In this video Lois Letchford, author of Reversed Memoir and literacy advocate, argues that struggling readers need more than phonics instruction; they need rich, meaningful content to motivate decoding. She shares a personal three‑week trip to Egypt—visiting the Great Pyramids, Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and the Egyptian Museum—where a series of “I Wish I’d Discovered” books about Tutankhamun sparked her son Nicholas’s fascination with hieroglyphics. Because the books were too difficult for him to read independently, she read them aloud, discussed the material, and rewrote the stories in his own words, turning a challenging text into a language‑rich learning experience. Letchford cites literacy scholars Natalie Wexler and Susan Newman, emphasizing that content provides a purpose for learning letters and sounds, fuels questioning, and builds the confidence needed for word‑work. She concludes with a call to educators and parents to incorporate content‑rich reading, model the strategy, and share the journey.
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Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, author of the book Reversed Memoir and literacy problem solver, talking about when children fail in first grade, they suffer academically, socially, and emotionally. And the work that is required to turn such students around is phenomenal, and it takes more than just the teaching of decoding. And that's what I'm about. It's content plus decoding. Decoding and comprehension that takes a turnaround. And that's what I'm talking about. Because my husband and I just spent 3 weeks in Egypt. We visited many places, and the first was Cairo, where the first thing we did was visit the Great Pyramids. And last time I talked about Nicholas and his love of hieroglyphics. And we saw the pyramids, and then we went down to Aswan— to Luxor first. To Luxor. Where we saw the Valley of the Kings. And when Nicholas was 7 and 8 years old, we fell in love with this series of books, I Wish I'd Discovered. And this one is I Wish I'd Discovered Tutankhamun with Howard Carter. These books planted a seed. They were incredibly difficult for Nicholas to read, so I didn't ask him to read them. But I read them to him. And when you're reading books to children, they are getting the content, and then you can rewrite it in their words. And this was the book that took us through the journey of Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun. And then I actually went to the Valley of the Kings and saw His tomb. In the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, we saw the death mask of Tutankhamun. Nicholas wasn't with us on either of those occasions, but this was the book that had us in raptures over Egypt and hieroglyphics. It has you asking questions, it has students asking questions, which is The step to learning. And it's again, I'm talking about this nest, creating the nest that allows the reading and the writing and the letters and the sounds to flourish and eventually to hatch. And that's what it did for Nicholas. The story of Howard Carter is phenomenal within itself. So when we went to Egypt, we were knowledgeable. We knew what we were looking for. And I didn't actually see Tutankhamun's tomb. I saw the entrance and I went into others, and I did, but I didn't go into him because we'd seen— you're going to see the same thing, hieroglyphics, hieroglyphics, and hieroglyphics. We'd seen his death mask, and I've seen other things about Tutankhamun around the world, but it was just special to stand in the desert and just see sand upon sand upon sand upon sand and learn about Hieroglyphics and the discovery of these tombs and the opening of the tombs to the world through hieroglyphics learning. And how the, the Egyptologists learnt so much about the ancient culture, because you look at hieroglyphics and there's no left or right or up or down. Which way do they write? And they didn't know that for a very long period of time. So that was what we discovered. Taking Nicholas back, or visiting Nicholas in Egypt, in Cairo and Aswan, was just beyond a dream come true. It's something I never expected to happen. And here we were exploring the places that he and I had learned about over 20 years ago. So why am I telling you this? When children struggle with literacy, give them content. Natalie Wexler, Susan Newman are 2 people who really push content. I join them. Content gives you a reason for learning about the letters and the sounds. You're right. My student, my Nicholas, couldn't read this, but I could read it to him. We can read it. He can read a sentence. I can read a sentence. I can read part of a sentence. He can reread it. We can talk about it. It gives you language. It has you asking questions. And you can rewrite the book. In your own words or in the words of the child. That's something I didn't do for Nicholas, but how I wish I'd done it. It makes a difference. It makes it easy. It makes them say, I can do it. And every day I want my students being able to say, I can do this. I can read these words. And if they come across then a word that is challenging, then you've got the letters and the sounds to really work out why, why is it so important that We get to know this word. It's been a fascinating journey and it's made me passionate about content. And here, 20-something years later, is my son and me visiting the Great Pyramids and visiting the tomb, the Valley of the Kings and the tomb of Tutankhamun. Thank you. Hit like, hit subscribe, and share this journey with others because we never know where our children who struggle with literacy end up once we teach them to read.
