Playing with Words Webinar June 25, 2020 >> Charlotte Cushman: Good morning and welcome to our webinar, Playing with Words. We're so happy to have you with us, and to introduce you to this wonderful new resource. With us today, we have three wonderful Speech-Language Pathologists, Linda Hagood, Jay Hiller and Megan Mogan. They're joined by classroom teacher, Stephanie Face, and teaching assistant, Karmay Miller, from the Washington State School for the Blind, both of whom use this approach with students. Also joining us this morning are, myself, Charlotte Cushman, from Perkins School for the Blind, and Kate Hurst and Cyral Miller from Texas School for the Blind who've been working with Linda, Jay, and Megan to develop this micro- site, Playing with Words, which is part of the Paths to Literacy webiste. First, we'll hear Cyral Miller and Linda Hagood discuss this approach and learn more about the Playing with Words micro-site. >> Cyral Miller: Linda, 'Playing with Words' is a brand new part of the Paths to Literacy website. A lot of people don't even know what it is. Can you describe what the 'Playing with Words' idea is? >> Linda Haygood: Sure. Playing with Words is a collaborative approach to play-based storytelling with students who are blind and visually impaired with additional disabilities, including autism or deafblindness. The co-creation-- the co-creating of stories, focuses on the process rather than the product. For example, goals might be to expand the functions and forms of spoken or sign language communication, and to increase self-determination or self-regulation or even creativity. The goals do not focus on spelling, grammar, or narrative structure, although we sometimes do see incidental improvement in these areas as they're modeled in the storytelling activities. >> Cyral: And how did you come about creating Playing with Words? What- what are you? A TVI, or are you a teacher? What's your background? >> Linda: I'm a speech language pathologist, and I've worked for many years with students who are blind and visually impaired with additional disabilities, at Texas School for the Blind Visually Impaired, and also at Washington State School for the Blind. I've also had experience working with sighted children who have autism and multiple disabilities in private clinics, and in public schools. As an SLP, I found myself spending a lot of time and energy setting up systems for kids to communicate, to get just their basic needs met... requests [indiscernible] making choices, calling for attention. I also spent a fair amount of time teaching kids to show what they know, things like describing, naming objects, reporting on events, answering test questions. While these were certainly important, they really resulted in a limited engagement and very brief interactions. I found that what I really wanted was to engage in longer episodes of play and interaction, and balanced conversation with these students, and for them to be able to do this with their peers, siblings, and parents. When I looked at typical children's language development, I found that they often engaged in story creation around their play interests and their interactions. I started doing some integrated play groups for children with autism, designed by Pamela Wolfberg at San Francisco State University. And in these integrated play groups, typical peers were included as expert players. And the students I worked with were novice players. The pretend play that occurred in these groups often resembled stories. And the children with autism loved it when we would write down the stories and use them to recreate and expand on the original play scenario. >> Cyral: So, this model takes the kind of limited language that we often find with kids who are-- have autism or who are blind and visually impaired, and it allows them to expand on it. What would that be true? >> Linda: Right, by accepting and... kind of validating the language that they have, by putting it on paper, it helps them to-- their language to grow. And that's my main role, is to help kids language grow and their social interactions to grow. I know teachers have sometimes different goals and objectives, but... that's my part of the-- my part of the package. >> Cyral: You started this model with kids with autism. And I'm wondering how it's different, or how your approach is different for students who are blind and visually impaired. >> Linda: Teachers and speech language pathologists who work with students who are blind and visually impaired are responsible for teaching literacy skills from the Common Core standards, as well as skills from the Expanded Core Curriculum like social interaction and self-determination. Teachers of students who are blind and visually impaired agree with the need for social interaction and self-determination instruction, but they often don't have time, because they have a great deal of pressure to focus on academic instruction, including reading and writing. The Playing with Words intervention offers a way to blend and embed instruction from the ECC with the Common Core. What I found was that children who are blind, unlike sighted children, tend to focus their early play on words and sounds, rather than objects or actions. For blind children. sometimes the words and sounds come first, and the play by storytelling activity helps them to incorporate objects and movement to develop shared meaning. I included a description of my early efforts at play by storytelling in my book Better Together, published in 2008 and available from TSBVI. At that time, the method focused more on improving student writing, and was entitled 'Writing Can Be Child's Play.' More recently, I'm researching a newer version of the intervention, Playing with Words, based on my continued experience and literature review. The most current version of the intervention is described in the micro-site on Paths to Literacy. It will also be included in the summer course 'Better Together' offered by Perkins. >> Cyral: What do you see as the... the evolution from... from when you focused on writing to now-- your're still... including writing, you're still embedding writing, and writing is still an important part of Playing with Words. So, how have you changed the oral... part? >> Linda: