TWG S2 E6: Empowering Minds: Navigating Dyslexia and Dysgraphia with Lois Letchford

Join us in this transformative episode as we dive deep into the world of dyslexia and dysgraphia, exploring the personal journeys, challenges, and breakthroughs experienced by those who have navigated these learning difficulties. From the very beginning, we set the stage with an insightful discussion on overcoming reading struggles with our guest expert, Lois Letchford, a renowned reading specialist who has turned her own journey with dyslexia into a beacon of hope for others.

Ever wondered about the link between early childhood ear infections and language development? We've got you covered! Letchford unravels the challenges of teaching children with dyslexia, providing valuable insights on strategies that work. Discover the transformative power of connecting oral and written language through poetry and playwriting, and learn how even the most complex texts can be made accessible and enjoyable to students with reading difficulties.

As we venture further, we unveil teaching strategies specifically designed for students with dysgraphia, with Cheri Dotterer discussing her upcoming book "Math Disconnected" and the pivotal role of concrete, semi-concrete, and abstract teaching methods. Lois Letchford chimes in, sharing innovative ideas to bring these methods to life, urging listeners to take action in their own educational settings.

This episode is not just a collection of stories and strategies; it's a call to action, an invitation to understand, empathize, and empower. Whether you're a teacher, parent, professional, or someone navigating dyslexia or dysgraphia personally, this podcast is a treasure trove of knowledge, inspiration, and practical advice. Don't miss out on the chance to transform your approach to learning and teaching, and join us on this journey of empowerment and discovery.

Lois Letchford
Cheri Dotterer

• (00:00) - Tempo: 120.0

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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.

Guest

Lois Letchford

Lois Letchford specializes in teaching children who have struggled to learn to read. Her creative teaching methods vary depending on the reading ability of the student, employing age-appropriate, rather than reading-age-appropriate, material. She holds a Master’s in Literacy and Reading from the State University of New York at Albany and has presented her work at several literacy conferences. Reversed: A Memoir is her first book.

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 [e-mail]

Hey, good morning. Good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you listen to the podcast.

I'm Cheri Dotterer, an occupational therapist, and recovering dysgraphic. Welcome to the writing glitch. No pencil required.

Did you know that I struggled when I hit college, and I was really trying to get those papers out?

And every time I would turn around, I'd have to rip another piece out of the typewriter and throw another one in so that I could get my term papers written for school.

And I was like, What is going on?

Why am I struggling with sentence structure?

Why am I struggling with paragraph organization?

Why do I have to keep wearing out paper?

Well, I didn't know it at the time; I just blamed it on my eyes. They're bad.

But I just blamed it on my eyes.

But what I didn't realize is that I have higher level dysgraphia also have some issues with reading comprehension and reading fluency.

And so I needed to overcome these things.

I went and tackled these deficits that I have by creating courses, books, and now a podcast.

So, if you are interested in learning more about some of the things that I do, listen a little bit later, and we will talk a little bit more about how you can get in touch with me.

But for now, I'd like to introduce my guest today.

Her name is Lois Letchford.

She is coming to us from outside Albany, New York.

She quit working when she realized that her son had dyslexia.

When she started helping her son Nicholas, examining her reading failure caused her to adapt and change the lessons.

The results were dramatic.

Lois was qualified as a reading specialist using her non-traditional background, continual experience, and passion for assisting her failing students.

Lois received her teaching degree in Australia, Texas, and then a master's degree from SUNY Albany.

She has now written a reversed memoir in her first book.

This story talks a little bit about her journey her how her son's dramatic failures in first grade really impacted her and her family.

Welcome to the podcast today. Lois.

And how are you really?

I'm doing okay.

I'm delighted to be here, Cheri.

And it's interesting you talking about your dysgraphia because of paragraph structuring sentence structure.

That's not one of the things that people often think about when we're thinking about dysgraphia.

When I first got into this, everybody keeps talking about letter formation, and I'm like, there's more to this story.

That's what I think about literacy and literacy instruction.

There's more to this story.

That's the title of it, of this, this podcast.

There's more to the story. It's not as simple as people Mike out.

I guess we're going back to Paul Harvey, aren't we?

Who's Paul Harvey?

Paul Harvey was an Associated Press radio host when I was a kid.

The title of his radio show was called The Rest of the Story.

He would delve into something and then go on and embellish it and tell what was behind the scenes.

When most people talk about dysgraphia or dyslexia, they're still talking about the middle of the road.

I'm talking about a child who's on the bottom percentiles.

And with a child who is so low down, you can't get one or two things right and expect the child to make the jumps in between.

