we're never going to get to the what it is. Okay?
Unknown Speaker 40:14
I had this aha moment several years ago after I wrote handwriting, Brain Body disconnect that we to reinforce with both sides of the body at the same time doing the same thing, symmetrical. But if we interlace them together and do that, do whatever we're going to do to reinforce writing,
Unknown Speaker 40:40
it's going to hit both sides of the brain. It's going to cross that hemisphere barrier, and we are going to have the logic and the creativity start to unite.
Unknown Speaker 40:53
So I teach a task called in bilateral
Unknown Speaker 41:00
I can't wait to hear this one. So I teach a thing called interlace, bilateral integration.
Unknown Speaker 41:08
And it's very important that your hands, your palms, are away from you as you interlace, if you put your palms together, when you lace your hands together, as if you were praying, you're not going to reinforce the motion. You need to have your hands away from you. Okay, so right now I'm going to have you do something. I want you put your hand out in front of you, put your other hand up here at your shoulder and try to move it around. Feel what your shoulder is doing there on right there that the hinge now turn it so that your hands now redo that, move it around. Do you feel the difference? Yes. Okay, so interlaced, bilateral integration, and then we practice. So you could practice individual letters, you could practice words, you can practice all kinds of things. So the interlaced by our integration.
Unknown Speaker 42:06
I have kids in math classes do the number eight. So we start here. We start, okay, and we're standing up and we're doing full arm movements rather than hearing the camera, yeah, yeah. So we're making the number eight with our full body. The
Unknown Speaker 42:25
hilarious movements that these kids make trying to make a number eight in the air with their hands like this. It's hysterical. And if you try this at home, full body, even adults, is hysterical. It's fun to watch.
Unknown Speaker 42:43
The reason that it's difficult, especially with the number eight, is you are forced to cross midline twice. You're first thing your body to go from your left brain to your right brain to your left brain as you're making the number eight, especially if your arms are interlaced together York. So you have the arch, you have the thoughts, you have the lower semi circle, and then you come back up again. And kids with disabilities in ADHD, ASD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalcia, and a lot of the learning disabilities that are out there, they struggle, because kids that have these disabilities, oftentimes,
Unknown Speaker 43:34
their body is cut in half. Every if it's over here, it's over here, if it's over here, it's over here, this blending the body, and one of the things that we need to teach them is how to blend their body.
Unknown Speaker 43:49
Interesting. This has been so interesting, Cheri, and you know what? I've known you for how many years now? And I have never heard this presentation in this depth. I am just so thrilled that you're on today, because this was such a learning curve for me, and I love it. Wow, wow. I hope it's a learning curve for your community as well. I noticed that the person that was on may have thought we were doing talking about something else. He stayed on for a while, but it is definitely something that will strike that parent who has that kid who's struggling it. It's not going to strike the parent of the person who's really looking for a medical thing, because it is a specific learning disability. And 33% of the population do struggle with a specific learning disability. It's just 6.4% of those kids are gifted, which blows people's minds. And then how many adults had never, ever had a diagnosis, and maybe they're going, oh my gosh, this is me. I see me in this conversation. Mm.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Could be, Yep, yeah, absolutely. Now what I do, what I've done, is I create professional development that is certified through the Department of Education, and I certify teachers to become dysgraphia specialists with the pro with the stuff I'm doing with John Lee, we are focusing on some math activities that are meeting the standards how I have and contributed to that relationship is I will go in and I will create adaptations for whatever she's done. One of the things that she does how kids need to look at their multiplication tables, or look at counting and stuff like that. They have a 100 chart. So you start at one, and you go to 10, and then you go back to 11, and you go over to 20.
Unknown Speaker 45:52
She goes to 120
Unknown Speaker 45:54
instead of stopping at 100 because kids think that the world stops at 100 when they're in elementary school, because of that 100 chart, what I've done, because of some of the tasks that she's done, is I've made the width between the lines, between the numbers, bigger, because some kit, if they're going to have trouble with writing, they're probably also Having trouble with cutting. Okay, one of the things about cutting is, if you make it wider, they have more success. So I made it wider, so we actually have three different dimensions of width to cut. These number lines with becomes a number line. These numbers out
Unknown Speaker 46:39
and we she takes and she looking at everything visually. She teaches the kids to look at the piece of paper visually and tell her what she sees. One of the activities that she does is she says, Okay, I want you to circle the number eight. Now.
