The Writing Glitch: Hack Dysgraphia No Pencil Required

In today's episode, Jonily Zupancic and Cheri discuss how they met and have joined forces to create a collaborative math and therapy team to support students with Specific Learning Disabilities, especially dysgraphia and dyscalculia.
Jonily Zupancic: jonily.com
Cheri Dotterer: cheridotterer.com
5-Day Roadmap to Hacking Dysgraphia: cheridotterer.com/5-day-challenge
5-Day Math DYS-Connected: Connecting the Puzzle Challenge
Listen for how Cheri surprises Jonily around minute 34.

Show Notes

In today's episode, Jonily Zupancic and Cheri discuss how they met and have joined forces to create a collaborative math and therapy team to support students with Specific Learning Disabilities, especially dysgraphia and dyscalculia.
Jonily Zupancic: jonily.com
Cheri Dotterer: cheridotterer.com
5-Day Roadmap to Hacking Dysgraphia
5-Day Math DYS-Connected: Connecting the Puzzle Challenge
Listen for how Cheri surprises Jonily around minute 34.
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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
Jonily Zupancic
Jonily inspires learning. She is an author, coach and speaker who helps educators and schools identify their focus, improve their thinking and inspire stakeholders so they can become unhackable, produce results, and lead the next generation into an amazing future. Jonily is the founder of Minds On Math and lead facilitator of the Instructional Coaching Network. Her work has reimaged mindsets of educational leaders based on cognitive science and impacted the engagement and achievement of all students.

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

[00:00:00] Cheri: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on where you listen to the podcast. . The podcast is available on several platforms, including Apple, Google, Spotify, and Amazon. I'm Cheri Dotterer. The host of The Writing Glitch, and an occupational therapist and a dysgraphia expert.
My co-host, Jan Orcutt, is not with us today. Welcome to The Writing Glitch Hacking Dysgraphia, no pencil required. In this episode, Jonily Zupancic and I are talking about a project that has changed both of our lives. Jonily is the owner of Minds on Math and the author of Making Mathineers. We met in October of 2018 with the help of a couple mutual friends and mentors, Kary Oberbrunner and Dexter Godfrey.
Hello, Jonily, welcome to the podcast. May I ask, how are you really?
[00:00:56] Jonily: I
am great. , I am very excited to be here and happy New Year to everyone. I am ready for a great 2023.
[00:01:07] Cheri: I am as well. Thank you. Do you know why I ask the word really when I'm asking that question?
[00:01:13] Jonily: Why is that?
I've heard you answer this before, and I can never remember the response. , please elaborate. .
[00:01:22] Cheri: That's because it makes you pause and really think about how you really are doing. It just gives you that extra, wait a minute, it just pauses your brain and makes you really think about it. I've been also doing really well today. It has been one amazing school break. It was quiet and peaceful around here this year, but I understand you were traveling all over the country.
[00:01:52] Jonily: I was, yes. So we had some getaway time with family and friends, and now I am back home and ready to get back to business.
[00:02:05] Cheri: Absolutely let's go get back to business. I mentioned that Dexter Godfrey introduced us and I wanna share a little bit of the story from my end, and then we'll add your part of the story.
Dexter came up to me at a conference. That we were both attending called the Igniting Souls Conference back in 2018. I was standing alone at the Barnes and Nobles, the pre-event book signing that they were hosting and minded my own business watching the crowd. And this gentleman comes up to me and is Hey, how are you doing?
Oh my gosh, does Dexter have the energy? He started talking to me. and talking about what my book is about, which had not been published yet, and he's hold on a minute. Like totally interrupted the conversation and said, hold on a minute, don't go anywhere. I have somebody I need you to meet.
And I'm standing there. I felt like an eternity. And all of a sudden, out of this crowd of many people, Dexter comes dragging this little person. It looks like a kid out of the audience and introduced us. And I'm sorry Jonily, but you did look like a little girl .
[00:03:15] Jonily: I get that a lot.
[00:03:20] Cheri: How did he approach you in whole timeframe?
[00:03:23] Jonily: I always love your perspective of the story. What ended up happening was when he came to me, he said, do you have a moment? I have someone. I'd like for you to meet and I'm like, sure. I don't even think he waited for the response before I was on the other end being drug over to you.