How has it become more of an oral language? I think, because I talk to teachers, and teachers said, 'Yeah, but that's not writing. That's talking.' And... I realized that talking was really a big foundation for the writing that they needed to do. And kids who... have difficulties with narrative writing often-- that's the reason for those problems-- is because they don't have a foundation in... being able to organize oral narratives and not be able to talk. And the teachers got confused, because they thought it was about writing, and so they should really be focusing a lot on, maybe Braille contractions, or being able to spell and organize the language, while they were teaching. And while that was really important, and I think lot of teachers will still take this intervention and do that with it, it wasn't my goal. My goal was to give them the foundations that they needed for writing later on. And... also for just having good conversations with people. >> Cyral: What part of the Playing with Words micro-site are you most excited about? >> Linda: I love the videos. I just think we did a great job of collecting videos and the things that the kids had offered us. I think that some of the work that Megan Mogan has contributed for kids who are... less verbal than the kids that I'm working with now, is really helpful and important. And I love the fact that we were able to collaborate. Speech language pathologists, often, don't get together, because we're usually the only one in a blind school, for sure. And this was three of us, speech language pathologists, Jay Hiller, Megan Mogan and myself, being able to coordinate our efforts and talk to each other. I'm... hoping that they'll go further and that we'll be able to... you know, continue our collaboration in other ways. I'm always trying to talk Megan into doing a... some kind of a... some kind of a course together on play-based writing, because she done some amazing things. So, that's exciting-- and exciting to be able to work with you, again, and... and... Charlotte and Kate. It was a great bunch. It's made me happy every time I met together with you. >> Cyral: I totally agree with that. >> Charlotte: As you heard, this project is a collaboration. Linda developed this approach and did research related to the efficacy of using oral and written storytelling to develop literacy skills while also focusing on self-identity, self-regulation and creativity. Jay Hiller and Megan Mogan have both utilized this approach, and contributed to the types of stories students can co-create with others. Their work has been compiled by Charlotte Cushman and Kate Hurst, with support from Cyral Miller, to develop the Playing with Words micro-site over the course of this past school year. All of the collaborators have worked to identify components of this process that should be included on the micro-site, and collect the video samples of students. So a big thank you goes to the students, and their teachers, who so generously shared their wonderful and imaginative stories with us. Before we get into these videos, we wanted to hear from Stephanie Face and Karmay Miller from Washington State School for the Blind, and give them an opportunity to share a little bit about their experiences in using this approach. >> Cyral Miller: Well, Stephanie, can you tell me about your role, and your background in working with students who have visual impairment? >> Stephanie Face: Yeah, I started as an Elementary Education teacher in Tucson, Arizona. I taught two years of 5th grade there. And then I moved up to the Northwest and... became introduced to the visual impairment field, and I started working at the school for the blind, and they allowed me to begin working while I began work on my TVI. So, I've now been working at the school for the blind for about eleven years. And I believe this is my sixth- my fifth year doing a self- contained middle school classroom. I'm working with students who have... cognitive impairments, behavioral impairments, such that they can't participate in our general ED classes. So, Linda is very heavily involved with this group of students. They all... access her services individually, and also, we... before the pandemic started, we used to do a lot of group work, too. >> Cyral: And so tell me about using Playing with Words, and how- how has it worked for your students, and has it been helpful for your students? >> Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. So, since I was trained as an elementary school teacher, like Linda-- I'm one of these teachers that Linda is mentioning, who is trained to come at writing in a specific way, and... I'm trained in the Lucy Calkins model of mini- mini-workshops, and I'm doing writers workshops and peer editing, and this kind of-- this is the writing world that I was used to. And... Linda, introduced me to a type of writing that's more playful, and more student-oriented. And- as opposed to me always coming in with... mini-lessons that-- I want to work on this rhetorical device, or I want to... see this sort of theme from you. I can let the kids... I feel more comfortable letting the kids play, and express, and negotiate with me. I might-- I still try to exert maybe a little bit more control than Linda does, because I can't entirely let go of the product-orientation as a Common Core Curriculum teacher. But... I do... think that it helps the kids-- I heard Linda mentioning how it helps develop their language, because they're more interested in exploring the topic, than me saying like, 'We're going to use settings.' You know, some-- half of the kids are already turned-off, because they're just not interested today. But... when I bring Linda's approach, kids are never turned- off by this... play with me approach. So, it's really important for the kids who aren't intrinsically motivated to sort of, you know, do schoolwork. It doesn't feel like work! And that's one really important... thing. Something else that... I feel very strongly about-- why this is a really positive intervention is because, particularly with children who are visually impaired, the way that they play, when they're little, is very heavily impacted by this disability. They don't have the same sort of social play with other