Unknown Speaker 46:58
I want you to
Unknown Speaker 47:00
go through your 120 chart, and I want you to circle all
Unknown Speaker 47:06
the multiples, basically all the multiples of eight. And she doesn't really say it like that.
Unknown Speaker 47:13
How many kids that don't understand the number system go 818, 2838, etc. They'll go right down the page, but when they go to look at it, they go, Oh, that's what we do with 10s. Wait a minute, what did I do wrong? So the visual, okay, helps them understand the difference. And then she does a thing called whisper counting, which is brilliant for these kids. And she has eight circles or eight objects that she has in front of them, and it's 2345678,
Unknown Speaker 47:53
hopefully, you heard me whispering one through seven on that. But she does that, and then she'll go 1112, 1314, 16, and she likes eight because it's one of the hardest numbers to remember. Okay, first, so she actually starts with the hardest one.
Unknown Speaker 48:17
And what she has found is the kids with the specific learning disabilities
Unknown Speaker 48:24
and the gifted kids
Unknown Speaker 48:26
are now on the same playing field. We don't have Johnny who's always answering the questions, okay, he's always sitting back and not answering anything
Unknown Speaker 48:40
in that same role. Now Susie's answering many more questions than Johnny is sometimes because all of a sudden, these visuals level the playing field for kids, and that's why visual spatial is so essential to helping kids overcome writing disabilities. Cheri, this is fascinating. This is so fascinating. I can see why your business has exploded and why you're getting speaking engagements all over the country these days. How can our folks connect with you? First of all, how they just connect with you if they want to, but how can they find you on social media, because your stuff on social media is amazing and and then how can they get in touch with you if they want to?
Unknown Speaker 49:28
I think the easiest way is to follow my name on the where is it? Right there, on the chat, oh on, oh on, on my end in your little Hollywood square, it says Cheri dotter the wood square. Yes, it says Cheri dotter, Cheri. For those of you who are not able to see this, who are just listening to this, Cheri is spelled C, H, I said, C, yes, I said, C, C, H, E R, i, d, o, t, e r, double.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
I gotta be like, Tigger,
Unknown Speaker 50:02
hey, you know what your name is fun to type when I'm typing it
Unknown Speaker 50:07
open yard, it's just fun to type. I always think of that whenever I type your name. And then from there,
Unknown Speaker 50:15
I all my courses are on a different platform called Disability labs with an S. There is disability lab out there. I have the S on the end.com
Unknown Speaker 50:27
so all my courses are on a separate platform. But if you go to Cheri dotterer.com
Unknown Speaker 50:33
that home page will pretty much take you where you need to go. There is some handouts there. If you're a parent, there's handouts there. If you're a professional, there's a lot of information there, in general, but that page doesn't get changed a whole lot. Now, can they find your two podcasts there?
Unknown Speaker 50:54
Yes, you they can. Good. They can. I technically I have three, because what I do is, when I break things up into shorts, I'll even put the shorts on a separate podcast, but they're all clips out of the the main ones, but yeah, both the writing glitch and tier one interventions are on the homepage. They do have their very own websites. As you grow in business, you have to get more you get more websites, but everything goes back and can be found through the main one, the main homepage of Cheri dotter.com
Unknown Speaker 51:29
Yes, perfect. I don't know what else to say, because it's Cheri Dotterer everywhere. I did try. Oh, I misspelled it after all that, C, A, T, R, i, d, o, t, e, r.com,
Unknown Speaker 51:44
yeah, we go. I have something special that's happening.
Unknown Speaker 51:49
I don't know when this is going out, but for the next it's available. For the next four days, I have a quality box that's going to be available. It's buy one, get one.
