In this talk, Lois Letchford recounts her transformation from a mother of a severely dyslexic child to a specialist literacy teacher. She describes her son Nicholas’s early failure in reading, the dire prognosis of low IQ, and the collapse of conventional programs like Success for All. A pivotal moment came when a family member urged her to make learning fun, leading her to use poetry and curiosity‑driven activities that dramatically improved Nicholas’s outcomes. Letchford then critiques the longstanding "Great Debate" in reading instruction—code‑emphasis versus meaning‑emphasis—arguing that the binary is unhelpful for the most vulnerable learners. She introduces the concept of an "unseen backpack," the hidden background knowledge, vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge each child brings to school, and cites research (Pressley, Baer’s Words Their Way) showing early language differences in future poor readers. Emphasizing a diagnostic, individualized approach, she urges teachers to assess what each child has and lacks, rather than relying on a single program. Emotional safety is presented as a prerequisite for any reading instruction. Letchford concludes with a call to educators to read her memoir Reversed, shift their mindset from program‑centric to child‑centric teaching, and ensure all children can learn to read.
Chapters
Hello, I'm Lois Letchford. I'm the author of the book Reverse to Memoir and a literacy problem solver. Today I'm going to share with you my journey from mother to teacher about dyslexia and reading and my story of how I became a specialist teacher in teaching not any child but teaching the children who'd failed Numerous reading programs. That's how it happened. And they're the children I focused on teaching. My personal experience with my son was extreme. He failed first grade. At the end of the year, he could read 10 words. He had no strengths and he had, according to the testing, a low IQ. It's a prognosis which is absolutely dire. And extremely difficult to outrun. We were privileged. I was able to take Nicholas out of school for 6 months. I started with a book called Success for All and it was a disaster. He couldn't do anything. He appeared to have no memory for words, for letters or for sounds. And once you get to that point, I remember being so frustrated. I— He can't do it. He can't do it. And then what do you do? You blame the child. And I did too. I blamed my son for not being able to learn how to Greek all these things. My mother-in-law was with me and she said, Lois, put away what is not working and make learning fun. Those words caused me to stop, to rethink, And then what else can I do? With that, I started to write poetry. And if you want to read the full story, find Reversed and read those particular chapters. It's part 2 in the book about what I did to transform Nicholas's learning. I was able to tap into his curiosity. All sorts of things happened during that 6 months which exploded my world. and change Nicholas's outcomes. We returned to our school, I saw the diagnostician who had tested him, and she turned around and said to me, well, Nicholas is the worst child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. That's a very damning statement, but that's what she said. But it's what caused me to really be able to evaluate what else has to happen. And then this week on The Science of Reading, I've seen a statement by Jean Chall, C-H-A-L-L, on the Great Debate, and I want to read it to you because this is what it comes down to in reading. Dyslexia and reading, stated as simply as possible, the distinction between 2 groups is this. One group, let us call it code emphasis group, believes that the initial stage in reading instruction should emphasise teaching children to master the alphabetic code. The other, the meaning emphasis group, believes that children should and do learn to read best when meaning is emphasised from the start. The main— the many issues can be boiled down to one big question: do children learn better with a beginning method that stresses meaning or one that stresses learning the code? The great debate. I don't want to debate that, but I want us to think about teaching of reading to those who struggle the most. What is seen in reading and what is unseen in the child? And that's what I want to explore today, because every person arrives. At school with an unseen backpack. What do I mean by an unseen backpack? What do I mean by an unseen backpack? Children arrive with, you know, the words their way picture. Of intertwining, intersecting threads: background knowledge, vocabulary, literacy structure, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. And then on the word recognition side, it's phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. The first is language comprehension, the other is word recognition. And this comes from Baer's Words Their Way. What part of it is seen? What part of it is unseen? It's easy to see the decoding. It's not so easy to see how we're going to teach it. But it's more challenging to see what does the child arrive at school with? What's their background knowledge? What's their vocabulary breadth, precision, and