Lois Letchford: Dyslexia and Language

9 Jul 2020 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:30

In this short monologue, author Lois Letchford (writer of Reversed: A Memoir and The Literacy Problem Solver) explains how she adapts Gabriel Wayner’s “making language alive” concepts for dyslexic, vulnerable, or otherwise struggling readers. She recounts beginning with her 7‑year‑old son, who seemed to lack memory for words, letters, and sounds, and describes how she created very simple, illustrated poems that were discussed and linked to the child’s environment. Letchford emphasizes that every word should be tied to multiple sensory cues—pictures, sounds, taste, and especially emotion—because stress shuts down the brain’s learning capacity while relaxation enhances it. She references her “box lesson,” a concrete instructional tool that combines these multisensory elements, helping students retain words and concepts. The talk concludes with a brief promotion of her memoir and a call to like and subscribe.

Chapters

Hello, I'm Lois Letchford and I'm the author of the book Reversed: A Memoir and The Literacy Problem Solver. And I wanted to share with you today Gabriel Wayner's thoughts from Forever Fluent and how I use the same sort of thing with students who are dyslexic or vulnerable students or those who are just simply struggling with learn to read. So what did he talk about? He talked about making language Alive, bringing language alive, giving language life. So how do we do that? I gave language life by writing poems. My first student was actually my son Nicholas, and he was 7 years old when I worked with him, and it looked as if he had no memory for words, letters, or sounds. And when that's your starting point, what do you do? So I write it— started to write very simple poems for him. Which we then illustrated, which we then talked about, which we then looked at in our environment. Through the writing of poems, we're building knowledge. We've got engagement and we've got enjoyment. That's the starting point of giving language life. The second part is that every word needs to make connections. Connections through, firstly through pictures. Or pictures and images, through sounds, through taste, and surprisingly through emotion. Emotion is actually a critical part of learning to read because when children are stressed, the brain actually shuts down. It closes up, and we don't want that. Nothing goes in or nothing comes out. When children are relaxed and enjoying life, then the brain really starts to work and work effectively. You may have seen some videos of my box lesson. My box lesson encompasses these strategies effectively. We're giving them an image, a sound, a taste, and engagement, and my students never forget that lesson, and they never forget the words that are attached to that lesson, and that's what we're working on. So it becomes a critical component of how students learn to read. So thank you. Lois Letchford, author of the book Reversed: A Memoir. Grab a copy, but also don't forget to hit like and subscribe to this channel. Thank you. Thank you.