people, more with adults. But I think it's very uncommon that kids who are visually impaired play with other little children. And one thing I know from being a general ed teacher, that's how kids develop a lot of their mental architecture for other human beings. A lot of their cognitive-- like meta-cognitive skills, in general, come from from the sort of social play. So, like I heard Linda mentioning earlier, that that this sort of gets at the underlying cognitive architecture of thinking-- the thinking that we do when we're writing, thinking about how would this character act? How would this person talk to that person? How would they think about the problem? All of these things are things that you learn when you're playing with Barbies. You know, when you're little. And so, I think it... it's an intervention that helps get at something that the kids lacked when they were younger. So, when it feels like we're playing, we're literally playing with toys, and we're literally doing the things that they missed out on to build those mental connections. But then we do bring it into an academic sense, too, where we write those things down, and... later we can bring in concepts like rhetorical devices, conventions, the publishing, like putting stories in-- putting pictures in, illustrating things. We actually even-- we've taken some of these stories that Linda wrote with the children, and we publish them, and we put them into the library at the school, so that the kids could check the books out of the library, and... share them with each other. So, even though it's-- it can start from this place of playing, it... mushrooms out... to touch every single part of what we do with writing and socializing, even. So it's powerful. It's very powerful! >> Cyral: You know, you didn't use the word, I don't think, 'imagination.' But- but what it seems to foster in children is it kind of frees them up to imag-- use imagination. And that's not something that I have typically observed in kids who are blind and visually impaired. They're so concrete, typically, they were so-- trying to figure out the world in front of them. And that's, I think, a piece of why they don't play as typically with other children as-- it's like in another realm. So, I think, Linda, what you've done is create a way to help these kids experience that-- that, 'what if,' you know, what if this box really was a... a car? And that's imagination. >> Linda Hagood: Well, I think, sometimes I work-- and Stephanie's class has created kind of a culture of play, too. Some of the stories that go on from one session to another, and become epics, some of our kids ask about them, and they want- and they want to share them. And... even other kids know about the characters and their stories. Other kids in other classes know about them, and ask about them. So, I think that has been important for them, too. What I've learned is that kids who are blind and visually impaired, and even kids who have autism, also, they do have good imaginations and creativity. But sometimes... by the nature of our teaching, we squelch that, or we tell them that that's not appropriate. And we take the things that people used to call self- stimulating behaviors, and can turn them into creative- creative pieces of work. And... I think that's really important for our [indiscernible] this is something valuable. >> Cyral: What's your role and background in working with students who are blind and visually impaired with additional disabilities? >> Karmay Miller: I have a Master's degree in Elementary Education, and prior to the Washington State School for the Blind, I worked primarily as a preschool teacher and in special education with sighted children, as an assistant. I've been at Washington State School for the Blind... for eight years as an instructional assistant. And most of this time has been with a very active student having additional disabilities, including frequent seizures, and requirement for gastrostomy, and mobility impairment, requiring a wheelchair. And the student requires behavior intervention and support to keep him in class and participating with other students. >> Cyral: In what ways have you used Playing with Words as an intervention with that student? >> Karmay: Well, prior to Playing with Words, my experience has been observation primarily with Linda Hagood. And... prior to this, the student resisted his speech therapy. I placed myself between him and the door, and provided as much positive support and encouragement as I could. But we were often not able to stay for the complete session. When Linda introduced herself, and it was like she was knocking on the door of his world, he invited her in, and she explored elevators, like she never had before, and they talked extensively about safety and alarms. The student had some success prior to this meeting, some goals with me, one-on-one, but he seldom joined class for group conversation or projects. And Linda and the student began joyfully writing together. And soon the student had something he genuinely wanted to share with the group. She would start out with him, and then he would have that piece that was important to him. And the group enjoyed his ideas, and began to add to them. And not only was he able to participate in class, but he also enjoyed talking and joking with the same students outside of class. And that student also gained-- [stray audio] >> Karmay: Sorry. He gained confidence in sharing his interests and strengths with adults and other students. That confidence was really important, and became a factor in increasing his... positive behavior. >> Cyral: Wow! Enough said, Linda! Every kid needs this. [laughing] Karmay, can you talk a little bit about... how you're using the Playing with Words? And what does it look like when you're using this technique? >> Karmay: Well, right now... I'm helping a bright, creative middle school student with his reading goals. And though he can dictate to me complicated plots, and pacing in a story, and develops unique characters, he struggles with written language. His reading skills are far below grade level. But we're- we're writing what Linda calls an 'epic story.' We do this to validate and encourage his gifting. I believe this is important, because students