Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of IDA

The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary by offering a FREE Special Anniversary Edition of their highly acclaimed publication, Perspectives on Language and Literacy. You may read the entire Anniversary Edition online HERE. Watch for the downloadable PDF coming soon.

Josh Clark, Chairman of the Board at IDA says, "We are excited about this issue and hope that it will help stakeholders and educators better understand and explain why implementing high-quality Structured Literacy instruction is so important. We thank the experts who have dedicated their time to creating these articles with the mission of building a common language and framework around Structured Literacy, which will bring awareness, answer questions, and pave the way for effective literacy instruction across the country."

Read the full press release HERE. 

There are so many great thought leaders represented in this publication speaking on so many important topics, but the one that really popped for me was the article about creating equity through literacy. 

In "Inclusivity and Excellence: Why Structured Literacy is Essential to Safeguard Student's Civil Rights" Kareem Weaver states, "Calls for equity without ensuring that systematic, direct, explicit instruction is provided, open the door for bias and assumption to enter into the classroom." p. 30

Equity is such a hot topic. We hear a lot of information in the media these days about equity. The authors in the Special 75th Anniversary Edition provide a road map for how to get there by empowering children through literacy:

You may join IDA via the MEMBERSHIP page to support the mission of this important organization. Special discounted teacher memberships are only $50. Advocate and parent memberships are only $40. That is less than the cost of one small mocha latte per month. Join Today! 

Whether or not you decide to join, be sure to explore the many free resources at https://dyslexiaida.org/ such as the Advocacy Toolkit and the downloadable Fact Sheets.

On a separate but related note, leaders from IDA branches across the country met in Baltimore for strategic planning March 15-17 to support the IDA sharpened vision of  "Structured Literacy for every child in every classroom across the nation and around the world." 

While in Baltimore, I stopped by the Edgar Allan Poe Museum before I left to do a little research for my upcoming decodable book, The Raven Remix: A Mash-Up of Poe Titles. Watch this blog for Poe Trivia from my museum visit. Stay tuned for a special poetry writing activity coming in April.  Sign up for my newsletter HERE to keep up with book news.  Read my March 11 post about Poe's Irish Heritage.

Poe's Irish Heritage

I'm celebrating March, shamrocks, and all things Irish with a bit of Edgar Allan Poe trivia and information about Poe's Irish Heritage. Although his father's family was Scottish, his grandfather, David Poe, was born in Ireland. David Poe left Ireland for America around 1750 with his parents and settled in Baltimore. David Poe fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.  His son, David Poe Jr., Edgar's father, was planning to be a lawyer but pursued acting instead.

Edgar's mother, Eliza, came from England with her mother who was an actress. She joined a traveling acting troupe and Eliza soon began to perform with them. From the young age of nine, Eliza was quite accomplished on stage and had a beautiful singing voice. Her mother died during the yellow fever epidemic of 1798 leaving her an orphan around the age of 11. She stayed with the acting troupe and continued performing with them, and they became her family. She married David Poe Jr. and they had three children. Edgar was born in the theater district in Boston near Carver Street. Although the street no longer exists, the city of Boston has left up the street sign to commemorate the place of Poe's birth. 

I was able to visit Carver Street, or what's left of it, while I was in Boston this past November for the ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing) Conference. Just around the corner is a lovely statue entitled "Poe Returning to Boston." If you look closely, you can see all sorts of interesting things coming out of Poe's satchel including manuscripts, a raven, and a tell-tale heart. Across the street sits a cemetery.

Although the theater critics loved Poe's mother, Eliza, they were unkind to her husband and often critical of his performances. He left the family when Edgar was two years old. Just before Edgar turned three, his mother died of tuberculosis, and her three children went to live with three separate families. The Allan family took in Edgar but never formally adopted him. 

My new book, The Raven Remix: A Mash-Up of Poe Titles will be available in September. Watch for more Poe trivia coming soon. Join my newsletter HERE to keep up with book news and free activities like last week's Boxty Recipe for Irish Potato Pancakes in my post about Sharing Recipes to Celebrate Culture.

Sharing Recipes to Celebrate Culture

Sharing recipes and foods specific to a particular culture is a great way to explore diversity. The Irish may not seem very diverse, but there was a time in our history when we made up nearly half of the people immigrating to America. In 1845, a terrible potato famine caused mass starvation throughout Ireland. By 1850, a million people had died. Others chose to leave Ireland looking for a better life. They brought with them their religion, their culture, and their foods.