You have to get 100% of everything right to take that child from the bottom to the top.

Yeah, we need to work on those building blocks.

Before we delve into those thoughts, though.

I want to introduce our sponsor. Today's sponsor is Dotterer Educational Consulting.

They offer the dysgraphia certification course, this course builds dysgraphia awareness, and provides provide practical interventions for lesson planning, using development to help redesign your lessons, whether you're a literary literacy teacher, a general ed teacher, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, or even a parent can find benefit from this course.

If you want to learn more about the dysgraphia certification program, the second typically the second Wednesday, but it's not always the second Wednesday.

Sometimes, we get holidays in there that really mess up the cycle. Typically the second Wednesday of the month, I do a webinar that I talk a little bit about the program.

And you can go to cheri dotterer.com/calendar to get the next one.

So tell me a little bit more about what you were saying about the lowest of the low.

Because the thing that came to my head, my brain was building blocks.

Go into that a little bit more, and then I'll explain what I mean by building blocks.

I totally agree with you about building blocks.

My son went to school in 1994. And he failed first grade.

By failed, I mean he sat in the classroom, he wet his pants, he beat his fingernails, he stared into space.

What I didn't know was the teacher shouted at him every single day because he couldn't do what was expected.

And when a child fails so dramatically, the chances of getting out of that little basket a few and far between.

You know, and that, you know, they've got muscle coordination problems they have, they have a variety of problems that you as a parent have to address.

Speech Language was something that we used, and we used speech therapists and occupational therapists to help him get through it.

Believe it or not, the speech therapist in teaching him taught me
I believe that you mentioned something there that hit home.

And I don't know if I can hold it together.

And I don't know that I've revealed this and shared this with any buddy publicly before.

But when I was in first grade, I did the same thing as your son.

And it jeopardized my social interaction with others.

I had an accident where I peed in the classroom, and from that time on, my social skills were severely damaged because the other kids didn't want anything to do with me.

And then, of course, my confidence went down. I also had trouble with reading.

And I was picked on because I had four eyes because, boy, back in those days, you know, glasses were not the norm back in their early 70s?

It was it was a traumatic experience.

I understand what your son went through because I did it, too.

And you're right.

There's a lot of building blocks.

When we look at the building blocks of education and learning.

There's so much neurologically that has to happen and get put in place.

Before you can even access academics. reflexes, sensory-motor system memory system; you need your proprioception, your vestibular system, and your interoception system all intact, or at least someone in text, because we all have issues that aren't fully intact, but we need those things intact.

I say those terms because I want to spark some of the conversation with you.

What have those conversations did the speech therapist share with you, and what were like new words for you at first?

Well, let me take you a little bit back. When Nicholas was eight months old, from eight to 18 months, he had ear infections.

No one said to me, your child's learning is going to be disrupted because they're hearing.

He's not hearing properly.

I've met a hearing specialist recently, and she said it's not only when they had the ear infection but either side when the infections coming in, and when they're going out of it.

They are not hearing language clearly.

No, they're not. I know that.

Sounds like you've got language.

The building blocks of language all grew and changed the brain to the point where his memory flank and his process of language were really poor, and still are to this day.

Was he a kid who ended up with tubes in his ears?

We didn't we didn't go down that route.

I don't know why it wasn't even offered.

I don't understand it.

He actually has a genetic disability because I remember when he was a tiny, tiny little boy, I could put him on the changing table, and he would not roll.

That worried me.

There's your vestibular problem there already, and then you've got this additional problem of hearing loss and ear infections.

That light up I read, you know, what only takes one ear infection a year for six years to create a learning disability.

Wait a minute, say that again.

It only takes one ear infection a year, from zero to six, to create a learning disability.

Well, that creates impactful, that's powerful.

That is one statistic I had not heard before.

I do know how important the auditory processing system is to learning how to read.

Many kids with learning disabilities cannot distinguish the different sounds between A e i, o and u.

And then there are some other ones, but basically, those vowel sounds are one big bound with the vowels and then the consonant blends.

It's a combination of both the vowels and those consonant blends.

The difference in a word like say, no, not say, play, pay, play, and puree.

Walk your vowel sounds the same.

One letter makes the difference.

We change the meaning if our children don't get it. It's disastrous.

I had one student a couple of years ago who we were trying to figure out if we could get him to use voice typing using Google.

He was trying to have him type some things into Google and just work on some stuff together.

Consistently he finally got the blends, but he could not get the vowels.

I distinctly remember the word chip. It was CHP constantly.

