Attention to the social and emotional well-being of children has come to the forefront of education in recent years with good reason. As a special education teacher for the first 25 years of my teaching career, one of the greatest challenges I faced each day was helping children with dyslexia to believe in themselves and, most importantly, their ability to learn. While there is now a wealth of information to support and inform adults and educational professionals about dyslexia, little is available to help children understand and cope with their disability. Quite simply, I wrote When You Write p I See d to fill that void and to provide young children a necessary foundation of confidence and create a positive self-image to help them overcome the social and emotional challenges they face every day due to dyslexia or other learning disabilities. In short, the goal of this book is to empower students with the knowledge that they are not ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’, but simply need to learn in a way that is different than their peers, and that’s okay! So often, students, particularly those who are dyslexic, feel isolated and alone, that they are the only ones facing these challenges as they quietly watch their classmates quickly and easily decode a text or story and wonder why the same task seems so difficult or even impossible for them. With each passing grade level, feelings of insecurity and self-doubt grow until giving up or acting out seems the best choice.
This story works to empower young learners, giving them the confidence to believe in themselves and achieve academic success by showcasing a character they can relate to, someone who looks like them, and faces the same challenges dealing with dyslexia. The character doubts himself, but learns he is special, smart, and ultimately, successful, learning how to read and all the joy that accomplishment brings. A serious topic, dyslexia is shared in a kid-friendly story, with illustrations and a rhyming, engaging tone that children will enjoy. Learning about new things, reading stories filled with fun and imagination, is not out of reach for any student. Learning should be fun, and my story, When You Write, I See d, shows every student that it is possible to enjoy reading and be a successful student.
Does your child love to doodle and draw? Do they learn best through pictures? Here’s a surprising way to nurture their creative skills and build their confidence – it’s called cartooning!
Meet artist, Sarah Jane Vickery. She’s taken the skills she learned during her own struggles with dyslexia, to develop Cartoon Club – a program that helps kids build confidence through the ageless art of cartooning.
Cartoon Club started out as an after-school activity in local schools but quickly grew in popularity with the children to become a program of weekly online art classes as well as a Cartoon Club Game and Online Course.
Sarah believes that a creative mindset is not just about thinking outside of the box and inventing new things, it’s also key to expressing thoughts, processing ideas and telling your own story. These are the tools that children develop by cartooning. By fostering the skills of creative thinking, children build confidence to adapt and change, not just when they are drawing, but in everyday life too.
In order to reach more children, Sarah has developed the Introduction to Cartooning Online Course. Based on her Cartoon Club class, it’s more than just a step-by-step instruction on how to draw. Sarah explains how she approaches each drawing, how she plays with ideas to design interesting characters, and the types of questions she asks herself when she get stuck or her picture isn’t working out how she wants. Her goal is to give children the skills to be creative with their drawings and have the confidence to solve challenges when they’re working on their own.
Cartooning has the connotation of being light-hearted or even silly, but it’s that very freedom to think outside of the box that Sarah says enables students to free their imagination and come up with new ideas they never thought possible. It’s a real confidence boost for dyslexic children who are often very strong visual learners.
The Online Course has lots of creative challenges for children. In one exercise, Sarah shows children how to brainstorm to develop their ideas from a simple starting topic into a complete cartoon scene. That’s another great thing about cartooning – you don’t have to take so seriously that it stifles in your creativity. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Parents say that they are amazed at how imaginative their children are and what they are able to produce from the topics Sarah presents in Cartoon Club.
Sarah says that “as someone with dyslexia myself, I have always struggled to communicate in words. Drawing and cartooning have always made it so much easier. I find it’s this combination of brainstorming, juxtaposing different ideas and translating that into a cartoon narrative picture, that enables me to develop and communicate my ideas so much more effectively.”
If you’d like to learn more, Sarah has given us a little taste of what you’ll learn in the Online Course. If you’re wondering if it’s right for you, you can grab your pencil and have a go at drawing along with her in the FREE Course Taster. This sample exercise is one on Capturing Expression. It’s about 20 minutes long and all you need is a pencil and paper. It’s a lot of fun and you’re going to be surprised at what your children can produce. You can have a go too!
Online Course Description
This is an online cartooning course for anyone who loves to doodle and get creative. If you want to not only improve your drawing skills but also create your own cool characters and draw fantastic cartoon scenes, this is the course for you!
Who’s the Course for?
The course is aimed at both beginners, who have not done a lot of cartooning before, as well as keen doodlers who want to develop their own style. This online cartooning course is based on my Cartoon Club for Kids (ages 8-12) and Discover Your Inner Cartoonist (adult) online art classes. So no matter your age, if you enjoy putting pen to paper, I think you’ll be surprised at just how creative you can be!
What will you learn?
The fun way to be drawing simple cartoons in no time
The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labor market. This phenomenon has accelerated both the arrival of the future of work and the reshoring of well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
A world of new technology is fundamentally changing how people work. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, demonstrates how the required skills, abilities and tasks, called competencies, are shifting because of automation and labor force transformation initiatives. Their findings indicate:
Processing, manual, and transaction-type competencies such as coordination and time management, management of costs and finances, material resources and reading, writing, math and active listening are declining.