who are behind in reading often struggle emotionally with self-esteem. Our only request is that he handwrite one page, before he dictates the rest of it... for the rest of the class period. We do this every Thursday morning, and his stories include drawings, instead of the props that Linda uses. He enjoys portraying each character as he spins his stories. We haven't, yet, included peers in his story making, though... he has shared his writing with peers. When we meet for our next session, we talk about revision, which is a little bit more of a risk for him. But he's looking at his own story. And I emphasize that authors need to let their thoughts flow, and don't need to focus on conventions when they write their first draft. He finds purpose in writing and editing, because he would like to publish his own work for others to enjoy someday. And... I ask him to first tell me what he notices about his writing. And this week, he told me that if there was one thing he could focus on while writing his first draft, it would be leaving more space between words. Having... his interests and his skills, and his gifts validated-- all of that risky words, words in writing-- it's much easier for him to handle. When learning is playful, the risk is no longer intimidating. His strong, powerful writing muscle is helping him develop his spelling and mechanics muscle. Also, he found another way to play with words. We were working with... i-n-g and i-n-k... type, welded team letters, and he's created his little creatures that look like an ING and an INK. [chuckle] >> Linda Hagood: You know, it was really fun-- we included him in a group, yesterday. We'd been doing these Zoom writing groups, and I've been really frustrated with some of them, because... I can't use props and the action is hard. But... he's a drawer, and there was another illustrator, yesterday. And while the kids who wanted to contribute to the story built the story, these two students were drawing illustrations. They send them to me, and I plug them into the document, and send the whole document back to them. So, I thought it was really good that he... was engaged enough with the other kids to want to draw their ideas, because it wasn't his ideas. This was a story that they had started and he joined in later. So that was-- I thought that was really fun. I felt really positive and happy about that. >> Charlotte: Let's get into more about the types of stories that are used in Playing with Words. We want to share examples of students and some of the thoughts of the professionals using this approach. We've groups the types of stories into five categories, and that includes Experience Stories, Songs and Poems, Pretend Stories, Yoga Stories, and Epic Stories. You can learn more about each of those types on the Playing with Words micro- site. Beginning with Experience Stories, we're going to turn to Megan Mogan and ask her to share one of the stories and talk a little bit about it. >> Megan Mogan: Hi there, my name is Megan Mogan, and I'm a DeafBlind Specialist with the Arizona Deafblind Project. I'm also a Speech Language Pathologist, and before my current role, I served students at the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind on the Tucson campus. And I'm going to share with you all a video of an experience story using some of the essential components of Playing with Words. And I chose this story called, 'Up,' because I think it helps us think through that little voice in our head when we attend literacy-based... webinars or workshops, with that little voice, maybe, that says, 'Oh well, maybe that's not really going to work... for my students who don't express themselves using spoken language or sign language.' And the reason I'm showing you this video, is partly because I want to assure you that there's no linguistic prerequisites for Playing with Words. There are many, many ways to have conversations and interactions using no words at all. And those are things that are often very well worth writing about. So let me first give you a little background. The student in this video is brilliant, and he's very intentional, and creative, and funny. He's deafblind. He has CHARGE syndrome. And he's profoundly deaf, but uses low vision with a preference for one side-- you might notice. And you'll also notice that he has many ways of both receiving and sending communication. So, my job is really to look at some of those forms, and think of them as his 'pencil.' And you'll see us using a deafblind technique from Dr. Jan van Dijk's work called 'co- drawing.' You'll see my hand under his hand, and he follows along, and engages as we write together. And what you'll see is a video of us documenting or writing about a very funny experience that he had when he was with his... in his previous period of school with his classmates. And they were all making... baking soda volcanoes. And his intervenor mentioned to me, before our speech therapy session, how much he had really loved this experience. So without further ado, here's a video of an experience called, 'Up.' And as you watch it, just see if you can notice some of the different ways we communicate about the experience, using no words at all. Enjoy. [Video start] [tapping] >> Student: [breathing excitedly] [banging] [banging] [banging] [short verbalization] >> Megan: Mm-hmm. >> Observer: Look at him look up! Ohhh! Thank you for all of this Megan. Really, on mobility, looking up. That's great! [slap] [Video end] >> Megan: So, what did you notice about some of the forms we used back-and-forth there in the video? Hopefully you noticed some simple line drawings with marker and paper. We did some tracing, especially of that hand shape of the finger pointing up. We labeled those pictures with print, and even with formal symbols, like that up arrow. You saw us acting some things out, adding formal signs and gestures. Even though you may not have been able to see it in the video, he was pushing my hands in various positions that he wanted. He used his own eye-gaze to direct me. And maybe you noticed, even his breathing patterns, when they click in there, that kind of served as a way to say, 'Oh, I'm super excited about this topic!' All of those forms served as his 'pencil' and really led us down