Saint Patrick's Day started as a religious holiday honoring the patron saint of Ireland in the Feast of Saint Patrick. He is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and explaining the mystery of the Holy Trinity by using a three-leaf clover. Over the years, the religious meaning faded, but the shamrock remained and people still celebrate March 17 as a time to honor Irish culture, mostly through food and green beer.

On the subject of food, when I was a speech-language pathologist serving in public schools, I often used cooking to work on all kinds of receptive and expressive language objectives like following and giving directions. It's also a great activity for working on social language, perspective-taking, and executive function skills planning, sequencing, and problem-solving. The young chef must practice inhibition and impulse control. You have to let the cookies cool down before you eat them after all. Focused attention is required while measuring or while counting the number of eggs in a recipe as an adult is talking to another student. Working memory is needed to hold the entire sequence in mind while following individual directions. How often have we as adults left out an important step in the middle? 

I often partnered with the school's occupational therapist who simultaneously worked on fine motor skills like gathering and combing the ingredients and writing down directions. 

I don't know about you, but I have never come across a recipe I have not immediately changed in some way. This practice has become more common over the years as I strive to accommodate the gluten and dairy-free diets of family members. Collecting a variety of recipes for a specific type of food while comparing and contrasting the type and amount of ingredients in each version is a great way to get kids thinking about the practical uses of research. Altering the measurements to make more or less of a dish is a wonderful way to work on fractions and math. 

Considering how ingredients work together brings in science and a bit of art. For instance, if you use honey as a substitute for sugar, you may need more dry ingredients to balance the extra liquid. Writing out the directions, step-by-step requires Theory of Mind which is the ability to take another person's perspective by considering what they do or do not understand. 

I recently came across a wonderful Irish potato pancake called boxty. The recipe is below. This one has been adapted to be dairy and gluten-free. It would be fairly easy to make at home, with a classroom, or in a therapy session. The parent, teacher, or therapist could talk through the directions with the kids while students wrote them down. Many special education classrooms are equipped with kitchens because of the value of cooking as a practical life skill and multi-sensory learning experience. Use special safety precautions when cooking with young children and people with disabilities, or save the sharp and hot parts of the process for the instructor.

Older students could make boxty or another cultural dish of their choice at home and write down the recipe to share with peers. You could have a potato cook-off focusing on how different cultures use potatoes in everything from gnocchi to latkes, patatas bravas, and kartoffelpuffers. Students could write down a brief description of the food and how it relates to their culture and share the experience with the class. For parents and homeschoolers, you might try a potato recipe from a different culture and read about that culture to learn more about it. Finally, assessing what ingredients are needed for a recipe and making a grocery list is another authentic writing opportunity. 

Whatever way you slice it, cooking can be a powerful literacy experience. 

RECIPE FOR BOXTY

Ingredients:

1 cup mashed potatoes

1 cup grated raw potatoes

1 cup gluten-free flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 1/2 cups almond milk

1 egg

cooking oil 

Directions:

1. Prepare the mashed potatoes ahead of time and put in the refrigerator. Use russet potatoes. They are more starchy than other types of potatoes.

2. Grate one medium potato, approximately one cup. Squeeze out the excess water. You can use your hands or a cheesecloth.

3. Combine the flour salt and garlic powder. Mix together with a whisk to distribute the salt. 

4. Add the mashed potatoes and shredded potatoes. Stir.

5. Whisk together the milk and egg in a separate bowl.

6. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir. The batter should be a little bit thicker than pancake batter. If it's too thick, add more milk. If it's too thin, add more flour.

7. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a skillet.

8. Spoon the batter into the hot skillet and press it down to make it into a flat 3-inch pancake. You can probably fit four pancakes on a skillet.

9. Cook for about 3-4 minutes on one side. Flip the pancake. Cook for another 3-4 minutes. If it is not golden brown, then cook a bit longer. 

After you have tried my recipe, make your own variation. For a savory pancake add cheese, bacon bits, or green onions. For a sweeter pancake, add applesauce.

Enjoy!

Sign up for my newsletter HERE and receive a free copy of my first decodable book, No Gift for Man. That way you won't miss any of the fun-filled activities I'm creating for A Year of AWE: Authentic Writing Experiences.