Lois Letchford uses Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan's story to explain four components of effective learning: attention, active engagement, error correction, and consolidation. She draws on Stanislas Dehaene's research and her own experience teaching her son Nicholas, who had early ear infections, to argue that repetitive literacy instruction fails struggling readers.
Chapters
Hello, I am Lois Letchford, and today I want to talk about learning and teaching with relevant to Helen Keller and tell her story and how it connects to me. And I'm starting with this introduction: If you want a child's mind to grow, you must first plant a seed. Helen Keller was born in mid-1800s, about 1865. She was born a normal child. At the age of around 2, she had an infection which left her blind and deaf. And because she's blind and deaf, we make the assumption that she can't do anything, that she is stupid. But her parents were able to contact the School of the Blind in Boston and get a teacher for her because Helen at the time was becoming uncontrollable. They found Annie Sullivan. Annie herself was blind and poor but had been taken in by the School of the Blind because she said, I want to learn to read. And now here was a student For her, a student who would challenge her at many levels. And this is from the story of Helen Keller, and she's talking about the time before meeting her teacher Annie Sullivan, and it says, have you ever been at sea in a dense fog When it seems as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way towards the shore with plummet and sounding line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen. I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. Light! Give me light, was the wordless cry of my soul, that the love shone on me in every hour. This is Helen Keller before meeting her teacher, waiting anxiously. She knows that something's going to happen, but she doesn't know what. And why I connect with this is because this is how many of our students feel. When they are sitting in a classroom and unable to learn. How little has changed. They feel lost. And unfortunately, I also connect with this personally because I grew up reading words without comprehension. I sat there, I did the work, yet I failed to progress. I failed to find that compass. I failed to find someone to help me become successful early on in school. That's why I connect with Helly Keller, Helen Keller, and Anne Sullivan. Helen is there with her teacher Anne, and Anne's teaching her. Anne has managed to do it. She spelled in her hand a doll. She gave her a doll and spelled in her hand doll, and Helen got it. Imitation, but she made the same movements on her hands, she said. But then there came a tussle. With the words mug and water. She'd been given a mug with water in it, and Helen didn't understand. And these are her words: I persisted in confounding the two. My teacher dropped the subject. The teacher knew what I'm doing is not working, and she herself has to change something. So they go for a walk. They walked down the path, and I will read it from Helen Keller's story herself. We walked down the path to a well house, attracted by the fragrance of honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water, and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water. First slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness, as if something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language Was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul. It gave me light, hope, joy, and set it free. There were barriers still, it is true, But barriers that would in time be swept away. That's what we have to do with our children who are struggling with literacy. What did Annie Sullivan do in today's terms? And here I refer to Professor Stanislas Dehaene and his book, How We Learn. Because no matter what we're teaching our children, whether it's structured literacy, whether it's sight words, whether it's reading from a book, the first thing, and at every level, we have to ask our question. Ask the question, have I got the student's attention? That's question number 1. Annie Sullivan did it. Second, Do we have active engagement? Active engagement, that ability to make connections. Annie Sullivan did it by using a doll and spelling into her hand, by taking Helen out to the waterspout and letting her feel it. What's interesting with Helen Keller is that she had this normal brain before 2 years old, and then with the lack of input, with the lack of hearing and the lack of seeing, The brain still develops without those 2 things. Next, we have the 3rd component is error correction. And what did Annie do? When she had a problem with mug and water, she stopped. They go outside, they do a different activity, and the error has been corrected. Are we doing this with our students? Making sure that we have error correction, because that's when the learning happens, the big growth. And then finally, that consolidation, the repetition to say, yes, I know it once and I can do it again. I did it yesterday and I can do it again tomorrow because everything that's gone in has been stuck. It's stuck inside me. I've got it. It's okay. And these are the 4 components of learning that I'm going to talk about again and again and again and again. Because if we don't have these things as we are teaching our most vulnerable students to read, our students are in trouble. How do I connect with this? Not only personally, but through my— the experience of teaching my young son Nicholas. Nicholas was 7 years old when I took him on. And initially I failed. And the failure was dramatic. He couldn't do what I was asking. And I had to have the words, make learning fun. And when I made learning fun and started to write poetry, what did I have? I had his attention. And attention in a way that he was relaxed. He said, I can do this. This is okay. And there we were. I had his attention. We were doing some error correction. When things didn't go right, we're able to correct it on every level. Do we have the right letters and the right sounds? Do we have to correct them? How else do we have to do it? And time and time again, my questions were always, what else do I as a teacher have to do To help my son learn to read. How else do I connect with Helen Keller? Nicholas had ear infections from the age of 8 months to 18 months. Again, it impacts the brain and the brain development at a critical time. And we know medical research tells us if our children have one ear infection a year, For 5 years, it can be enough to develop a learning disability. Nicholas had more. And I go to— often literacy instruction is repeating the same thing. And what does Einstein say? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. We cannot do that. Change the instruction, we change the outcome. And I want to go back to, if we want our children to grow in literacy, we must first plant a seed. Thank you for listening. Remember to hit the like and subscribe button and help us tell children and help us tell teachers and children that we can all learn to read.