And of course he obviously saw a connection between the two of us and he is highly respected in my book. If he thought that our connection was worth the time, then it was definitely worth the time for me. I remember at that point learning about what your book was about, that you worked in school-based therapy, and worked with students with disabilities.
At that point I thought this is a really great perspective to offset. My expertise, which is math, teaching math, teaching and learning. And I remember after that we sat in the Starbucks and talked for, I think a couple hours, you can correct me if I'm wrong about each other. Just trying to become aware of what each other does and what our missions were.
[00:04:32] Cheri: Yeah. I believe like the lights were going out around us. Yes. And we realized that they were trying to close the Starbucks .
[00:04:39] Jonily: Yes. We weren't finished.
[00:04:44] Cheri: We were not finished. I believe that when we first came home, it was like every month. But I'll tell you what. , we didn't meet last week and it felt like an eternity.
I think that you and I meet at least once a week at this point in time. We have this project that we've been working on to collaborate with math and occupational therapy, and I can't wait to share a little bit about that project with the audience today.
[00:05:10] Jonily: Yes ma'am.
[00:05:12] Cheri: But before we do, we need to introduce our sponsor.
Today's podcast was brought to you by Dotterer Educational Consulting. At Dotterer Educational Consulting, we hack dysgraphia from the inside out. Our mission is to help teachers, therapists, and parents raise the next generation of leaders by hacking barriers. To writing success, we offer a five day challenge called the Roadmap to Hacking Dysgraphia to help you build the skills you need to manage dysgraphia, apply that knowledge to the classroom, and help the next generation of leaders maximize their future.
You can find more information on my website, Cheri Dotterer dot com. That's C H E R I D O T E R E R. When you go up to the menu bar, you wanna click the link five day challenge. But that's not the only five day challenge I've been working on right now. Jonily, are you ready to share that project that
I
[00:06:10] Jonily: am ready?
Yes.
[00:06:12] Cheri: Drum roll. . I had to do the sound effect. We wrote a book.
[00:06:18] Jonily: Yes.
[00:06:21] Cheri: Oh, it has been a fabulous journey writing this book. Jonily, tell us about the book.
[00:06:26] Jonily: The book is called Math Disconnected, DYS- Connected, and it is focused on students with learning disabilities and how to best support them with mathematics. Not only students with disabilities, but students who maybe even have undiagnosed disabilities who struggle in mathematics.
Through the process of writing this book, Cheri and I have become much more aware of the clinical diagnoses, the mathematics that is not really explained well in publications and how to bring awareness and bring light to the subject, and most importantly, how we can help these student.
[00:07:15] Cheri: Amen. Amen. Yes.
Assessment, evaluation, and then positive outcomes that change these kids' lives forever is the mission. Now, to kick off this book, we're running a five-day math challenge called Math Disconnected Challenge, which is that other five day challenge I was alluding to. Jonily, can you tell the listeners a little bit more about this five day challenge?
[00:07:46] Jonily: Yes, we are running an abbreviated version of our book Math Disconnected, and we want to bring awareness to Dyscalculia, which is the official name of the math learning disability. And as Cheri does in her five day challenge, the kickoff day is all about awareness to dysgraphia.
We're gonna parallel that with an awareness to Dyscalculia. Within this awareness, we're going to talk about the signs and symptoms of math struggles. We have different audiences here. We have the occupational therapist, we have teachers, and we also have some other audiences in instructional aids.
Parents, anyone who has any kind of connection to students being able to learn mathematics. is our audience, but we're trying to really collide teachers and occupational therapist and bring awareness of that connection. Just as Cheri and I were creating this connection through Dexter, we know that the therapy connection and the math classroom connection is essentially important.
Almost nonexistent at this point. So when I talk about awareness, it's not just the awareness of the signs and symptoms of math struggles, but it's also the awareness of how all stakeholders in the school system can work together to identify the struggles and issues of these students, and then help intervene in very short
interventions. We're talking 30-second to two minute bursts of interventions and obviously some longer interventions. But through this five day challenge, we're gonna take a look at some of these interventions that have been game changers in math education. As we walk through these interventions, we're gonna look at one specific I'm not even gonna call this an intervention. I wanna back up for just a moment. We know that through student struggles, they need mental stimulation that is going to address Their confidence is going to reduce their anxiety.