Creative, problem-solving and social competencies such as analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies and creativity and initiative are trending up.
To cope with this fast-changing world, businesses need more creative and out of the box thinkers to manage digital age disruptions. The country will require more people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell. All were innovative thinkers and businessmen who were or are dyslexics.
Human Resource (HR) departments must learn how to adapt the hiring and on-boarding process to take full advantage of creative thinkers and dyslexic candidates, by not rejecting them because they do not fit the standard new applicant model. By using those outdated standards, they have been rejecting bright minds who are part of the next generation of inventors, designers and makers.
See how a young person with Dyslexia attempts college acceptance by requesting that they give him an opportunity to prove himself.
“I am dyslexic. I used to think it was a liability; that someone had to “take a chance on me” to give me a job or “let” me into school. I encourage you to think about how you measure ability. If you are using a process that relies solely on reading and writing effectively you are eliminating people who would be your best problem solvers. If you want new, different, better ideas you need someone who thinks differently. And for that you need someone with a brain that is wired differently”.
Although each person with dyslexia will have unique strengths and weaknesses, the learning difficulties are best known for causing challenges with reading, writing and spelling. Once thought of as being an impediment to a successful career in business, countless high-profile CEOs and entrepreneurs are helping dispel the misconception that dyslexia is a negative condition.
Dyslexia Handicap or Advantage?
Dyslexia is far more common among entrepreneurs than the general public. A study by Julie Logan of the Cass Business School in London showed that 35 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs—more than twice the national average—identified themselves as dyslexic. In a survey reported by CEO Magazine, 69,000 self-made millionaires and 40% of entrepreneurs were found to show signs of dyslexia.
Dyslexia affects about 15 percent of Americans. But this apparent weakness can also be a covert strength, especially in business. Shark Tank stars Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran and Kevin O’Leary all have dyslexia, and say it has helped them be better entrepreneurs.
So, what is dyslexia? Dyslexia is a genetic difference in an individual’s ability to learn and process information. Focusing on the changing demand for competencies expected to emerge in the future, shows how a typical dyslexic capability could support the required shift in effort in the workplace. New collar jobs will be created that match closely to the strengths of dyslexic thinking and could provide an opportunity for organizations to bridge the skills gap of the future.
However, the traditional approach to dyslexia in the workplace is typically directed at the remediation of dyslexic challenges. An alternative approach based on skills could allow for organizations to focus on both the remediation of learning difficulties and harnessing of strengths, better aligning a deeper understanding of dyslexic skills with organizational values.
Anyone who has ever had a speech therapy session knows that it is an insightful and helpful experience. Speech therapists have spent years advising their patients about how to improve their speech, voice, and communication skills on an individual level. However, there are some techniques that can also be done at home between sessions with your therapist or independently. In this blog post, we will discuss 8 different techniques for improving your kid’s speech quality at home! Speech therapy may also be necessary in some cases of dyslexia if problems with articulation persist. The following fun exercises can be done to improve speech and vocabulary in any child regardless if professional intervention is required by a speech therapist.
1. Introduce a new word to your child every day
If your child is able to learn new words, then this technique can be helpful! Introducing a word every day forces them to think about the meaning of that word and how they say it. It also gives you an opportunity to point out similarities between different words (e.g., shoe and chew).
This exercise should not take more than one minute per day. You can use a word list as an easy way to find new words for introduction each day! Learning new words can help children to be more expressive and feel confident in their abilities to communicate!
2. Play games with your child that increase their vocabulary
Many games and activities will help your child to be more expressive! For example, you can play “I Spy” or Guess Who. Ask questions that require a lot of words (e.g., What is this? How many colors are there in the sky?)
Playing these types of games encourages children to use their vocabulary and gives them the opportunity to express themselves.
3. Encourage your child to read more often and in different genres, like magazines or comics
Reading books or magazines is great for children because it allows them to be exposed to new words and ideas. You can also encourage your child to read in different genres, like comics!
This will help make reading more fun and they may learn something new from the book that they wouldn’t have found in a typical novel.
4. Use puppets as a fun way for children to practice conversation skills
A puppet is a perfect way to engage children in conversation and it is easier for them to express themselves. Puppets are also really fun because parents can act out the part of the puppet too!
This will help your child feel more confident about speaking with others while getting lots of practice at communication. (Note: Puppets are for children that have speech delays and need to work on their language skills.)
5. Get kids involved in cooking so they can learn about healthy food choices and how to prepare them
Use cooking as a way to get your kids involved in healthy eating and making wise food choices.
Some ways you can do this are by having them read through cookbooks with recipes that appeal to their interests or letting them spend time looking at online recipe ideas on the internet. This will help give them information about what they should eat, and what they should avoid.
More importantly, it will let them explore the science of cooking so that when they grow up they’ll know how to cook for themselves or learn new recipes on their own!
6. Have kids act out stories from books or movies together
Have kids act out stories from books or movies together – one person should be the narrator while the others are characters in the story.