links? What language structures do they use at home? What language structures are used at school? What's their verbal reasoning like? What's their literacy knowledge of print concepts like? That's all in an unseen, unacknowledged backpack. It's not a starting line at the race where— a starting line for the beginning of a race where everyone is lined up at the same level. Our children, and according to Pressley, Pressley in his book, Reading Instruction That Works, it's a famous book, it's an older book, but he states on page 72, he said, as early as 2 years of age, children who will later experience severe reading difficulties manifest differences in their use of language, compared to those who will be normal readers. Their utterances will be shorter, their syntactic sophistication will be lower, and their pronunciation not so good. So there are 3 factors that he has immediately identified. My son had all 3 of them. Their utterances shorter, Not a syntactically sophisticated language and lower pronunciation or poorer pronunciation. My son was in speech. The gap between what was going on in the brain and what was coming out of the mouth was huge. And he had no words to explain the situation to me that what was happening in school. And I noticed from early on, from as early as 2 years of age, that his speech was lower and slower than that of his brother. So all of these things are in the unseen backpack, yet we expect children to arrive at school all at the same level. And that to me is where the problem begins. Because we have to start in our thinking, what else do I have to do? It's— I don't think that quote from Chawle is adequate. We have to start looking at what else do we have to do. It works for those children who are normal. It doesn't work for the most extreme children. Now, this is the difference between a teacher who's in a classroom and a specialist teacher. And the question to me is, who are we trying to teach? What's our goal with reading instruction? Is it just to teach a few? Is it to teach the majority? Or is it to teach that word all? And if we are to teach all, we're having to start to think. We're having to start to work and we have to become, as Pressley suggests, diagnostic teachers. We have to start to work out what does the child have in their backpack? What don't they have? Because I have taught many children who have failed this, the reading programs. The failure lies right at the very beginning. The inability to understand the difference between words T-O and T-W-O is a prime indicator this child will struggle with reading. And I recently taught a student, 16 years old, who could not adequately describe the words T-O and T-W-O. I said, give me a sentence with T-O, and he said, I have 2 lizards the same. That's an indication that there's a problem with his language, and when you've got a problem at that level, anything you put on top is confusing. Are the letters and sounds consistent? I don't know, because nothing is consistent. And that's where we as teachers have to become diagnostic in our approach and not favour one over the other, but work out and think, what do I as a teacher have to do in order to teach these children to read? That's where I come in. That's what I've been doing all along with my students. It's evaluating what do they know? What don't they know? What do I have to do? And for teachers, what I would really like to do is get us to think not one or the other. It's what else do I have to do? We have to shift our thinking that this program is going to be adequate for 100% of people. If the child is learning from the program you are teaching, you say fantastic. It's when the child isn't learning, we have to go back to the drawing board and say, What else do I have to do to ensure this child reads? And most importantly, are we providing a safe place where children feel free and happy to express their thoughts, or are we going to jump down their throats when they get something wrong? Are we providing safe emotional spaces for our children to learn? That actually comes before we're even doing letters and sounds or any teaching of reading, because if our children do not feel safe in our classroom and safe with us and can look confused, we have failed them. They must be emotionally safe. Before we impact any teaching of reading and writing. So that's today's talk, you know, it's about teaching the most vulnerable students. Please read my book. As educators and readers have said, every educator should read my book because things that happened to Nicholas should never, never, never have happened. Thank you. And it comes down to how we think and how we look at that child sitting in front of us. What do we think? And if I want to do anything, I want to shift our mindset away from, let's use this program, to simply, let's teach this child to read. Thank you, and please buy my book, hit like, hit subscribe, and share so that we can get the message out that our children can be taught to read. And they must be taught to read if they— we are to have them productive members of our society. Thank you. Lois Letchford, literacy problem solver and author of the book Reversed: A Memoir.