That's going to give them a sense of success mathematically. And this stimulation is what I call a stimulus. And one of the stimulus, and I know we're gonna talk about this a little bit later in the podcast, is what we call a quick dot. And through these stimulus, we are able to provide sensory based learning experiences.
in mathematics that not only reduce anxiety and create successes for students that have never maybe felt success for math before, but we are also going to rip down the barriers that remove the access from students with disabilities. We want to make math more accessible for student. But keep the complexity of the subject area and we do that through the stimuli, one of them being quick dots.
As we go through the week, we're gonna walk through these short interventions and these interventions are going to target the deficit areas of math fact fluency. Pattern recognition, mathematical reasoning, and number sense. We're gonna target these major deficits that students have and learn how to fill these gaps and to create successes that are not only going to improve overall math achievement, but are going to improve the confidence and the mindset of these students .
[00:11:24] Cheri: I think I'm gonna add at this point in time for the occupational therapist in the audience. There's a lot of neuroscience that's going on as we know in preparation for writing. There's proprioception, there's vestibular, there's kinesthetic, there's other senses that are happening, and I've spent the last couple years educating Jonily and some other math teachers on what the these senses are doing for the system and.
I've been able to bring to the table is the awareness of those sensory motor pathways. What Jonily has done for me is helped me make connections to math education so that as a therapist, I'm able to help these students that are struggling with math in very unique structured ways that augment the classroom.
[00:12:29] Jonily: Cheri, you make a good point on this connection, which inversely the title of the book and the challenge math disconnected is bringing awareness to the lack of connections between what students are getting in therapy and what they're getting in the classroom. If we can connect those aspects, just as you've described, then we have much more power to enhance the learning of mathematics for these students.
As teachers, become educated in the neuroscience and as the therapist to become educated in the math content. We can then double dose the interventions with these students, make them much more connected. Then we're gonna actually see the carryover into the math classroom as well as the improvements in therapy.
But to be honest, Teachers and therapists don't understand each other's worlds enough, and that is what this project has done. what Cheri and I have done, is understand each other's worlds so that we can better facilitate our own world. The interventions now are targeted not just for content, but also for non-content therapy areas.
The amount of information that I've learned from Cheri about sensory processing issues with students have allowed me to make my interventions better mathematically bringing in those sensory components.
I
[00:13:56] Cheri: wasn't gonna talk about this earlier, but I do need to talk about this now.
There is a book called Start With Why by Simon Sinek, which you have shared that book with me several times. And one of the takeaways I took from that book is the, his circle starts with the center with why. And then the second layer is what? And the last layer is how. . But one of the things that I really want us to think about is that why section is really the center of the brain.
That's the limbic system, which is where all the sensory motor pathways connect with the body. And if we are not connecting with that center part of the brain, We are not gonna be able to access learning, whether it's math, reading, writing, social studies, science, art, math. It doesn't matter if we don't connect the center of the brain, that sensory motor process. Learning isn't going to occur.
[00:15:03] Jonily: Absolutely. You talk, Cheri , about information processing. That's exactly what you're talking about right now. Kids don't even have access to the learning no matter what interventions we're doing unless we adjust for information processing.
[00:15:16] Cheri: Exactly. What I want to propose to my audience, as well as your audience is connect, have the. OT work with you in the classroom. If you are a teacher, if you are the OT, approach the math teacher and say, "Hey, look, I know Johnny is struggling in your classroom. Can I observe him a little bit and see if there's a way that I can help him?" Really make those connections?
Use the Learning Support teacher as a bridge to make those connections a little bit more solid. Another way that you can really make those connections as an occupational therapist is seek out the instructional coach in your district. That is one of those people that you may not even know exists.
Jonily, tell us what an instructional coach is so that they know how to find that person in their school.
[00:16:17] Jonily: this is a very recent position or role in a school district. Many school districts don't even have instructional coaches, I'm gonna say probably in the last 15 to 20 years, there have been these roles in schools that have been called instructional coaches.
These are people that have been dynamic classroom teachers that have been able to use strategies in their classroom that makes a difference in achievement of students, not just for mathematics, but for all subject areas and have studied instruction and what helps the brain learn. Instructional coaches are coaches for the teachers
on instruction, so the name is in the title. These coaches sometimes still have their own classroom that they teach their own students, but at other times, instructional coaches don't have their own classroom of students anymore, but they work with teachers to support great instructional delivery in their classrooms.
When instructional coaches first came to be, it was a little bit awkward. Anything that's unknown causes a lot of anxiety. And it was almost perceived that if an instructional coach was paired with a teacher, that teacher was doing something wrong or that teacher needed help or that teacher had deficits
and exactly the opposite is true. I think in education, we haven't truly made this shift that if we're working with other people, that's a positive, not a negative. And I think that's a mindset we need to get over in Education. In our instructional coaching training, we are told to seek out the teachers that are already having great success, analyze that success, and then help them even elevate that success to the next level. Instructional coaching was never meant to" fix teachers." I think that was maybe a little bit of misconception in the beginning.
There still isn't. A lot known about instructional coaching because it's not as prevalent everywhere as I think it will be in the next 10 to 20 years. Bottom line is instructional coaches, coach teachers on their instruction in ways such that they model lessons, they observe the teacher doing lessons, give feedback, and help that teacher get better.
Through that instructional coaching, the instructional coach themselves become better in their work and in their instructional knowledge. Now let's couple that with partnering instructional coaches teachers, aide. and the therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, any other of these stakeholders that can be a part of this team, not just in an IEP meeting or not just when their decisions need to be made, but a team talking about the actual instruction and interventions with the students.
That's the conversation that we're talking about here today. it's gonna be awkward probably for therapists to approach teachers, or teachers to approach therapists. This podcast can be one way. You can send a link and say, "Hey, I heard this podcast. I wonder if there's any connection that we can make to help better serve our students."
[00:19:30] Cheri: I love it. I love it. I love it. From an occupational therapist perspective, the mentorship model is the closest thing that I can relate to what you are describing, Jonily. Occupational therapist, seek out people to partner with and improve collaboration within your school district.
If you really want to learn more about that, come to either of these five day challenges, because that's exactly what we're talking about is collaboration. One of them is taking it more from the writing. The other one's taking it more from the math perspective, but we can learn about both. There's been a lot of research in the science of reading.
We need to up the ante on the science of writing and the science of math from the perspective of collaboration.
[00:20:26] Jonily: Beautifully said.
[00:20:29] Cheri: I say that and I pause, because I'm thinking science of mathematics. Isn't mathematics part of science? I'm talking about like the whole neuroscience behind it.
[00:20:39] Jonily: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's controversy around science of reading because I'm a math person, I don't know all of the details. I know, just enough to be dangerous, but we've also had our controversy in mathematics . This old math, new math, common core math.
I think the math world has been mixed up for a long time, and this collaboration has really brought substance to what mathematics teaching and learning should look like, and more specifically in math disconnected, what instructions should look like and what intervention should look like for students with disabilities.
I think all of the controversy and all of the kind of education wars that have happened over the last decade at least, has really caused us to all pause and think about. . . What are we doing and what does the research say? And that, I think, is the beauty of these projects that Cheri and I are working on together is we have taken a deep dive into analyzing what has happened in the past, where are we now, and what does the future hold for education for students with disabilities specifically.
[00:21:53] Cheri: One of the things that I talk about in my five day challenge that I'm doing independent of you is the cost of education. The cost of education to educate a child in a general education classroom is around $20,000. You add special education to that, you can multiply that times eight. Eight times the amount of money to educate a child. If we start to collaborate and shift some of the buckets of places that we put the money, we can probably improve the budget in school districts. , this is my perspective. We can improve the budget inside the school district. Employ the occupational therapist full-time alongside the instructional coach and the general education teachers reduce the overall cost of special education and the quality of education of our students will improve dramatically.
[00:23:02] Jonily: Cheri, I couldn't agree more. Since you have opened that can of worms, I'm gonna spill it out.
it is my belief and perspective that we waste a lot of time in our schools doing things that don't have the direct impact in student achievement.
When I hear those numbers about the cost that it takes to educate, It does not cost nearly that much in my opinion. Let me give you just one example. I just did an event a couple of weeks ago called Math in a Month, and in 23 days we can conquer all of our math standards. Through exposure rather than this focus on teaching one thing at a time and trying to master one thing before we move on to another.
I'm only able to now provide this coaching and provide these events for people to have success in a shorter amount of time because I understand how the brain learns and typical traditional math teaching. Is exactly the opposite of how the brain learns, holds onto processes and retains the information.
What we do is we shorten the span of time. We teach multiple standards through each of these stimulus that I was talking about before. And through that we. Gain more success in less time. We can teach more in less time. And we level the playing field because in these stimulus that we use, they are naturally differentiated to allow access for our top level student and our struggling student at the same time, in the same room with the same lesson.
If we stick with these traditional approaches, it takes longer and costs more. If we start to look at some of these brain-based, sensory-based, processing based approaches, it's not only gonna cost less money, but it's gonna take less time and less stress on our teachers and our school systems. It's gonna bring more joy to the students, the teachers, the parents, and everyone else involved because of the types of interventions that we're using. That are focused on how the brain learns and how information is processed.
[00:25:25] Cheri: Are you ready to share one of those interventions?
[00:25:28] Jonily: I am ready.
[00:25:30] Cheri: One of the interventions that we have been working on has a solid foundation in visual perception. Jonily, can you describe your Quick Dots?
[00:25:45] Jonily: Absolutely. Let me describe Quick Dots first. Quick dots is a stimulus that actually turns into what I call a reference task. it's a task that we ask students to do mathematically, but as Cheri said, visually there's a lot of other non mathematical components . Quick Dots is a way that we can provide a high level of accessibility, but also a high level of math complexity at the same time.
it's really a game changer in education. The reason I call this stimulus, A reference task is because Quick Dots can be used again and again with variations or the same Quick Dot throughout the year and through the years. I like to use Quick Dots, some of the same Quick Dots from one grade level to the next so that students see them multiple times.
And get multiple interactions over time. We talk about why students don't retain information and it's because they don't have enough interactions. Over time, our gifted kids only need one to two interactions. Our bright kids who sometimes some will say they're gifted, really are bright and achieve only because they play the school game and work hard.
They need five to seven interactions, our students with disabilities and some of these processing issues, they might need 60, 6- 0 to a hundred interactions before they learn something completely that they will never forget.
[00:27:14] Cheri: Let's pause a second.
[00:27:15] Jonily: Yes.
[00:27:15] Cheri: you just said 60.
[00:27:17] Jonily: 60.
[00:27:18] Cheri: 60 interactions.
That means two times two equals four. Somebody with a disability may need to see that and interact with it, both visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically 60 times before they get four.
[00:27:38] Jonily: I love that you paused and reiterated that because in the Minds on Math Model of Instruction, one of the first steps is to identify what's absolutely essential, mathematically.
How are we able to teach more and less time? We're really identifying what's essential and what concepts and skills have the most leverage to maximize high school learning, basically. And once we identify what those essentials are, then ultimately we have less to teach, but students will learn more.
I'm glad you paused on that. Quick Dots is one way to get 60, 70, 80 interactions over time. Because in my classroom, I could do a Quick Dot with my students once a week. I could do a Quick Dot every day if I wanted to. I could do a Quick Dot every year that the students are in my school. That could be one of our consistent interventions or instructional aspects that we use at every grade level.
[00:28:48] Cheri: What does a Quick Dot look like?
[00:28:50] Jonily: Perfect. I was just gonna describe the first Quick Dot. We call this one the Purple X because it is purple in color and it looks like it makes an X.
If you visualize an X, and then also visualize chunks of nine. So 3, 3, 3, 3 rows of three. Picture one chunk of nine and expand it outward in four diagonal directions. That's how the X grows with these chunks of nine. However, the beauty of this Quick Dot is that there are chunks of nine that overlap on the corner.
There really aren't chunks of nine. There's this whole visual perspective piece, but it's also a really complex math piece. when we show a Quick Dot student, we might show them what I call stage three, which is like three iterations or three expansions of the chunks of nine. You have all these dots on a paper.
I show the students for three to four seconds, I take it away and I ask them to tell me how many dots they saw. That's the essence of Quick Dots. I can use the purple X multiple times, but we also have lots of variations of Quick Dots so that you can use different Quick Dots over time. Students are then asked to figure out how many dots they saw.
this is access for everyone. Every student in my room, whether they have a strong or a weak math number sense, math ability, they have access . They feel like they can answer it because we're estimating and one of the things that students with dyscalculia have is lack of estimation skills.