We’ll teach you how to have kids act out stories from books or movies together! One person should be the narrator while the others are characters in the story. For example, one child is a character and another is an obstacle in the way. The narrator should tell them what to say and how they’re feeling as their emotions change throughout the scene, while the other child takes on a different role like a best friend or bully, depending on what’s going in that part of the story.
7. Practice tongue twisters to improve their articulation
Kids should practice tongue twisters to improve articulation.
Here are some fun ones: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if the woodchuck could chuck wood?” and “What’s in the red box with hornets?” These will help your child improve articulation, and they’re a lot of fun to say.
8. Read books aloud for at least 5 minutes each day and let them draw or scribble something related to the reading material
Children should read books aloud with an adult, or one-on-one. This will help them improve their articulation and reading skills while also improving their oral language.
Additionally, children can draw something related to the book they are reading. Research has shown that this activity facilitates the development of drawing skills in early childhood as well as improves literacy and language skills. This technique is ideal for children with dyslexia because it helps them improve their reading skills while boosting vocabulary.
The best way for parents and teachers to work on nasal speech therapy is by reading books aloud. Reading a story from the point of view of different characters can also help kids improve their articulation skills without even realizing it!
Why these techniques work: These speech therapy techniques are a great way to help improve articulation and reading skills in children, who may have trouble with their oral communication due to developmental delays or other health issues. They’re also easy to implement at home, making them an ideal choice for parents of young kids.
Speech therapy is a really great way for your child to learn more about themselves, what they want in life, and how they can go after those things.
But you don’t always need access to professional help from a therapist – there are many things that you can do at home with your child.
Children may be struggling in school because they cannot get their thoughts out when talking to others. This is a big reason why so many children have speech delays and need speech therapy help from professionals – but there are lots of ways for parents to work on these skills, too!
(STILLWATER, Oklahoma, May 7, 2021) — Camille Carey was told she shouldn’t go to college.
Not that she couldn’t, but she shouldn’t.
She was struggling to pass her high school exit exams because she couldn’t read them. She couldn’t write on them, either.
Despite her severe dyslexia and dysgraphia, Carey eventually did pass those tests. She decided to go to college anyway, and Friday, she will earn a master’s degree in entomology and plant pathology from Oklahoma State University.
“They told me, ‘Well, it is better if you don’t go to college,’” she said. “Well, here I am.”
The Weatherford, Texas, native has known about her disabilities from an early age. Her mother, Barbara, realized Camille was having trouble in preschool, with the diagnosis becoming official in first grade.
“It is all I have ever known so I don’t know anything different, but it definitely does take some time,” Carey said.
She has had a drive to always do well in school despite her disabilities, but Carey said none of it would have been possible without the advances in technology in recent years.
Carey uses screen readers such as JAWS and dictation software like Dragon Speech when writing her papers. Voice-to-text has become a major part of her life, and she can’t go anywhere without GPS because most road signs are illegible to her.
“I have to know exactly where I’m going, so there is no real spontaneous driving with me, it is point A to point B,” Carey said. “In restaurants, I have to normally have whoever is with me to read me the restaurant menu, or I am going to be there for a very long time trying to read it.”
Without technology, Carey has to break down a sentence word by word.
“Sometimes I might read it backwards or sometimes I might read something or I might see the word like ‘cat,’ but I might not recognize it is ‘cat,’” Carey said. “So, normally it is like decoding it word by word and going very, very slowly.”
When writing, she has to use technology because her penmanship is completely illegible. Carey described it as almost like writing in ancient hieroglyphics.
Her advisor at OSU, Dr. Wyatt Hoback, said he first noticed her handwriting in his initial meeting with Carey when she was deciding whether to go to graduate school in Stillwater.
“I realized she was taking notes and I glanced down at those notes, and they were just lines and squiggles. I couldn’t figure it out,” said Hoback, an associate professor in the Ferguson College of Agriculture.
Although her disabilities are a daily hindrance, Carey has persevered. While earning her bachelor’s degree at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, she became interested in entomology and the study of insects’ impact on plants.
After her Tarleton State graduation, Carey began to work at the Noble Research Institute in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where she developed a passion for agriculture.
“They were the ones who got me into extension and really trying to create good, meaningful research that could help producers and landowners,” Carey said.
One day, she and some other students visited Stillwater from Ardmore to explore graduate school opportunities. She met Hoback and he saw how bright she was and how high her GPA from Tarleton was, so he decided to take a chance on her.
“I was a little bit apprehensive, but she had such enthusiasm and drive, and we took her on,” Hoback said. “I am really glad about that decision because she is amazing.”
Carey’s graduate projects at OSU involved working with the Agricultural Research Service Lab of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Stillwater, where she was co-advised by Dr. Scott Armstrong. She primarily worked on sorghum research, a hardy grain that is drought-resistant and used mostly for cattle forage.
Sorghum had been under attack over most of the past decade as aphids — pests that can drain a plant’s nutrients — had undergone a genetic switch that allowed them to start colonizing sorghum plants.
Because sorghum is a cheaper plant, chemical application was too expensive. However, since aphids were destroying sorghum, the USDA needed research on how to make the plant less desirable to these pests.