Unknown Speaker 52:00
Okay, and
Unknown Speaker 52:03
oh my gosh, we have curated stuff for dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalcia. We have stuff for teacher relief. One of the things I have here on my desk
Unknown Speaker 52:17
are these wonderful silver earrings
Unknown Speaker 52:22
with a bangle. And then there's a necklace that goes with it. But the necklace is not on my desk. We have some fuzzy socks for Christmas.
Unknown Speaker 52:31
I love it now. What is this for? This is something you're doing on this is a holiday box that's only available for the next four days. Okay, this will probably go live by tomorrow morning. Okay, so it you have to purchase if them by the end of the week. But next year, we're actually creating a subscription, and the subscription is going to house dyslexia books, stuff about dysgraphia, stuff about dyscalcia, and it's gonna have different activities and things and relief objects for the teachers and or the parents or whoever you're getting it for. So that's the new thing of coming out. It's called relief in 3d
Unknown Speaker 53:18
I am betcha 100%
Unknown Speaker 53:21
I bet you that information is not on my website, so there is a way to contact me on my contact page. If you're interested in that link, I will still hand that one off to Kathy. I'm gonna look away from the camera to pull it up here so I don't forget it before we go away. But yeah, we're moving my store. And I think the store link is moved, but it very well may well not be, but the reason I'm moving my store is to house this subscription box. Now we are we are creating. So
Unknown Speaker 54:04
Cheri is always a mover and shaker. She's always adding more and more to her business and her business plan and her website. So stay tuned. And this thing missing, yeah, this subscription box idea came out of left field by
Unknown Speaker 54:20
an ad I found on I saw on Facebook scrolling at 10 o'clock one night when I was supposed to be sleeping but, and I thought, No, I have no need. I don't have any products for that. And I started thinking more about it. And what I've done is I've taken all the stuff that I teach, we've put it onto one pagers so that it's easily accessible, so we have quick start guides for different activities and different things that. And then we're going to be putting them in once a month get a new box, but the holiday boxes is something special. Just to get things off and rolling, we're.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
Kathy, here is the link. Ah, good, and okay, but the thing that really is fascinating, and just I'm excited about it, is we have contracted with a
Unknown Speaker 55:17
publisher who publishes decodable books. And I say that because one of the things with kids with dyslexia is they don't know how to pull the words apart, to decod them, put them back together, is encoding, which is spelling. Okay, so decodable books
Unknown Speaker 55:38
there the science of reading has put together a systematic order into way you can learn how to read. These books are based on the science of reading, and my friend has agreed to
Unknown Speaker 55:58
provide books for the subscription box, and she has enough books that will last us several years. Oh, so we're gonna, you're gonna be able to get one decodable book, and who knows, you can't, over time, get her entire collection. And yeah, so it's been fun, and she lives about an hour from me, so we're gonna this is also gonna be neat, because we're gonna be able to get together once a month to exchange the books. So we're gonna gonna meet in the middle have lunch and actually get to talk to one another at a slower
Unknown Speaker 56:37
I love it.
Unknown Speaker 56:39
Wow, Cheri, I can't wait to see you. Hopefully we'll get to meet up in person soon. I appreciate you being on. We've been on for a little over an hour now. So I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this today. This waking me up today. I know it sounds funny, people, that's by 15 in the afternoon. Thank you for waking me up. It is I have been exhausted over the last two weeks because my parents are moving. I have to say more, yeah, and you just got back from Texas, so yeah, you've been traveling around the world. I get it. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. I will put all of your contact information in the replay folks that are listening, you can find all of the replay information@kathybinner.com
Unknown Speaker 57:28
again, you see my name here in the little Hollywood square. For those that are just listening and not viewing the video, it is Kathy with a K and binner is bees and boy I n, e r.com, Kathy binner.com, and Cheri, thank you so much for being with us today, and we will see everyone next time. Thanks for the invite. You were put here for such a time as this. Go be awesome. Go be brilliant. Change the atmosphere in your classroom by the tips you hear on the writing glitch.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai