In this episode of The Writing Glitch, Cheri reviews Decoding Duo and the Morphology Anthology from the Changing Minds Group. These structured literacy resources provide explicit, systematic, and multisensory strategies to improve phonics, spelling, and morphology instruction.
Join us as we explore:
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The scope and sequence of these resources
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How occupational therapists can integrate structured literacy into interventions
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Fun, movement-based learning activities to reinforce spelling and phonics
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Why using familiar classroom content enhances student engagement and retention
https://www.craftingmindsgroup.com/
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TIME STAMPS
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00:00 Introduction to the episode & why literacy tools matter
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01:00 Overview of Decoding Duo & its structured literacy routines
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02:30 Key components of the Decoding Duo program: phonics, word reading, and dictation
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04:00 How occupational therapists can use Decoding Duo in interventions
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05:00 Exploring the Morphology Anthology: What is morphology?
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06:30 Structured literacy in action: Greek & Latin roots, word structure, and multisensory learning
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08:00 OT applications: Using spelling words in sensory activities
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09:30 Movement-based learning: Kinesthetic techniques to reinforce spelling
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10:30 Creative ways to use structured literacy in OT sessions
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11:30 Final thoughts: The importance of fun, engagement, and emotional connection in literacy
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12:00 Outro: Be awesome, be brilliantโyou were put here for such a time as this!
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#TheWritingGlitch #cheri #NeuroscienceOfLearning #CognitiveScience #BrainDevelopment #ExecutiveFunctioning #EducationPodcast
- (01:00) - Overview of Decoding Duo & its structured literacy routines
- (02:30) - Key components of the Decoding Duo program: phonics, word reading, and dictation
- (04:00) - How occupational therapists can use Decoding Duo in interventions
- (05:00) - Exploring the Morphology Anthology: What is morphology?
- (06:30) - Structured literacy in action: Greek & Latin roots, word structure, and multisensory learning
- (08:00) - OT applications: Using spelling words in sensory activities
- (09:30) - Movement-based learning: Kinesthetic techniques to reinforce spelling
- (10:30) - Creative ways to use structured literacy in OT sessions
- (11:30) - Final thoughts: The importance of fun, engagement, and emotional connection in literacy
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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.
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. Donโt let a misunderstanding about this disability stop you from providing best practices.
In case you donโt know me. Iโm 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.
Itโs a big shock when you discover how pervasive writing difficulties are and how little people know about how to helpโeven 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.
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Join The Writing Glitch Community. https://thewritingglitch.com/
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. And welcome to the writing glitch today. We are going to do a product review from the changing minds group, and we're going to look at decoding duo and the morphology workbook that they have. Give me just a chance, a couple of moments here and I will be right back with you as we shift over to look at their product.
Speaker 2: While you, wait, why don't you take a moment and subscribe to this podcast? If you're enjoying what you are listening to and write a comment or a review in your favorite podcast app. One more thing, do me one more favor.
Speaker 2: And that is share this podcast with five friends. Thank you so much. It means a lot to have you help us out to get this, this broadcast and this podcast noticed. Thanks a bunch. . [00:01:00]
Speaker: Okay, I am back. Decoding Duo, Structured Literacy Routines. As we open the book, we come to the Table of Contents, and The table of contents reads that we're going to introduce the duo. We're going to just give a description of the activities using the structured literacy routines. Talk about a simple method.
Speaker: So we go through the scope and practice. We give an overview,
Speaker: the pathways. So they've really gone into detail about how structured literacy instruction Is delivered and what are some of the categories of things that you're doing as your work through this book description of the activities, and then it's very [00:02:00] detailed. So it gives just specific language. Of what you are teaching
Speaker: and at the top it tells a little bit about what the topic is that you're talking about. Here we get into, let me see if I can back up a page here. Here we're getting into some of the decodable text that is, that they're going to be issuing. We have tricky word, we have letter sound practice. I'm just skipping through because I don't want to share the whole thing that they're doing here.
Speaker: So we have a teacher slide. We have phonics concepts. We have more about what they're talking about in that particular lesson. We have single word reading. We have the RAN chart, so that's Random Automatic oh shucks, I can't remember the word, but it really has [00:03:00] to do with what are you picking up on automatically?
Speaker: And here we have some phrases. Here we change it to and incorporate it into sentences. Have a game for the teacher. Dictation. So it just keeps going and getting more in depth and follows the lines of structured literacy. Now, how can an occupational therapist use this even if their school is not using it?
Speaker: You can utilize the, ah, the sequencing of the words that they're utilizing in the building so that when you're working with students at a specific grade level, you can focus, especially if your school is using this system, you can at least be utilizing those words in those sentences that they are [00:04:00] seeing in class as remediation.
Speaker: Now as far as the morphology anthology, let's see if we open this one up, what does it look like?
Speaker: So the table of contents includes morphology, anthology at a glance, so it explains what morphology is, the scope and sequence. So it goes into that systematic. That explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory approach of what structured literacy should be as we're looking through the curriculum, and then we have activities.
Speaker: As we dive in here a little bit, we have morphology at a glance, so we're explaining what morphology is. Let me go back a page here. Let's see what it says here about morphology.
Speaker: Morphology really has to do with [00:05:00] how words are put together through, based on their historical foundation. Is it Greek? Is it Latin where did the foundation of the word come from and how do we help kids understand? So here's that overview of morphology and we have a three day sequence.
Speaker: So there, it's very sequential as you're working through the different words.
Speaker: Instructional Activity, let's see if I can go back, and here are these random phrases that students should be able to identify. Ooh, we have a members only club, hoo. They create a little bit of a game out of it, it looks like. Here's some dictation by a teacher, looking at some of the words that, Go along with this story, which has to be with about dolphins, and then there's this systematic [00:06:00] layout of The lesson as you do lesson one lesson two
Speaker: we go into the words that they need to be recognizing And do we add an S or an ES? And what are some of the rules? So it's very interesting how well they have developed this book and the interaction with these cute little characters they have, like this guy in the front and then with the. Decoding duo.
Speaker: Whoops. I'm bumping the microphone and the the video camera. Sorry about that. And these are little guys. They come up throughout the book. Now these are the overview of the teaching program. I am sure that there is more materials that are involved, but these were the samples that they shared with me.
Speaker: So how does an OT utilize that? I would find out if your school is using this. [00:07:00] The decoding duo or the morphology anthology from Crafting Minds group and take a look at the sentences that are in there, the spelling words, and from there, utilize that as some of your prompts and some of your reinforcement for what you're teaching.
Speaker: So this can take spelling to a whole new level.
Speaker: Let me come back on screen with you.
Speaker: Okay. So here I am back with you. So again, as you're looking at these different structured literacy products and how to incorporate those in an occupational therapy classroom or remediation session, find out what the teacher has been working on. In that classroom, utilize the same words like when we were going through there, we saw a picture of an octopus.
Speaker: How do you use [00:08:00] octopus in your session? What can what games can you create with octopus? What crossword puzzle? Maybe what word search would be easy to create because you can create that in, in a spreadsheet, as long as you have a very narrow column with you center all your letters, you can focus on capital letters or small letters, depending on what the student is working on and take all those words that the student Children have been working on, especially up to that point, and I would definitely include ones that they haven't worked on for a month or two, because then you can bring back that space practice that, and it's a very practice because they probably weren't using that in the general ed classroom, so it's bringing back those words that they've Already seen, already used, already [00:09:00] incorporated into the lesson plan by the teacher where we can reinforce them with different ways of incorporating.
Speaker: Of different ways of utilizing those resources. So creating different worksheets, but let's go beyond the worksheets. What about on the swing, you're throwing a ball back and forth. How do you spell octopus? O C T U P U S. As you're throwing the ball back and forth, you're getting that vestibular, you're getting the proprioception.
Speaker: Getting that kinesthetic movement so you're getting all of those ancillary sensory parts of the brain working that we so crucially are working on in occupational therapy and these kids crucially need to help integrate what they're learning. That's just one example of movement. There are so many different examples.[00:10:00]
Speaker: You could be having them walking along that sensory path that you have created several years ago. They became very popular. Why not, as they're going through that, every time they jump or walk along the wall or whatever, as they're moving along the wall, let's reinforce. How to spell those letters orally, and then we can translate them to written work when we get down to some seated work or some board work or some prone extension work.
Speaker: I am trying to with these. Product reviews, not necessarily say that they're good. They're bad. They're, but this one, I really like it because it's incorporating fun things for the kids. They get attached to these animals and research is showing that animals create a [00:11:00] much more of emotional connection than person to person, especially when kids are struggling.
Speaker: They, Get a defeated experience along themselves. And they have all this shame and the guilt that goes along with it, where we need to find other ways to overcome that negative self talk that these kids are going through. So look for some more product reviews till the end of the school year. This has been Cheri Dotterer at The Writing Glitch.
Speaker: Go be awesome. Go be brilliant. You were put here for such a time as this.
Speaker: Thanks a bunch for being here.