There, there were no vowels in anything that he did except his name because we've drilled his name into him hit well. I drilled his name, address, phone number, and date of birth into him for two years.

Go back to your memory.

What do children who are on the Dyslexic spectrum have problems with isolated, abstract, and irrelevant? Your dress is isolated, abstract, and relevant.

And so much of what we do in the beginning falls under that category.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, what a powerful conversation this is coming.

So what?

Tell me a little bit about yourself, what your business is, and like we, you will have written this book, but what are you doing with it at this point in time?

That question, What am I doing trying to sell a book?

I've just started to put out a program that ties with the book and reading for middle schoolers, and there will be a second one for younger children.

It's not available yet, but if you want advanced copies of it, which is the first process I'd go through, is to contact me and try it.

How do they find you find me on LinkedIn or my website is best through my website, and just contact me at LoisLetchford.com.

That's the best way.

We do have a course that is supplemental to the book, but we're still in the early stages of releasing that course.

You start out with middle school.

Why did you start out with middle school?

Because there's a lot of competition in the early years.

There are a lot of philosophical discussions that go on in the early years, which I hadn't gotten into until I met this six-year-old who came to me not too long ago with nothing, zero words.

I had to create a program to meet his needs.

And I've done that.

I'm thrilled, I'm thrilled.

In three weeks, my little boy went from inability to read about two words to now he's got about 50!

Every step is a big hurdle.

The next lot of words are the rhyming words of dad SAD and MAD.

We're working on those at the moment.

But it's a huge struggle, and I haven't got past them.

We haven't even really gone to the, to sounds of the vowel sounds because he's struggling to get why am I doing this?

The letters and sounds come together to make words.

That's where we're at at six.

Oh, wow.

Even though he's talking to you, and he talks with his parents, he doesn't make the association that the written word and the oral word in our communication.

That ability to separate sounds and put them back together is challenging.

Why do I start with middle school?

Yeah, because of that.

The other reason is that, once I taught my son to read, I did explicit things for him that were really under circumstances that were only for him.

When I was able to transpose those ideas to other children, I went to Lubbock, Texas, and taught as a district reading specialist.

The students who came to me first were in middle school.

Got it. Okay.

Middle School, as you know, they require a different approach.

You're not doing you.

And you've got to not only teach them letters and sounds and all the things that are missing, but you've got to do it at a level that they're saying, this is worth my while.

And that charge is excellent. I did.

Middle schoolers have been the history of life.

They are starting to question why adults are doing what they're doing.

What are you going to do that's different?

They aren't that. defiant, outwardly, but inwardly, it's a rock that you have to melt because everyone else has failed them.

What are you going to do that's different?

It's really what they're asking.

That's where I come in.

Whether I can do it myself.

Whether I've written it in a way that other people can pick up and know what they have to do is going to be the challenge.

Wow.

The whole process of reading is step one because we have the auditory, we have the visual, and we have maybe the tactile withholding the book.

How do you translate that when you have a kiddo who's going from two words to 50 words?

Then, we need to write it down.

Are you do you have any unique interventions or strategies that you do to help buffer that gap between the two different subjects?

Yes, I'm just trying to reach for something in my box of goodies we try down here in my box of goodies, if I can do with it falling out.

Oh, it's got squashed. It's been in a bag.

What I do is I write poetry for children.

Poetry that children can read, but not any poetry.

They have to have a reason for writing.

This is my Caterpillar that's been in his box, and he's got legs.

He's got to back, and he's got legs, and I write about first lines are, my name is and the child's name.

I made a, and this one is a caterpillar.

My Caterpillar has two eyes, and my Caterpillar has one.

Now, my Caterpillar does X, Y, and Zed, finishing it off with the first two lines from the beginning only reversed so that the child is not doing something abstract, not doing it for life.

My little boy looked at the word Caterpillar, and he said, This is the word cat
that was the start of life.

It's a whole range of activities in connecting the word, as you said, with the oral language with the written language.

With real life. It's that triangular connection, always doing something.

What I do with the older students is turn a book into a play.

The thing was comprehension is that you have comprehension, I have comprehension, and we have a book in between us.

We don't always end up with the same picture the author had in the book. You might have a slightly different picture to me.

When I grew up, interested in hearing about your story.

I grew up reading words I could not comprehend.

No one picked it up.

I was just not smart enough.

I didn't work hard enough.

I didn't try hard enough to try hard enough.

I didn't know how much harder I could try.

And it's very difficult to try when you're running like a caterpillar.

And no one's helping you.