the road to a more formal experience book about this topic, later on. And so kind of going back to this kind of intervention... part of our job is really facilitating the process of putting all of these various communication forms that our students prefer to use, and figuring out how to put them into permanent form. And what this does is it allows us to model more formal language targets, whether those spoken or signed, written, braille. And they allow us to do that WITH student engagement. And that engagement is made possible because now all of a sudden our language is attached to a preferred topic, to direct experience, and to real objects. And so if we look around, our students have these really rich voices with lots of stories to tell. We just have to remember to listen, even if our students aren't using words to tell those stories. In this next video, I want to show you some ways to plug in more formal literacy modes into play-filled storytelling. And this is in the form of a song or poem. The student in this video, Angel, is totally blind, and profoundly deaf in one ear. He loves music. He's an excellent piano player. And he uses spoken English to communicate. And he has some really nice emergent braille skills. He wanted to tell a story about a time it snowed in Tucson, Arizona, which I can promise you is a very, very memorable experience here in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. I videoed him telling this story, and then I took the time... to go back and re-watch the video, and reflect on what I did, and what Angel did, using the Playing with Words Reflection sheet. I hope you enjoy this musical story called, 'Snow.' [Video start] >> Teacher: The title of his story is called... 'Snow'. >> Student: Snow. >> Teacher: Okay, go ahead and start with, 'Once at my church.' >> Student: Once at my church, it snowed. A snowflake fell on my... shoulders. >> Teacher: What did it sound like? [single note] >> Student: A snowflake fell on my nose. [single note] Then, two snowflakes fell on my cheek. [piano chord] Then, a LOT of snow fell on my hair. [multiple notes] It snowed ALL around. [multiple notes] Then, they rolled a big ball-- >> Teacher: Some kids wanted to build a snowman. >> Student: Then, they rolled a big ball. [sweeping, descending notes] They rolled a medium ball. [sweeping, descending notes] [giggling] Then, they rolled a... little ball. They rolled a [indiscernible] little ball. [sweeping, descending notes] >> Teacher: That sounded like a big ball to me. [short, sweeping notes] Ohhh! They said-- >> Student: Hello, snowman! [happy tune] And then they felt happy. >> Teacher: About? >> Student: About the snow! The... the... end. >> Teacher: Let me hear a snowfall again. [multiple notes] [video end] >> Megan: Isn't that a great story? I want to just really encourage you to, as much as possible, video your storytelling sessions with your students, and use the Playing with Words Reflection sheet as a sort of self-assessment. Just to let you in on a little secret. I love lists and checklists. I'm definitely partial to this- this check- this sheet, this checklist. And you can see that this particular reflection sheet allows me to make sure my instruction includes all six essential components. I won't go through each component here of our... snow story, but I do want to say, that the time it does take to complete a reflection sheet-- it is an extra step following the intervention-- but it really pays dividends in subsequent Playing with Words intervention. You start to develop this kind of natural flow where all six components-- they almost become naturally embedded in your instruction. And if they are not, you can go back and take the time to consider how you might switch up, or adjust, or alter your instruction the next time. And so I really just value this step of the process. And I thought this... this song or poem was a good example of a way I was able to turn around and think of some things a little bit differently. >> Charlotte: Two other kinds of stories include Pretend Stories and Yoga Stories. Linda would you please tell us more about these two examples. >> Linda Hagood: This is an 'emotion meter' story that was created with Pavel, a middle school student who loves washing machines, and most of all, he loves Admiral Washer's. He has low vision and experiences attentional difficulties. To improve his... self-regulation, I used his interest, and expertise in washing machine cycles, to help create this emotion meter. He pretended to be the washing machine, and we made a meter that compared his attentional levels to the cycles in the washing machine. It was really important to use 'enactment' with the development of the written emotion meter in order to help him integrate the concepts. I found it interesting that he could stay so very still, when he was doing the enactment of Lid Lock, or Soak cycles. But if I asked him in everyday life to be still, it seemed almost impossible. After we had created this emotion meter, his teacher posted it on the desk, and he did check-ins during the day to give him practice in knowing his own state of attention. We didn't ask him to change it, just to become more mindful and aware of his attentional state. [Video start] >> Pavel: [INAUDIBLE] washer. >> LInda: Say it one more time. >> Pavel: My brain is an Admiral Washer. One, sensing lid lock. >> LInda: OK. Put your paper down. >> Pavel: Put your ideas in. >> LInda: And show me what sensing lid lock looks like. One quick turn for the sensing. And then-- Pavel>>Lock. >> LInda: Lock for 10 seconds. Tick, one. Tick, two. Do it with me. >> LInda: Three >> LInda: Tick, four >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Five. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Six. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Seven. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Eight. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Nine. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: Ten. >> Pavel: Tick! >> LInda: So -- >> Pavel: No, fill. >> LInda: Fill. OK, show me fill. >> Pavel: Whoosh! >> LInda: Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! All the way down to your toes. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! You're full. >> Pavel: Third step, it will be to soak. >> LInda: What are you doing when you soak? Feeling-- >> Pavel: Feeling calm and [? in-tune ?] with my ideas. >> LInda: OK. So, do it. >> Pavel: I'm doing it. >> LInda: OK, deep breaths. One, two, soak. Three, soak. Four, soak. Five, soak. I see those new ideas. Six, soak. Seven, soak. Eight, soak. Nine, soak. 10, soak. >> Pavel: Agitation >> LInda: What are you doing with your ideas when you agitate? >> Pavel: Mixing them. >> LInda: Mixing them up, trying them out. Agitate, one. >> Pavel: Agitate, two. Agitate, three. Agitate, four. Agitate, five. Agitate, six. Agitation, seven. Agitation, eight. Agitation, nine. Agitation, 10. >> LInda: OK. >> Pavel: Next step is the rinse cycle. >> LInda: Tell us what's happening. >> Pavel: The tub rotates, and the water sprays across your load of laundry, like that. >> LInda: OK. >> Pavel: And the water sprays, and the drain pump is running-- >> LInda: And you're going down? >> Pavel: [INAUDIBLE] [? storm ?] to get out the soap and stuff like that in your load. >> LInda: And show me where the water goes. Rinse-- >> Pavel: Down the drain. >> LInda: All the way down. Yep, stay down there and let it fill. There you go. >> Pavel: First spin, engaging the motor and-- >> LInda: Feeling really-- >> Pavel: Feeling really calm. >> LInda: No. Really-- >> Pavel: Or really mad. >> LInda: Really mad is the spin, or really excited. I see you're building up. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60-- wow-- 70, 80, 90, 100. >> LInda: Go. >> Pavel: Next step, final rinse. Feeling calm down. >> LInda: [whispering] 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -- >> Pavel: -- 0. >> LInda: Go. Tell us what it is. >> Pavel: Final spin getting ready to move on. >> LInda: Getting ready to move on. 100, 90, 80, 70, 60-- >> Pavel: It's a motor break. [INAUDIBLE] >> LInda: --60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, zero. And what phase are you in now? Cycle? >> Pavel: Complete. I won. [Video end] >> Linda: Katrina is an 18-year-old student who has very low vision due to Leber congenital amaurosis, and also has high functioning autism. After listening to samples of meditations for children, from Shakta Khalsa's CD Rainbow Walk and Relax, Katrina suggested that most of the meditations seem to be very visual and weren't appropriate for blind students. She wanted to write her own meditation that used breath, listening, and touch to help her self-relax. We had been working, also, on the concepts of co-regulation and inter-dependence, so she decided to include me in the meditation. One of her favorite places is the forest, and she used it as the setting for her meditation, assigning me the role 'stabilizing tree trunk.' [Video start] >> Katrina: You sit against a tree. >> Linda: Okay, I'll be the tree. I'll sit down. And you're going to sit against me. >> Katrina: You lean back against the tree-- >> Linda: Yeah. >> Katrina: Then... while you're leaning back... you can smell the pine trees [sniffs & exhales] You can hear the wind blowing in your face [exhales] And you can feel the grass, soft as warm bed. Breathe! Listen! Feel! Breathe! Listen! Feel! [exhales] Breathe! Listen! Feel! Sometimes when you breathe, you can smell flowers starting to bloom. Sometimes when you hear, you can hear birds chirping. Sometimes when you feel, you can feel moss and ferns, soft as warm blanket. Breathe! Listen! Feel! [exhales] Breathe! Listen! [exhales] Feel! [exhales] Breathe! Listen! Feel! Breathe! Listen! Feel! Now put your hand on the tree's shoulder, stand up, and continue your walk in the park. [Video end] >> Charlotte: Our final type of story is Epic Stories. Here to tell us more about that is Jay Hiller. >> Jay Hiller: Hello, everybody. My name is Jay Hiller. I'm a Speech-Language Pathologist at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I've worked there 12 years, and I've been doing Linda Hagood's Playing with Words technique for about 12 years. I have a few video and blog entries on the Playing with Words website that I hope you'll take a look at. But I-- today I'm going to talk to you about my experience of Playing with Words, and specifically about 'epic stories,' and my experiences with them. I'll start by talking about what the Playing with Words technique has meant to me. I found it to be a really excellent medium for forming relationships with students. And Linda pointed out to me, a few days ago, that when you have a group of students who are all working on the same epic story, a culture develops around the epic story, and it's a relationship that the students have with each other. Which is very, very nice. The Playing with Words technique provides a strong medium for your targeted goals, the things that are written down on paper that you responsible for reporting to- to a student's family, and their ARD committee. But other things come up, as you're working on them, that you might not have... targeted on paper, and you can get a whole lot done. Playing with Words technique is not at all judgmental. This is something I personally find really valuable about it. I think if- if you work with middle school to adult students, which is the age group I work with, I often find that they come to school with a long history of having been told that they were wrong, over and over again, and a real reluctance to take a chance and try new things-- which is really what you have to do if you're going to learn something new. Because we don't tell them that they're wrong, ever, in- in this type of therapy, our response is always, yes. And... it takes all of that... bad history and that judgment, out of things, and there's- there's much more opportunity for learning. And then the last thing, is that it doesn't require a lot for me in terms of preparation, and for busy teachers, or busy therapists, that's really, really valuable. I've done this with a number of students, over the last few years, but the student the I- I'm going to talk to you about today is my student, Gabby. Gabby is deafblind, she has cochlear implants, and she has some vision. She has a lot of... social language needs. And the thing that's most important, to me, for you to know about Playing with Words and Gabby, is that if I hadn't