We are targeting these students specifically because we're giving them more interactions with estimation. That's what a Quick Dot looks like. That's how we implement a Quick Dot, and that is how we can offer access for all students, and then the complexity of the mathematics extends beyond that.
But I'm not sure how much we wanna get into here, Cheri.
[00:30:52] Cheri: No that's quite all right. I've worked with this particular Purple X with several of my students, and one of the things that I've noticed is students with the disability do not see the overlapping corners where the X is expanding into the next level.
Even a as they copy it over onto another piece of paper with the same background, they cannot see it. I often see it's seven blocks of nine with no overlap, and even after you point it out with different colors , they still can't see it. Bringing awareness to the visual perception is one of the essential pieces that we need to create this overlap and this collaboration between therapy and teaching.
The teachers understand the neuroscience and the OTs the speech therapists understand what the teacher's trying to get to.
[00:32:00] Jonily: I'll share from my perspective, I think this is beautiful because. From my perspective, I have some select groups of students that I've followed through the years, and every year they see the purple X two to three times during that year.
And ultimately through those interactions, my most struggling students with a great number of math deficits, are now able to see that overlap because we've made it very explicit for them and now they're looking for that overlap in other areas. Talk about the beauty of application. That's another thing that our kids with disabilities struggle with, is applying that application knowledge.
They learn to another scenario, and I'm seeing mathematically that students are able to at least look for overlap and double counting, which is one of the deficits. Even students that don't have math learning disabilities, many of our typical students, struggle with seeing some of these overlaps in mathematics and then that messes up their counting.
The other thing I wanna point out is, Cheri, when you said the two times two equals four and the number of interactions kids need for. By doing a Quick Dot, I'm building math fact fluency because we're dealing with a bunch of nines. If I have seven nines or eight nines or nine nines, I have to figure out at some point how much that is.
That's single digit multiplication, fact fluency. Quick Dots are addressing that skill as well as some of these other skills that we've talked about. This is what I mean by teaching more and less time. You can use one task, one reference task, one stimulus, and teach multiple standards and do therapy at the same time.
[00:33:47] Cheri: Bingo, bang, boom, bam. Love it. Wow. We have talked about a lot of things in a short amount of time. Hopefully we haven't taken our audience to this. I cannot even associate with both Jonily and Cheri because their minds are so far above us. Please take the time, slow down and join our five day challenges.
You can find the information on either cheridotterer.com or jonily.com am I correct? Jonily?
[00:34:22] Jonily: Absolutely. Yes. J o n i l y. jonily.com
[00:34:27] Cheri: our podcast releases on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month during the school year. I also encourage you to join The Writing Glitch Community, and we have special q and as in there that after the podcast releases, Jonily will even come and do a q and a? Talk with you about some of those concerns.
Before I end this podcast, I have a surprise for you, Jonily.
She's looking at me with
[00:34:58] Jonily: I wish people could see my face.
[00:35:01] Cheri: I have a surprise for you. You have been nominated. Make sure I got it right. The Champion of Change Award with the International Dyslexia Association. I have pulled together, some of your. Teachers from the school that you primarily work at, let them know about this nomination and you have been nominated.
So congratulations on your nomination . You will find out sometime soon. I will have to share the write up that was sent in. So congratulations.
Oh my gosh. Wow. Oh, Cheri, thank you. Oh my gosh. That was really unexpected.
Oh, why? I know. Okay,
[00:35:57] Cheri (2): Ed Watson, thank you for your time.
[00:35:59] Jonily: Oh, Ed, oh, that is a game changing human, there. He is a remarkable . Wow. Oh my goodness. Absolutely fantastic.
[00:36:13] Cheri: Ah, wonderful. So as I close, remember you were put here for such a time as this. Podcast post-production is managed by Sam C Productions. Thanks for being here. Jonily, tell everybody again where they can find you.
[00:36:31] Jonily: Jonily.com. Thank you so much, Cheri.
Wow.
[00:36:35] Cheri: All right, so long. Everybody have a great couple weeks. We'll see you on the fourth or second Tuesday of the month.