“A lot of pests eat those plants so basically we are trying to create resistant plants that cows, horses and livestock can eat but the insects don’t like,” Carey said.
Her work also included seeing if sorghum could grow under artificial lighting, as well as studying aphid reproduction, which involved at one point her having to go count aphids every single morning for 35 straight days.
“She is always enthusiastic and accomplished probably 2½ to 3 master’s projects by herself in the period of two years despite COVID because she was so engaged and willing to put in the time and effort to figure things out,” Hoback said.
Carey also served as a teaching assistant for Hoback, grading papers using her screen readers and giving notes using her dictation.
“She is just awesome and so caring that she helps students learn without making them feel like they have an inadequate knowledge of entomology,” Hoback said.
Carey said none of this would have been possible without the help of OSU’s accessibility department, ensuring she had everything she needed to succeed.
“Y’all are so lucky here with the accessibility department,” Carey said. “I was nervous that they weren’t really going to understand because there are not many people in graduate school who have to use screen readers all the time.
“But they understood it 100 percent. They understood that I wasn’t trying to get an unfair advantage over the other students; I was just trying to make it on my own.”
Technology has had its drawbacks, though. In a field that has so many scientific names, she has had to work with her professors to teach her screen readers how to say each word. Because she has to dictate her papers, Carey has to be alone lest the program pick up someone else’s voice.
“It might take someone else maybe a week on a publication, and it is probably going to take me a month,” Carey said. “It takes me a very, very long time because I have to make sure everything is right. You are talking to the computer and listening to the computer back again. It is a constant little battle.”
She kept at it, though, and she will get to continue her education past her master’s as well. Carey has been accepted into the doctorate program at Texas A&M, where she will continue working on her dream of being an extension agent someday.
Carey said her mom cried seeing what she has done. Camille is not the only one in her family with these disabilities —one of her sisters has dyslexia and her father has dysgraphia.
“There have been times where I cried and wanted to quit because it has been so hard,” Carey said. “Mom has definitely been my biggest supporter and always been there.”
Hoback said seeing what she has done shows that earning an advanced degree in science is possible with a reading and writing disability. Carey just wants to show that no matter what anyone says you should or shouldn’t do, don’t ever give up.
“Kids who are just like me, technology is amazing, but you have to want it,” she said. “It is going to be really hard, but you got to want it and work for it, and it is so rewarding.”
MEDIA CONTACT: Jordan Bishop | Communications Specialist | 405-744-9782 | [email protected]
Oklahoma State University is a modern land-grant university that prepares students for success. OSU has more than 34,000 students across its five-campus system and more than 24,000 on its combined Stillwater and Tulsa campuses, with students from all 50 states and around 100 nations. Established in 1890, OSU has graduated more than 275,000 students to serve the state of Oklahoma, the nation and the world.
Most folks today don’t write in cursive. Some people never even pick up a pen or pencil. Writing in cursive has become rare — yet reading cursive remains an important life skill, whenever:
family members still use cursive, or even send greeting cards that use cursive fonts:
teachers use cursive, or assign work that involves reading historical documents in their original form:
employers, supervisors, or co-workers use cursive:
store signs or logos use cursive:
Today, more and more children and adults — with and without disabilities — cannot read cursive handwriting, or can only partially and laboriously figure out a word or sentence in cursive, even if the cursive writing is clear and error-free (which is often not the case). These difficulties occur at all educational and socioeconomic levels.
In the USA, Canada, India, and many other countries, non-readers of cursive include most people 35 and under, as well as a surprising number of older adults who have often managed to hide this problem throughout life.
Worse yet, today’s millions of “cursive non-readers” (with or without disabilities) aren’t limited to those who were simply never taught cursive.
Even when conventional cursive training actually does lead to reading (and writing) cursive, those “successful” learners often lose the ability sometime between the year that they are taught cursive (typically Grade 2 or 3) and the year that they leave high school.
This situation was profiled in 2013 by one of Canada’s largest newspapers. The cursive non-readers whom that article were college freshmen. By now, almost eight years later, they must be in their mid-twenties: they have jobs, or are trying to get jobs, and probably some of them have families. (How will cursive non-readers help their children, if the school or the district or other administration mandates cursive instruction?)
Forgetting how to decipher cursive (or never learning how to decipher it in the first place) can happen anyone — but it more severely impacts people with dyslexia, autism, and other neurological differences that affect how we perceive and process the data that our senses provide.
People with various neurological differences (autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and more) are often very good at looking for patterns — and are extremely good at seeing patterns in the surrounding environment, without ever even having to look for the patterns! The patterns, especially visual patterns, simply jump out as them — or, I should say, simply jump out at us (because I have several of these “dys-”abilities). Therefore, we use visual patterns to try to make sense of what we are trying to learn — and we learn best when we are encouraged to use visual patterns.
However, students who encounter cursive are often discouraged from even trying to wonder if there are visual relations between the cursive letters and their printed counterparts. The two systems of writing, appear unrelated to each other:
Since it looks as if there is no relationship between most cursive letters and their printed counterparts, many learners frustratedly give up on even trying to use their visual/pattern-recognition strengths to “crack the code” of cursive. When the visual/pattern-recognition strengths of a learner’s brain are suddenly made useless, he or she may feel that his/her brain has stopped working and can no longer be trusted. (Such a learner may be said to have “form constancy issues.”)
Unfortunately, well-meaning parents and schoolteachers may accidentally push learners even further in that direction, by trying to reassure frustrated learners of cursive that “there is really no relationship between cursive and printing anyway, so don’t even bother trying to see a relationship or a reason or an explanation. Don’t even think that there could be a relationship between one style of letter and another. There is no relationship, nothing to find, is nothing to understand, so just memorize, don’t worry, and you’ll pick it up just fine, I’m sure.”
However, “just memorizing” (without understanding) is an extremely fragile and worrisome way of trying to learn and remember. What is memorized without comprehension is quickly forgotten, as soon as lessons are over — Especially in modern times, when fewer and fewer people write cursive (or even write by hand at all) in life after school the liabilities of “just memorizing” hold true for most people, to some degree — but they almost always hold true, to a huge degree, for people whose neurology differs significantly from the average.
When learners are told that “there is no reason, only memorization,” and when they experience no way of fully understanding the material that they must memorize , they lose trust in their own ability to even try to learn and understand: at a basic rote-memory level, and/or at any other level.
This is especially true when the subject is cursive handwriting, because — for many students learning cursive — the cursive textbook is typically the only textbook that is full of assigned material which they cannot read (although it is in their own language), but must still copy.
One part of the visual skills/form constancy problem is that the shapes of cursive letters are often inconsistent from word to word, in ways that can make words very hard to recognize.
Look at these cursive words:
In both words, the third letter is a cursive s — but the “same” cursive s is very different each time:
A learner who has memorized the cursive s in past (where it needs to start at the bottom) is likely not to recognize the “same” cursive s in post (where it needs to start at the top):
For any learner — but especially for one whose neurology is not the “average” that textbook publishers assume — all this can deeply shatter confidence and motivation.
Does it have to be this way?
Can we make cursive make sense to all learners — even if they don’t write cursive, or if they don’t write by hand at all?
What if we showed our learners how cursive happened?
A new book, READ CURSIVE FAST (National Autism Resources, 2021), takes this approach: offering three easy stages to lasting cognitive comprehension (not just fragile rote memorization) of what makes a cursive letter a G or a Z or an r or an s — and why. Now, learners’ visual strengths, pattern-recognition strengths, and cognitive strengths can work in synchrony instead of being neglected or frustrated,
Step One: Show how cursive letters happened!
When readers are allowed and encouraged to learn how cursive letters came about, remembering the cursive shapes makes cognitive/pattern-recognition sense, and does not have to rely solely on rote memory. Here’s an example for the letter G:
READ CURSIVE FAST uses a pattern-recognition/cognitive approach to “unlock” the visuals of every cursive letter. Some letters need to be cracked in step-by-step detail, while others can be “cracked” more simply:
When you see the print-style s hiding inside cursive s, you can see why the cursive s looks different after lowercase o versus the way it looks after lowercase a.
Building pattern recognition and understanding into the learning task makes for faster progress and greater retention, by providing another route to comprehension. Cursive writing is not the only path to cursive reading — for many students, it is not even a reliable path.
Step Two: Sustained Reading
Once students recognize cursive letters alone and in words and phrases, it’s time to build automaticity and fluency with longer texts. To accomplish this, READ CURSIVE FAST uses “cursive stories”: passages written in fonts that resemble increasingly difficult styles of handwriting. Here is the opening of one story:
___________________________________________
(The first four sentences of a cursive story from READ CURSIVE FAST.)
___________________________________________
The beginning of each story resembles familiar printed letters, but each sentence adds more and more cursive features, carefully easing readers into understanding increasingly complex forms of cursive.
Step Three: Reading Historical Documents
Once students can read present-day cursive with some fluency, they will eventually want or need to read our nation’s historical documents, many of which are written in very elaborate forms of cursive.
Today, reading historical documents is one of the most frequent reasons for needing to read cursive, but handwriting style variations in past centuries were even more frequent than they are today. This means that most students (particularly those with neurological issues) will benefit from practice with historical cursive samples once they are experienced in reading present-day cursive samples.
Therefore, READ CURSIVE FAST includes a section specifically on historical documents. Learners reach this point are usually pleased and amazed that they can now read historical material.
When we know how each cursive letter happened, we know (and we never forget) what makes the letter understandable. Whatever our own handwriting looks like, whatever style we use, or even if we never write by hand at all, we can make sense of every cursive letter we are shown what parts of a cursive letter make that letter make sense.
When cursive letters make sense, we do not need to write cursive in order to read it.
When we make sense of the interrelations of different alphabet styles — print and cursive and more — handwriting becomes …
As the author of READ CURSIVE FAST, I look forward to seeing and hearing your own experiences and thoughts on cursive reading issues.
