Helping Dyslexic Kids Thrive In Language Arts ft. Teacher Diane Bramble

We're going to get through this. Yeah, it is hard and it is a lifelong thing that you're going to have to deal with, but we have so many ways that we can support you and what do you need? That was so much good advice and tips in there. Sort of from a teacher's perspective, how is that for you working with accommodations and what's your view on it? Well, accommodations are ways that we can change something so that the learner can show what they know without being held back in any way, without being restricted in any way.

So, accommodations take so many different forms from preferential seating to, often it's said, you know, move those students closer to you, which generally works. And a lot of those kids in the middle school who have dyslexia diagnoses will sit in front. I see them all, they're just right there in the front, which I appreciate. But some students need to sit a little farther back. I remember your daughter is one of those.

She was able to really dig in and listen best without being in the front. She really needed to sort of sort and sift through things, synthesize things with a little more distance. So, as a teacher, again, it's really knowing that student and figuring out where does that student need to sit in order to be the best learner they can be. So, an accommodation might be as simple as where that student sits to making sure they use voice to text, getting text to voice for that student.

There might be a study buddy, note sharing. So, many of these things are pretty simple to do with just a little bit of organization and forethought. And every educator owes it to that student, to those students, to make it work. So, if I think a teacher says, well, it's just not going to work in my classroom for whatever reason, I really believe that it's the family, the parent's job to really get in there and advocate until the student can do that for the students can do that for themselves.

So, the advocacy and accommodation, those things go hand in hand after it's acknowledge, advocate, accommodate. So, really acknowledging what that student needs, set up the accommodations, and then really make sure that those are followed through at school. So, I believe that almost all accommodations can be done pretty easily in the classroom. Yeah, that's great to hear. I think too often we hear from teachers that it's just not practical, that they have too many students to be able to individualize in the way that we sometimes, or that we often feel like we need them to, you know, when our students have learning differences.

I guess, any additional thoughts on sort of that practicality aspect, like how to properly individualize instruction for people with learning differences while still maintaining a cohesive classroom or whatever? Well, it definitely is a challenge, and there needs to be planning from the teacher, possibly a special ed educator, a counselor, really getting together to figure out what that student needs, and then figuring out a way to make it happen. And if there are five accommodations, figuring out what the most important ones are, and making sure you do those, which could be always voice to text, for instance, that is pretty easy to do.

You just need a laptop and a quiet spot. And then later, as a teacher, you check in, you see how the spelling was, did you spell check, did you run it through Grammarly, and then you're having a one-on-one conference with that student. And it really is important for every student with dyslexia or a learning difference to have assessments at least three times a year for writing and three times a year for reading, at least.

And we're using in the middle school right now, the curriculum-based measurement, CBM for writing samples, and reading, we are using Dibbles and the Dibbles Maze. And so that gives information to the teacher. And I think flexible grouping is really important. So it might be hard to figure out how you're going to talk about paragraphing with a group. The whole class doesn't need it, but these four students do. So you have a quiet group over here working with that while the other kids are working on vocabulary, silently reading, working on an essay.

So I do believe that with creativity and forethought that it's possible to work on those accommodations and make those happen.

Yeah, and of course, talking about all these challenges, sort of on the flip side, you know, I think people often think of dyslexic students as not good at language arts in general because of the challenges. But I'm wondering, as a language arts teacher, what you've seen about actually strengths in that area. Yeah, yeah. So many. I even jotted a few notes. The, and I'm just generalizing, but kids who have dyslexia are so clever and creative, their brains have to go through different routes.

They're, if they're looking at a word compared to someone who doesn't have dyslexia, they're looking at a word and they're making meaning of that word. And then they go to the form. Someone who doesn't have dyslexia, I can look at the word farm and I say F-A-R-M, boom. Where a student with dyslexia needs to make meaning, I think, or C-F-A-R-M, and then goes to the phonemes of the word. So the students are bright, their brains are so interesting, and I always want to let them know, I'm so curious, what is going on in there?

Talk to me about what's going on. And often the self-awareness and the creativity and the, just the sense of who they are and how they learn best becomes so finely tuned. So I also want to let those kids know that they have sort of a superpower that helps them look at the world in a new, fresh way. And when they talk to other learners in the classroom about how they think about a topic or a concept, it just enriches the conversation, it enriches the community.

And I really believe that the demystification of this, of dyslexia, makes, it just brings us so much value to the community because there's just a deeper understanding of the ways that we're all similar and different. So challenging, let me see if I have some of my notes here. So the ways that, here we go, just thinking about how they can, kids who have dyslexia need to have their brains challenged. They need to be challenged because their intelligence isn't related to their dyslexia.

So we need to get them the challenges that they deserve, that they have the right to. So that might mean that they're listening to an audiobook because that reading level and the conceptual understanding is at a high level. But being able to decode that text is not there yet. So reading aloud to students in class is important. Families, read at home, continue no matter what. They're 35, they're coming back for Thanksgiving, have a reading.

