In this YouTube monologue, literacy specialist Lois Letchford shares a Christmas‑time cinnamon shortbread stars recipe while demonstrating how cooking activities can be leveraged to support struggling readers. She outlines the exact ingredients (butter, fine sugar, plain flour, white rice flour, ground cinnamon, cinnamon sugar) and step‑by‑step method (pre‑heat oven, cream butter and sugar, add flour and cinnamon, chill dough, roll, cut stars, bake). Throughout the demonstration she reflects on her own childhood difficulty reading recipes that used implicit language (“cream the butter”) and connects that experience to the concrete‑literal reading challenges many vulnerable students face. Citing Ulrich Boeser’s Learn Better, she argues that learning requires effort and active meaning‑making, and that hands‑on cooking provides the cognitive engagement (quizzing, explaining, enacting) that improves comprehension and retention. She proposes extensions: adjusting sugar for health, researching differences between bleached and unbleached flour, and turning the recipe into a science‑inquiry lesson. The talk is directed at parents and teachers, encouraging them to read the recipe aloud, talk through each action, and use the activity to build vocabulary, procedural knowledge, and richer understanding, ultimately aiming to develop skilled readers. Lois also promotes her YouTube channel and other literacy resources.
Chapters
Hello, I am Lois Letchford, author of the book Reverse to Memoir and literacy problem solver. Getting ready for Christmas, so parents and teachers, I'm sure you too are doing exactly the same thing. And because we're getting ready for Christmas, I thought it would be lovely to share a recipe with you. Why a recipe? Because by doing things, we create meaning for students, particularly for the most vulnerable students. We create meaning. We're asking children to read. We're asking them to connect the reading with the real world and therefore making meaning of all that we are doing. So the recipe I wanted to share with you today is called Cinnamon Shortbread Stars, which requires 250 grams of butter, a cup of sugar, fine sugar, 2 cups of plain flour, half a cup of white rice flour, and 1.5 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, plus cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on top. And then there's a method, and the method is simply preheat the oven to 160 Celsius. Take 2 baking trays with baking paper. Use an electric beater to beat the butter and the sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. Add the flour and the ground cinnamon and bring the dough together in a bowl. Shape it into a disc, cover it with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to rest. It's a really simple recipe. And the reason I wanted to also share about cooking was this is where I can remember having a problem. With reading, because the recipes when I was a kid did not say, use an electric mixer and beat the butter and the sugar in a bowl until pale and creamy. In fact, I clearly remember the recipe saying, cream the butter and sugar. And I said to my mother, Mum, we need cream. And now I'm showing you the problems I have with reading. Not only I have, but the children who struggle with reading see the world concretely. They don't see the dynamic language that's happening. One, it's lack of experience with cooking that caused the problem. It's lack of experience and comprehension of reading. So when you're doing this, You can talk to the child as they're doing things. We're creaming the butter and the sugar. So this is why I do so much work by doing, doing, reading and doing. Now why is this important? Because Ulrich Boeser in his book Learn Better says learning requires effort. And to create meaning, we have to actively make sense of something. And that's exactly what I did way back then, you know, and I can— it's interesting what sticks in your mind. I would have been about 10 and cooking on my own, or attempting to cook on my own for the first time. So it makes learning a matter of doing and Active process and a wealth of information suggests the more cognitively engaged approaches to learning, like quizzing, like explaining, or even enacting, show much higher outcomes. Reading and doing— you're creating an experience that the child never forgets. Experiences change the brain. So when you start dealing with experiential learning, We're making— allowing the child to make more connections. And then he goes on to say, the more enriching forms of learning spark richer forms of understanding. That's what I want all the time, richer forms of understanding. So use cooking, use recipes, use the ones, your favourites, and it also allows you to adjust the ingredients because some Sometimes there's too much sugar in things. I reduce the amount of sugar. Sometimes it will have an effect on the recipe, so that allows you to play with the recipe, but often not much effect, and just reducing that makes it healthier. And then you can do an exploration of why we would reduce the sugar. And also, when you're looking at something like this, you can start to connect the ingredients that you have in your cupboard with what's expected on the recipe. And with that, I'm saying looking at the difference between bleached flour and unbleached flour. And you can start to do research with the child and even the different forms of sugar that you're using. Why have they got these different sorts? What impact does it have on your cooking? And now there's your recipe gone from a simple recipe to, to a science project. And an inquiry lesson. Why? Why do we bleach flour? Why should we use unbleached flour? And as I'm telling you here, I'm saying use the recipe from scratch. Create the recipe from scratch rather— if you can— rather than use just a box. A box is just a matter of undoing the packet, stirring it, and off you go. I much prefer to do things From the beginning with all the ingredients, it does take more time. Learning takes time. Of all the things we do, learning takes time. So my recipe was cinnamon shortbread stars. It's an Australian recipe, and then it goes on to say step two: it's roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. On a three using a disc. Then use a star-shaped cutter, or, you know, you can use a whole variety of cutters, and place on lined trays lightly sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and then bake. Swap the trays throughout the cooking for the 12 to 15 minutes and then set aside, letting it cool. So enjoy the Christmas season. Cook, enjoy it, encourage children to read, I would read the recipe for them if they have that level of difficulty. Work with kids, talk to them as you are baking because you're giving them the language that they need to help connect between all of the areas that we need to become a skilled reader. And my goal is always to have students become skilled readers. So Thank you. Thank you for joining me this year as we continue to use my YouTube channel. Check out my videos. Parents, connect with me and have your children listen to my stories, the poetry. And this week I've also done Diary of the Killer Cat read on YouTube. So thank you. Happy Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy holidays.