Strategies to Support Struggling Readers Which Don’t Require a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology
I have a confession to make. It involves a basic failure on my behalf. What’s worse, my failure impacted students whom I care deeply about: students with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges. It involved waiting for test results before putting accommodations in place for students who were struggling in my class. Of course I didn’t fail them intentionally, and by about the third time I got an evaluation back that pretty much said what I imagined it would, I started putting help in place for the student right away. The discovery of my own blind spot led me to wonder if other teachers were accidentally failing their students in similar ways.
For many years, this is what I did: I would identify a student who was having problems, make some basic observations about what was particularly difficult for him, and then request further information about the student in the form of screening, special tests, and/or a learning evaluation. I would then wait for a report before taking further action. I am often haunted by memories of a particular former eighth-grade history student whose contributions to our discussions put him at the top of the class, but his written answers on tests and essays were always weak and minimalist and put him only in the high C range. At the time, I thought it was sufficient to label this descrepancy and recommend that he get a formal evaluation. I suspected a test would reveal that he was dyslexic. His English teacher concurred. Unfortunately, his father would have nothing to do with outside testing, so my brilliant student received low Bs in my class and never got the help he needed to express what he knew.
But really, what was I waiting for? If asked, I would have responded that I needed more specific information about the student before I could know best how to support him. To many readers, I am sure that response sounds legitimate and reasonable. However, my confession is aimed at fellow teachers who will understand why my delay was unnecessary. I know that I am not alone when I admit that I can usually make general assumptions about what a learning evaluation is going to say before the results are in. Most often the report confirms what I had intuitively guessed about the student. As personally validating and satisfying as that confirmation often is, it should not be a prerequisite to providing timely critical accommodations to my students.
Immediately employing accommodations makes sense for many reasons. First, evaluations take time to schedule and complete. Why waste time waiting to have suspicions confirmed before helping a student? Secondly, there are those untidy problems of cost and access. Testing and evaluations are expensive and for many an unobtainable luxury. For a variety of reasons, public schools can be stingy with these resources, and many independent schools wrongly assume that parents can afford this expense on top of the cost of the school’s tuition. Consequently, many students who need the help that an evaluation can provide are denied it.
I need to be clear about something—I remain an enthusiastic proponent of testing and evaluations. Teachers are greatly assisted by the critical information that they yield. Outside testing provided by learning specialists offers a unique opportunity to isolate many classroom variables and specifically reveal and identify students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, testing helps assess how extreme students’ gaps are and what level of response is necessary. That information is a real gift to teachers, parents, and most importantly, students, and it is a gift that keeps on giving because tests allow future teachers to understand the student’s profile. Lastly, evaluations are required for students to qualify for accommodations on high-stakes tests such as SATs, ACTs, and state exams. All identified students should be provided access to them.
For A Student Struggling with Understanding the Classroom Reading Assignments
Suggest listening to audiobooks or identify a willing adult to read the assigned book to the student. Recommend that students read along with the audiobook version or to follow the words alongside the reader. The more often a struggling reader is exposed to the way they words look, the better. Exposure to the page helps students learn the architecture of sentences. This also helps with spelling and conventions.
Suggest use of assistive technologies currently available that read material aloud to the student. The Kindle, the iPad, or Google’s Nexus tablet, would be examples of this kind of technology, but there are many similar devices being introduced into the market all the time. Click here to read a comparison of these tablets.
If the book/content has been made into a film or covered in a film, suggest that the student watch it to help give a context to the story or content.
Offer extra time to finish reading assignments. Dyslexic and struggling readers need more time to read assigned material.
Provide class syllabuses in advance. Allow the student to read assignments ahead over the school breaks and the summer. This can help the student get a head start so that when the school year takes on its full momentum she is prepared and has had an opportunity to work ahead to absorb the increased volume of work.
Recommend reading books with larger fonts. Hardback versions from the library are visually easier and E-readers offers the ability to adjust the font size as well.
Recommend books that may be shorter or less dense but equally rich in ideas and story for independent reading time.(Click here for a kid-tested reading list.) It is important to recommend the book with enthusiasm, the same enthusiasm typically reserved for more sophisticated titles. Read well-written, easier books yourself, out loud to the class, and recommend them to all students so the struggling students can read them without shame. The objective is to get struggling readers to read AND to like it. (For more on creating a classroom culture for struggling readers, click here.)
Recommend graphic novels.(Click here for a listing of kid-approved ones.) Graphic novels provide struggling readers with a way of strengthening their vocabularies, build their reading confidence, and foster their appreciation of story. Graphic novels can also help support a reader’s understanding of everything from Greek Mythology to Shakespheare.Dictating ideas to an adult can help a student get started with their writing by generating an idea bank that they can draw from. (They also won’t get caught up worrying about how to spell those words)
“Half of the incoming freshmen at our business schools are now being required to take a basic course in writing because they cannot write a presentable letter, report, or proposal.” When David McCullough, twice Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, learned of this situation, he called it “a serious national problem.” Knowing that dedicated teachers, devoted homeschooler parents, concerned grandparents, and trusted private tutors and mentors around the world advise, coach, demonstrate, and practice their young learners in the art of writing, you shake your head and say, “No. It just can’t be.”