Talk about something, talk about a poem, talk about a passage, a paragraph. Being able to just access the language in that student, having them talk to you about what they understand gives you a sense of what they know and the depth of their understanding. So these kids are bright and creative and they bring those things to the classroom while they deserve to be as challenged as we can challenge them. It was a ramble.

It was a big old ramble, but I got it out eventually. No, there's a lot of really good points there, actually. Yeah, I really like particularly your point about making sure that you're giving them challenging enough material.

I think that that's something that we kind of preach on this show, on Dyslexia Journey. And I think that still as a society, people have some struggles recognizing that. The misconceptions and the myths hold, don't they, of, well, they're just, they see things, they don't see things right, like the rest of people. Or it's related to intelligence, or it's just numbers and letters backwards. Those myths just do persist, even though it's becoming less and less.

But with challenging those students, that's where the accommodations come in and are so key. So if a student, like if you as a teacher are giving a multiple choice test, you need to accommodate for that student to have maybe a voice to text, maybe writing a short paragraph to show what they know, even having an interview with you. So being able to get that sense of understanding from that student's brain out is what's most important.

And as an educator, finding that way, finding that route to having that student share what they know is really key.

Now, I was just going to say that, that I think it's helpful just hearing all the context here, because it's like, I'm able to hear sort of these different techniques, right? You did mention, you know, sort of having the side group of the people who need to work on the paragraphing, you know, so I can hear that piece. But it's like going a lot. I think the point is, it's going along with the other things you can be doing both.

You can be doing the part where you're catching them up, and you can be doing a lot of the parts where you're helping them demonstrate their higher level knowledge, too. Right. Yep. That's exactly right. And I think, going back to the trust and the relationship student to teacher relationship, having that student know that you know who they are, and that they've got this, I think is so important to talk about that on a weekly basis of, you're working so hard right now.

And you just did a voice-to-text five-paragraph essay in 20 minutes. You just transcended space and time. What were you doing in the library? Congratulations. And now what we can do is let's work on revision and editing and just individualizing where that student is. But I do really want to emphasize that the importance of the student being known and that they know you know who they are. And Don Graves, a writing teacher who I took classes with in grad school, had this really interesting challenge for the educators in this class.

He said, from memory, write down every student that you have, just from memory. And then write next to every student something you know that they're really good at or that they have as a passion. Now, put a check mark by those students' names who they know you know that they're good at that. So, if we're thinking about someone who does cyclocross, and I want to be able to talk to that student about cyclocross, how was that race over the weekend?

I see you've got a big band-aid on your knee. Is that from cyclocross? Or is that from your puppy or your little sister? So, really being able to just talk about what they know and that they know that you know is really important. Yeah, that's so key, I think, really for anyone, regardless of learning differences. I mean, feeling seen in school by your teachers, sort of feeling seen for who you really are, what your interests are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, I think goes so far in establishing trust and then leading to sort of positive learning outcomes.

Right, yep. And there will be hard things, and it's going to – I want most of the time reading to be pleasurable while growing competency and fluency and comprehension. And then sometimes it's going to be complex and it's going to be really hard, but just communicating that we're going to work on this together, that you've got your team here. I do believe that one of my goals as an educator is to help my students find their voice, and not just writer's voice, but their inner voice, their self-advocacy voice, being able to communicate if there's a conflict, being able to be an active vocal person in the community.

Whether that's their family, their classroom, their classroom, their school, their city, the country, the world, beyond. So I think I really believe how communication is key, and I want students to be able to know that they can code switch and talk to a lot of different people and communicate on the page and communicate orally, and that they can do that with confidence and competency. Yeah, that's also really key, I think, I think, for people with dyslexia, who don't often, I think, or sometimes can feel intimidated by speaking in school settings or in more formal settings, speaking and writing, and just sort of expressing themselves verbally.

And it's important to make that link, yeah, between life skills more generally, too, I think. You've offered so much here with us, just wisdom and insights from all your experience. I'm just wondering, as we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to share, any final words?

Let's see. I really appreciate the opportunity that you've given me here to examine my practice and to consider students I've had in the past and sort of dream about the students I'll have in my future. And you've helped me sort of redouble my belief in the importance of all the things that we've talked about, accommodating, doing accommodations, interventions, communicating, the parent-to-school pipeline, I'll call it, and the triangle of student-family school, student-family school.

So the importance of communication in all of those stakeholders, I think, is something that I would like to leave everyone with. Don't stop talking. If you're a parent, don't stop advocating and inspire and encourage your child to work on that. Upper elementary, middle school definitely can start advocating for themselves. So I think just keep that communication going and don't stop until you get what your child needs. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

We really appreciate your wisdom and your willingness to share that with us and with our audience. Great. Thank you. So many years of experience you're sharing with us, too. So it's really helpful. And I know your audience, too. Thanks. We'll see you next time.