started using this technique with Gabby, I really think that her therapy could have been a big mess. You know, she she would have come to my office, twice a week, and I would have done something with her that I called therapy. And she's a hardworking student, so she would have done what I asked, and-- but I think that it would have been that every week I would have gone like, 'Oh, my gosh, this isn't working! What am I going to try now?' And we could have done that for years. She was a really, really hard student for me to understand. I had worked with deafblind students before. I'm not a signer. I have a few basic signs, but I don't really have any real proficiency with sign language. And I was experienced with working with intervenors. But if you've worked with deafblind children, you know that they're all different from each other. And Gabby was just hard to understand and hard to read. The year I started working with her, she had returned to her school after an absence of several years. So, I didn't really know very much about her. There were other staff members who did know her, and that was helpful. She had intervenors who were new to the school. They were hard-working and doing their job and trying to help me. But we were also forming our relationship with each other, which was another layer of challenge. Gabby had goals, and I don't remember exactly what- what they-- how they were written, but one was like, 'Given a group of peers, Gabby will have a conversation' kind of goal. And the other one was... an 'artic goal' that she was going to produce 'liquid /r/ clusters.' And so, I was I saw her once a week in her art classes. I thought art is kind of a nice, relaxed environment, and there are kids in there, and we can have conversations. And I saw her once a week in my office for the artic. I tried all kinds of things, you guys. Some of them were really... expensive and time consuming to implement, and it just was not successful. You know, the other students were working at a-- had conversation skills that were head-and-shoulders above Gabby's. She really didn't understand... what was needed from her, and she was much more interested in all the fun supplies in the art room, than she was in interacting with her peers. So, the way things changed... was that, I-- in my office, I was working with her on her artic, and I had this idea, because I wanted a relationship with her. I wanted her to... to see me-- I didn't always want to be working with her through her intervenors. And so, I started writing stories with her artic words in them, that she would read, and in the end she would illustrate them. So, I was trying to capitalize on her interest in art. I think that what happened, is that one day I wasn't very prepared, I maybe had half a story written, and... we started sharing the story. And things really took off from there. We would pass the computer back and forth. And you can see, in the video, on the website, how we do that, now. And I really felt like, well, for the first time, I'm making a real connection with her! Because you have to have a relationship with your students in order to teach them. And up to then, I felt like I didn't have a relationship with her. So, we started off-- we did work on artic a little bit, and then we started touching on other things that she needed to know. Our stories were-- first it was Alice in Wonderland fan fiction, and then in September 2017, we started working on a story called, Gabby and the Dog Man. Nobody ever chooses to write an epic story. Maybe Homer did, but I'd never thought to myself, we're going to sit down and write an epic story. Epic stories just happen. Sometimes you can get tired of the big stories, or I can get tired of them, but what's good about them is that you're usually touching on something that's deeply interesting and engaging to your student. And so you have your students complete attention, and you can teach them anything you want to through the epic story. Because Gabby was really, really interested in Dog Man and Petey the cat, I could teach her all kinds of things. But, we worked on artic, as I mentioned. We've worked on perspective taking. We've worked on... learning words to describe emotions. And I'm particularly proud of this one, because I could really see her vocabulary expand, you know. To the point where, you know, one day I asked her how she felt about a change in our schedule, and she said 'disappointed.' and I was like, 'Woo hoo!' She's- she's learned that word, where before she might have just said, like a little kid word, like 'bad.' We've worked on vocabulary and concepts from her academic classes, and we've worked on linguistic devices to negotiate with peers. And what- what I mean by that is, you know, Gabby, if she wants to do something, she might say, 'We're going to do' whatever! And so I started teaching her these linguistic devices that I'd observed one of her classmates use really effectively, 'Maybe we could... What if we... ?' So, I mentioned that I felt like the epic story helped me with my relationship with Gabby. I also got interested in using it to help her develop relationships with peers. And one thing I tried is I brought in a friend's daughter and they spent a morning together, and they worked on a story, and it went really, really well. And then, because teenagers nowadays are busy, nothing much happened until we had the shut down, and that- that student became available to work with her, again, over Zoom. And that that's been pretty successful, in my judgment. You know, I would I'd be on a Zoom call, so would Gabby's intervenor, but mostly the adults sat back and the students interacted. And that's been super good. Gabby's, also, just improved in general, in interactions and relationships with peers. You know, I- I can't document that it's has to do with Playing with Words, but I'd like to think that it, the Playing with Words technique, has been helpful. There was a student on her dorm, last year, that she would watch movies with and they would talk to each other and interact. And I was told that at a Zoom meeting for a class, you know, when everybody got together for the first time, she had a pretty good conversation with one of her classmates without adult intervention. Gabby