Feeling Perplexed by Such an Observation
McCullough, of course, is not fabricating a wild story. Consequently, after a bit, you acquiesce. After all your hard work to teach your students, though, you not only feel puzzled but also feel betrayed. You lament right out loud, “The very thought of such grim results seems impossible.” Your associates, who, like you, also worked diligently to teach their young learners to write well, they had believed – agree. Another member of your teaching team asks, “How in the world is this astonishingly dismal result possible?” After your thoughts settle, your team begins to ask, “Well, then, what measures can we implement to assuage this predicament in the future?”
Searching for Solutions
Once you accept McCullough’s words as true, your teaching team concludes that perhaps your young learners are in the half who mastered what each of you had presented. After all, you constantly had taught your young learners to think positively, to visualize their success, and to expect the best. Now, momentarily, you and your colleagues were thinking negatively.
Teaching the Parts of Speech in a Fun Way
By beginning to enumerate what you had done to prepare your students to write well, you began to get on track. You had taught lesson after lesson to impart to your students grammar – the parts of speech and their definitions -using not only color-coded words but also colorful, memorable characters. You also enumerated and explained the cooperative roles and relationships of the parts of speech. Each member of your teaching team also had relentlessly reviewed the mechanics of the English language—capitalizations, punctuation, contractions, and spelling. Your students were so versed in grammar and mechanics that some of them told you they reviewed your lessons in their dreams at night. Your basic teaching lessons and exercise practices have served your students well. Yes. You now begin to realize that your methods have blessed the memories of your learners.
Using the Power of Colorful Mind Maps to Bolster Memory
Because Mind Maps can so beautifully organize information succinctly, they enhance memory with impressive staying power. Their branches relate to each other in such a way that each and every branch helps to build the topic of the particular map. For example, the young learners can name a mind map as “The Parts of Speech.” Then, they can handwrite the parts of speech—verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections—onto their separate branches. Using attractive colors, drawing, and handwriting in cursive or hand printing join forces to make learning the Parts of Speech not only fun but also memorable.
Note: The Mind Map, as a larger printable .pdf, is available at WritingNow.comgratis.
Connecting New Information with What They Know Already
When students latch onto information that enlightens them, new related information fastens, in a sense, with the data already present. The concepts, then, in a way, begin forming a net to grab, hold, and store more input. Each new learning experience that can hook with the items already present continues the wonderful arrangement. The more relevant and related information students learn, the more they can learn, digest, and absorb. David Gamon, PhD, and Allen D. Bragdon, authors of Learn Faster & Remember More, put the thought more eloquently, “How well you remember depends on how much you already know.” Therefore, the incremental lessons you had taught fostered strong memories. Plus, connecting the three powerful forces—memorable mind maps, drawing, and cursive handwriting—creates a mighty memory treasure.
Enhancing Memory with Cursive Handwriting
Indeed, you had empowered the memories of your young learners in a fine way that some in society today seem to have forgotten. They had loved drawing colorful mind maps and then labeling the parts of speech in cursive. Your students had loved handwriting their assignments. The main trouble your students had was deciding which Parts of Speech Mind Map they liked more. Some liked a Words and Images Mind Map that defined the parts of speech. Others liked a Roles and Relationships Mind Map that showed how all the parts worked together. Others favored a Composing Sentences Mind Map or a Composing Paragraphs Mind Map to steer them to success with their forthcoming writing assignments. More advanced students resonated with the Writing Tips Mind Map. In all cases, they had loved that the vivid colorful characters and color-coded words that made learning not only endearing but also enduring. WritingNow.com provides printable versions of the noted Mind Maps and additional ones from its ebooks to download and enjoy as a gratis bonus.
You did not throw aside handwriting as outdated or outmoded. You did not see handwriting as some relic from the past. Instead, you honored its use for sustaining memory. Moreover, helping your young learners to enjoy practicing their cursive handwriting yielded lasting profits for them.
Speaking for the Practice of Cursive Handwriting
Neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre, PhD, equates the action of handwriting with “meditation” because she says it perpetuates “mindfulness.” Angelika Troller-Janesch, Vice President of the Carinthian Dyslexia Association in Austria explains that taking notes by hand supports memory and helps students preserve what they learn. Livia Pailer-Duller, PhD, CEO of the Austrian Dyslexia Association, a colleague of Troller-Janesch, concurs and shares that handwriting fosters fine motor skills. Plus, she says handwriting boosts the entire learning process. Both teachers emphasize the importance of not allowing digital experiences with computers, tablets, and cellphones to bring about the extinction of the art of cursive handwriting.
Teaming Handwriting with Computer Generating Your Compositions
While computer-generated assignments certainly speed the reading for hardworking teachers, it can be a useful practice if young learners will compose their first drafts by hand. Then they can type their work using a device of their choice. Doing both processes likely team up to expand their memory of the material. Multiple viewing gives time to ponder what they first composed. Plus, as the students continue in this way, errors very well may pop up and beg for correction.
Consequently, students learn in an instinctive way that they cannot simply sit down and write or type their essays in half an hour and think they have finished. They must learn to revise. This polishing practice attunes them quickly to the idea that it takes work to make their essays smoother and smoother. Revising also enhances preserving information and critical thinking.
