Lois Letchford: The Lincoln Project: Slow to Learn But Slow to Forget

24 Jul 2020 · 2 min

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2:12

In this brief spoken piece, author and literacy advocate Lois Letchford shares a personal anecdote about how she used simple, playful poems to teach her son, then‑aged seven, phonics and vocabulary. She highlights one particular poem, “The Witch’s Spell,” which she crafted to embed many “sp” words. Although she was initially dissatisfied with the poem’s quality, her son later recalled it vividly for its humor and the imagined spell ingredients he added. Letchford uses this story to illustrate a broader teaching philosophy: when educating vulnerable readers, creating fun, memorable experiences—rather than merely drilling letters and sounds—produces lasting impressions that persist into adulthood. The segment ends with a typical YouTube call‑to‑action.

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Hello, Lois Letchford, author of the book Reverse to Memoir and literacy problem solver. I'm here today to talk to you about creating lasting impressions with our students. When I first worked with my son, 7 years old, I wrote simple poems for him. When he was 30, I asked him about those poems and the learning from 1995, and he said, oh, they were so much fun, and he recalled the poems, A Mug in a Bug, The windmill on the hill, the simple poems that I wrote. But he said, above all, I remember the poem where I wrote the witch's spell. And I went, what? I was not pleased with the poem, The Witch's Spell, because I was trying to use as many SP words as possible within a simple little poem so that he could hear them. And it was simply, I do not. spit in the spell, the grand witch told her charge. The spit will spoil the spell. It will make it bubble and spoil and spill. And it will make us spin on the spot until we look like a top that has been spun. Silly poem. From that poem, Nicholas said to me, can I write the ingredients to a witch's spell? And I said, of course, Nicholas, of course we can. And he wrote, 3 alien brains, 1 poison snake, 4 stinky rat's tails, Bird poo, 2 drops. Half a cauldron of boiling water. Magic potion. Blood of a dead lizard. And 1 alien eyeball. And when he was 30, he said to me, I can't remember the ingredients, but I just remember it being so funny. I think it was actually the ingredients from around the house. It wasn't because I have the poem in front of me. And he laughed about that memory. When we are teaching our most vulnerable students to read, we're not only teaching them about letters and sounds, we're creating an environment that allows them to learn. And those memories last our students a lifetime. Thank you. Lois Letchford. Hit like, hit subscribe, and I'll be back next week.