has definitely learned and grown. I should also say, that Gabby's mom noticed the change in her, and mentioned it to me. And she said that-- what Robbie said is that she had seen a real change from- from the types of therapy that had been done with her before. And I make a distinction between traditional types of therapy, and therapies like Playing with Words. I call Playing with Words therapy, process-based therapy. And by that, I mean, that the interaction between the participants, whether it's the teacher and the student, or the group of students themselves, that interaction is more important than the product that you get. When I look at, you know, the hundreds of pages of document that I have on Gabby and the Dog Man, I find it pretty much unreadable. The products not really very good, but the process of making the story together has been excellent, and she's learned a lot from that. There's also- there are also product-based interventions. I have a sample link that I'm going to include, that's a product-based story, I wrote it. I have a specific target that I want the student to learn. There's not room in there for him to show me that he can learn anything else. And the product that I want him to- to learn, that I want him to understand, is that it's unconventional to try to join conversations that are going on as someone passes you in the hallway, when you're sitting in class. So, I have the same story taught from two people's point-of-view. And I have questions after each half of the story, and you can link on that and see what that looks like. That's product-based therapy. I've picked out one thing. If I ever want to teach that goal through a process-based intervention, like Playing with Words, I would have in my mind, 'Yeah, I want Johnny to learn that it's a little bit random, and unexpected, and it surprises people when he tries to join their conversation from the classroom, as they pass through the hall.' You know, as we're writing, you know, I might, you know, let us go back-and-forth a couple of turns on things that are unrelated. And then, I would throw into the story one of the characters doing that, and invite him to respond. And if he didn't respond the way I wanted him to, or the way I would hope that he would, I would do a 'yes and.' And I would either, let it go for a little while, or I might bring it back around, again, and see if he got it that time. Or I might, myself, write in the perspective of the other person as we're working. I find value in both approaches. I think, though, that the Playing with Words approach is a little bit better, because you have the total engagement of the student in Playing with Words. You know, they have a real- a really active role in what's going on. And it's- it's usually on a topic that they're intensely interested in. Whereas the product-based, I've chosen everything. I've chosen the names of the characters. I've chosen the situation. I've chosen the reactions. It's a little bit more passive. I was trying to think of a... parallel that most of us have experienced. And I think that if we were sitting in an office together, and I asked for a show of hands, of how many people studied a foreign language in high school, a very high percentage of people in the room would raise their hands. And when you study foreign language in high school, if your high school was like mine, you do a lot of acting out skits, you know, like they have those little [speaking French] kind of interactions that, you know, they're scripted. You practice them, and you conjugate a lot of verbs, and you learn stuff. I mean, I obviously learned that little script-- I learned it in seventh grade-- but it's much more valuable, you know, like if you can go into-- I guess I just did French-- you can go into a French speaking environment, and you have something you want to communicate. Like you're in a restaurant and you need a fork. Once you figure out how to make the waiter understand, 'I need a fork.' You will never forget how to say fork. Okay, so I hope I explained product-based versus process-based. Process-based is more fun. You have a higher chance of learning and retaining what's being presented to you. And there you can learn many, many more things with the process-based. Product-based has its place. My overall final thought is that I hope you'll try this. People probably have different feelings and reactions to it. And one of those feelings might be reluctance to try something new. Just just do it! Just try it. You won't be sorry. It's good to be brave and try some- try new things. Don't worry very much about the impression you make on other people. I've been told, 'Well, you're just... playing!' You know, I've certainly been... accused of that in my therapy with younger children, that I'm just playing with them. And that's not true. You know, and this is a form of play and it's really, really important for our students to have opportunities to play. You know that what you're doing, you know that you have real goals, and you know that it's good for your students. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if you find that it's also good for you. You'll learn a lot about your students. And you'll learn a lot about teaching. >> Charlotte: When thinking about creating a Playing with Words activity, Linda Hagood identifies six components that should be considered. Some components may not be included, initially, such as including peers in the intervention session, but these should always be goals you're moving towards, or at least, considering for your students. You can explore each of these components, in depth, on the Paths to Literacy website, and Playing with Words micro-site. >> Charlotte: We hope you're excited to learn more about the Playing with Words approach. Please take some time to visit the Playing with Words micro- site, on Paths to Literacy, to see all the content that's included. You can simply click on the Playing with Words link on the home page of Paths to Literacy. If you look at the handout, you'll see that there's a site map you can check out-- we have the forms for planning and reflection. We have an area on props we'd like you to look at, and we have all of the video examples listed out. So have a look and explore!