Learning to Plan for Their Next Day
In your listing of the many aspects, concepts, and projects you had used to help secure their successful writing, you and your teaching team had encouraged your young learners to let each sunset, remind them to pause and reflect on their day. After their appraisal of the passing day, you suggested that they plan for their forthcoming day to help bring big dividends. If upon review some days their efforts went awry, you, doubtless, helped them learn to release the negativity. You pointed out that counting the aspects of their day that did go well would be of great use. It was your hope that helping them to make it a habit to write out their plans for their coming day would become a lifetime ally. You also hoped that if they would allow the sunset to be their daily reliable reminder “to be grateful for the passing day and to prepare gratefully for an even better day tomorrow” doing so could foster their good health emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Finally, you hoped that creating mind maps, engaging in fun drawing, and using cursive handwriting, along with so many other worthy strategies that you taught with care would weave together to help your young learners love their writing and make it their best friend for life.
About the Author
Linda Davis-Kyle is a fitness, health, education, and general interest writer whose articles have appeared in professional journals such as Modern Drama in Canada, Notes & Queries in the UK, Caritas in Ireland, and Studies in English Literature in Japan and in periodicals such as WellBeing in Australia, The Star in Bangladesh, and Healthy Options in New Zealand. She is the author of the e-book Getting Ready to Write: Reviewing English Grammar.
Sources
Aguirre, Claudia. “Does writing by hand sharpen your creativity?”
McCullough, David. “Dialogue with David McCullough (on John Adams).” With Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Library of Congress. Special Event, February 12, 2014. youtube.com, April 3, 2014. 59:50-1:00:13 and !:00:18-1:00:32.
Accessed 18 April 2020
Pailer-Duller, Livia. Personal communication. 30 January 2021. Troller-Janesch, Angelika. Personal communication. 30 January 2021.
Most children are not getting the right kind of memory practice. Long term memory is improved by tests – rote memorization, but it’s working memory that impacts IQ and learning capability, making it far more important
Working memory is defined by the NIH as the retention of a small amount of information in a readily accessible form. It facilitates planning, comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving.
If you can hold, interpret and compare more information in your mind at one time, it makes sense that you will be able to think more deeply, leading to thinking associated with a higher IQ.
Furthermore, if you are able to hold more information in your mind, you can follow lectures more easily, understand the plots and flow of books more comfortably – make them more engaging and interesting, and therefore easier to pay attention.
Einstein’s Brain – Is a Good Long Term Memory Harmful?
Einstein is known to have a notoriously poor long term memory, which scientists wonder helped him. Part of his brilliance was that his mind was not cluttered with rote learned information he didn’t need.
However, a bigger factor in the Einstein story is his working memory. He is thought to have been able to come up all the moving parts in his Theory of Relativity by holding and manipulating them at the same time in his working memory.
Working Memory Practice?
You’d think that given the potency of improvements in working memory to improve attentiveness and IQ that it would be consciously developed at school.
You’d be wrong in that assumption.
Even though working memory is a foundation for learning, if your child does not develop it normally – through listening and reading – it will not develop. And so, it’s not surprising to know that one in 10 students has a low working memory, a gap that will not close without intervention.
This is not a surprise. If a child has auditory processing delays, working memory development will be hampered through lack of practice – if the language being heard is muddy, it cannot be held in working memory. Since dyslexia, ADHD-PI and many other learning issues have their source in processing delays, the presence of working memory in their diagnoses is to be expected.
Short Term Memory vs. Working Memory
Working memory used to be called short-term memory, and you even see it used as a synonym. However, there’s a lot more to working memory than just the short-term memory component. They’re all part of executive functioning skills.
Here’s a good definition with handy quantifications, thanks to The Human Memory website. We’ll start with ‘short-term memory’ to associate the topic with that common layperson term:
“Short-term memory acts as a kind of ‘scratch-pad’ for temporary recall of the information which is being processed at any point in time, and has been referred to as ‘the brain’s Post-it note’. It is static – a way to hold and recall small amount of information (typically around 7 items or even less) in mind in an active, readily-available state for a short period of time (typically from 10 to 15 seconds, or sometimes up to a minute).”
(By the way, children tend to hold less than seven items – more like a couple – particularly if they have learning or processing difficulties.)
Active not Static
Meanwhile, working memory is active – information is held and manipulated. It spans auditory memory and visual-spatial memory, which understood.org explains this way. They’re like skills you’d use to make a video: “Auditory memory records what you’re hearing while visual-spatial memory captures what you’re seeing.”
But, wait, there’s more. To ‘see’ the film again, you’ll need to play it back immediately to access it even while you’re trying to incorporate new information. It can get tricky if you can’t replay that video in your mind (thinking of it as a piece of information nested in your brain) while you’re being bombarded with other information you’re trying to connect to it. If you’re confused by how much information I tried to shove into that sentence, you’ll get a sense of what poor working memory skills are like!
In short, working memory is about recalling and processing relevant information. When you recall information, you’re remembering it in a specific sequence. As for processing, this centres on controlled attention – a cognitive function – that’s linked to processing emotions.