You're running on that hamster wheel, and you just can't get the hamster wheel to take you anywhere.

Definitely.

And it's an idea of a treadmill.

Definitely.

Because where the trouble is, you're building muscles, but you're going nowhere.

You're going nowhere.

And when my son struggled, I was able to come back and look at some of the reasons why I could have struggled.

And that's been fascinating because it's really helped me understand reading comprehension and decoding much more effectively than I would have thought.

And then having students who have made mistakes.

Students who have made mistakes have really been a lightbulb moment for me.

Do you want to know what they are?

Sure. Let me see if I can read a breach for a book.

Aren't we lucky I have a book here?

But this is my favorite book, acid stock.

And you see immediately I'm into books.

I'm using books for my students.

I'm not using decodable text, I'm using books.

And this book is written, and this is acid stock.

I will eat this.
A key pecked at it, but it would not break.

And then I'm only going to give you a couple of pages.

The hippopotamus rolled on it.

Lion bit double page spread lion visit chimp here hit elephants stamped on it and so on and so on and so on with the book.

I had three little children sitting in front of me, third graders, and I said to them what's the date each child in the three sat in front of me put their hands up and said it's nothing, and it was eye-opening to me to recognize that we can read this whole book and then not have a clue what it was after.

I did this lesson about a month or two later, one little girl.

okay just play. Can I just pause you there because there are going to be people listening to the podcast that have not been able to see it?

They won't see the YouTube version of it.

It happens to be the egg.

It so there is an egg where one of them is stomping on it.

One of them has it in their mouth, and I don't remember all the other road
biking.

Hitting out.

You're right. You're right.

No, it's not on oil to have those three.

Wow. Yeah, wow is wow is the big thing, isn't it to recognize that's the failure?

That's the level of failure.

And these kids were not the slowest children I've ever taught.

They were just below average.

And with that, I was then able to go through with the book and say, well, there's the word what's happening.

We went through the whole book, and we changed the word to EQ.

And that was also why I wanted to have people act things out.

Because it changes. And you, you, as the reader, have to do the work.

Yeah, I'm going to wow.

So, one of the things that's happening in my life is I am currently writing a book with a math teacher.

It is called math DYSconnected, and we are very, very close to being finished with the book itself.

One of the things that we have been talking about is the concrete, semi-concrete, and abstract versions of teaching kids.

And you mentioned then about putting on a play.

One of my fellow OTs who does executive function skills has kids write a play, and they have to act it out later.

So you're, you're talking about things that are happening around me with the different various levels of building blocks that are that we need to put together to help these kids learn.

So fantastic ideas.

I hope that our listeners today take some of these ideas and put them into practice in their own settings.

And if you would like to learn more about how to implement those, I'm sure Lois can share some details with you.

Before we head out of here today, Lois, is there anything that you would like to share with the audience?

Any additional information any other strategies?

Well, language, by its very nature, is abstract.

That's, you know, that's the first thing to know and what you just said about mathematics.

Mathematics is a language.

It's another language, and we have to learn it.

And, you know, there's language, English language, and mathematics language.

And I love working with mathematics because every word counts.

So, what else do I want to talk about?

You know, the first is knowing that when children fail, it's not their fault.

We are the ones who have to change.

The child is doing their absolute best.

And they can't say to you, I don't understand this.

This doesn't make any sense.

All of you watch their behavior deteriorate.

So we are the ones who are in charge.

And we are the ones who have to provide sufficient instructions to take our children from the bottom to the top.

And before I go, the reason I wrote my book is my son, Nicholas, who failed first grade, ended up with a PhD in applied mathematics from Oxford University.

Oh, how cool is that? That is amazing.

Wow. And a lot. A lot of what I've learned comes from teaching him because his journey was extraordinary and unexpected because I trusted the schools.

But once I'd been through my experience, I didn't trust the schools.

And I joined the system so that we could turn children around.

That's what I did. That's what I do.

Wow. You have been listening to the Writing Glitch podcast.

We released the second and fourth Tuesday of every month during the school year. subscribe to the podcast, do me a favor, and write a review.

In your favorite podcast app.

You can also listen to the podcast on the writingglitch.com.

If you're looking for some more intervention ideas specifically for dysgraphia, head over to our other podcast, the Writing Glitch Pocket Cast, and there's where I'm going to be sharing interventions this season of the podcast.

Remember, you were put here for such a time as this.

SamC Productions manages the post-production.

Thank you very much for being here. Lois.

It has been delightful and very, very educational.

Thank you.

Notable Quote:
It only takes one ear infection a year, from zero to six, to create a learning disability.