Dyslexia Story: The Writing of Poems for Nicholas Letchford

Hello, Lois Letchford here, author of the book Reversed: A Memoir and literacy problem solver, sharing with you my journey through YouTube too. This week I'm talking about my son Nicholas. And his learning. Nicholas failed first grade in a really dramatic way. Really the absolute worst you want for any child and you really don't want any child to experience what he experienced. He withdrew. He physically— I saw that he wet his pants. He bit his fingernails. I dressed him for school every day and his teacher, Literally shouted at him. I didn't know the full extent of what happened during that first year at school and it still distresses me today that I sent him to school rather than simply withdrew him. That's what should have happened. However, that's with hindsight. I didn't. Turning a child around once they have dramatically failed is incredibly hard Particularly when the failure is such that they feel they can't do anything. That's a real challenge and often children don't turn around. In addition to that, we have the mindset the child is not particularly smart. And that's what the testing showed when Nicholas completed first grade. The testing showed he had no strengths. He could read 10 words and then the disastrous one, he has a low IQ. That impacts the way we see, the way we teach, it impacts lifelong expectation. Very difficult to deal with. However, he did go on to 2nd grade and we had a total change of teacher and we had a change of attitude. Her working with him with spelling words of Cat, hat, rat, and bat changed my perception of Nicholas to an extent. I could see that he was incredibly slow with these, the learning of these words. When I asked him to first write them, he came to me and said, will you help me with those spelling words? I said, of course, Nicholas, I'll help you. And I said, Nicholas, write the word cat. And he went and he froze. And he couldn't move. And as I saw that, I realised there's no point in asking him to write anything. So I said, Nicholas, let's go outside and use clay. That was a really— a stroke of genius on my part, but it was also in the back of my mind, you've got to do something entirely different. And that became a critical component. So Nicholas and I worked for nearly 90 minutes, for not only for that night, but for the next 3 or 4 days, working just with clay to get him to spell 10 basic spelling words. He had no clue. He had no idea how to do them. And so we're starting to see his discipline and his concentration. And that was really important for me to see. However, I also then— Had the privilege of taking him out for six months when our family moved overseas for study leave. That was another big move. It was a big move, and Nicholas chose not to go to school. But I worked with him at home, and I took a series of books with me called Success for All. Never. Should a series of books be called Success for All? Because you cannot guarantee it. Because what you don't know as a book is the background knowledge of the child. And basically, this book was way too hard for Nicholas. So the title Success for All was a misnomer. And it gets you in, you think it's going to do, and it's— people have narrow views about what they expect children to do. Yet all of those success depends on the child's background knowledge and where they are in the— on the scheme of learning. These books were not appropriate for Nicholas. That was a start. That was really challenging for me because I could see him, you know, his shoulders went up and his ears went down and he was panicking again as we started to do these worksheets with successful and he couldn't do it. Then I started to get frustrated thinking these books should help him and they don't. And, and that's when my mother-in-law was with me and she said, Lois, make learning fun. That was a critical step. Make learning fun. I'm going to divert here for a minute. Because I, I am doing a series with Lisa McCartney on when learning is trauma. Last week we talked to my sister Lenore about what happens when the brain is traumatized and the brain basically shuts down. We're in fight or flight mode and this is where Nicholas was again. Unable to take anything in. Shoulders up. You see it physically. The body's going. And freezing. And as much as he tries, he can't do anything. So by taking away the pain and making learning fun, I allowed him to relax. Now, at this time, while Nicholas is relaxed, my stress levels are going up as I had to come up with something that would work. I had no resources. There was no internet. The internet was just starting and it certainly wasn't available for everyone. I had no books because we were away from our home. I had access to very little things. So you have to rely on yourself. And the only thing I could think of to come up with was that Nicholas could rhyme words and he could see patterns. And I had learnt that when we were writing with our— with clay, With our spelling words, rhyme words, and see patterns. Write a poem is what came to me. That poem transformed our classroom. He relaxed because I read the poem to him. The pain went immediately. We laughed over the poem because the poem was silly. What a mug of a bug, he used to lug his rug along the kitchen floor. Doesn't he know his rug will tug his good things out the door? Simple, simple poem using the ugh words. Now you've got rug, you've got bug, and you've got a mug of a bug. Now, being Australian, A mug. A mug of something is a silly person. Mug is not a common word in that sense for many children. So it's really important they learn to read a mug of a bug. And now I change it for my students. I say, do you know what that is? And they say, no. I say, it's a silly bug. Let's change the word a mug of a bug to a silly bug. So you've got the whole, you've got the complete poem. Once you've done that, you talk about what is happening. What is happening in this poem? There's a silly bug. He's dragging things across the floor in his rug and they're all getting caught in them as he drags it across the floor. Do the illustration. Then you're coming out with the rhyming words. Mug, Bug, rug. As I said, mug's not a common word. Is bug? A ladybug? Rug? Yes, we know what a rug is. What about the word tug? Tug. Do you use the word tug? Have you used the word tug? I'm going back to our oral language because here we have the gap between oral language and written language. Orally, we use a very small number of words, and this has been written about in academic papers. We don't use a wide range of oral language, and a lot of times we use, you know, simple phrases with children. So when you come to written language, written language, particularly in children's books, uses the widest number of words for most, most children's books. Poetry brings us into that word in tiny doses. So we can look at a mug of a bug dragging his rug across the floor and giving it a tug. Tug was a word my mother used. She'd say, give it a tug. She was a sewer. And she would always say, I'll just give it a tug. So it's a common word for me, but it's not a common word today. So when you're dealing with words with children, check out, is this word in their oral language? Have they heard it before, or would they only have heard it occasionally? Maybe sometimes, and even on occasions, you'll think, this is a word they have never had before. So you have to expose children not only to how the word decodes, /t/-/a/-/g/ and /r/-/a/-/g/, but also to the meaning. It's that combination of decoding and meaning that is critical for our young children to get. And using poetry, the simple poetry that I wrote for my son, really helped him as a way into literacy. It was the first step. It was the first component that I did. And because I had a blank slate, what did I have to lose? Because everything else I had done had been a failure up until this point in that 6 months. So it was, you know, it was a really good start. As I look back on that, the order in which things happened for Nicholas made a change to the outcomes. The order in which things happened, the writing of poetry, the dealing with the whole of the poems, breaking it down, made an impact. Life Long. You know, in 2018, I talked to Nicholas about his learning, and he cried about grade one. He cried. But he came back about grade two and our time in Oxford, and he laughed. His face transformed. He laughed. I remember the poem, and he actually said, "I don't remember all of them, but I remember a mugger of a bargain and and Bill and Jill on the hill." He could recall the poems that we wrote, that I wrote for him 25 years ago. That's how powerful the learning was for Nicholas at that time. So as I take you through my journey and his journey, take away from it, what do I have to do for the children in my care, whether I'm a parent at home during COVID And working with them and the child is getting something or not getting it. Go to poetry because it's enjoyable and build from the poetry. Build from the enjoyment before we start turning to everything else. So hit like, hit subscribe, share my journey, check out my book Reversed: A Memoir. I now have a number of videos up talking about how I've come to my philosophy of reading and why it's so important that we take our most vulnerable children and teach them to read. We never know what they are capable of until we teach children to read. Thank you. Lois Letchford. Hit like, hit subscribe, and share this with others.