Dyslexia and Universal Design for Learning Podcast by David Poeschl.

Hello, my name is David Poeschl and I'm a parent adviser with Matrix Parents at Marin CIL. This is another in our series of monthly podcasts for the year 2024 to 2025.

today. I'd like to talk about universal Design for learning, which I did in a previous podcast, but I want to do it in a different way than I that I did then at first, just to give you a sense of what it is, if you don't know what UDL or Universal Design for learning is, and we'll go into a little more depth in it and later on in the podcast.

But just for now, what it does is that it teaches a student using the student's preferred method of learning, and it also elicits proof of mastery of that studentsŐ knowledge of the subject in the studentsŐ preferred way of doing it. Okay, so and what I want to do with this look at UDL from a perspective. We have what's called a dyslexic learner.

And for instance, I want to know how a dyslexic learner takes in information most efficiently. How do they show mastery of the material they've learned in a way that's most effective for them? We're going to talk about a common, cognitive profile. The dyslexic thinker and how that can profoundly affect their ability to function successfully in a typical school environment.

And we're going to hear stories of successful dyslexic thinkers and their school experiences that illustrates the mismatch between intelligence and today's education system. Then, as I mentioned, we're going to do a quick review of UDL principles. And then last, we're going to look at a lesson plan that encompasses UDL in a really effective way and shows how creative and relevant these lessons can be, to get the information across.

And last, I'm also going to throw in a review of my first encounter with AI, and it didn't go particularly well, but we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that also. So first let's talk about a definition of dyslexic thinking. And this definition came because of support from Microsoft and LinkedIn in particular, to be put into dictionary.com.

In addition, LinkedIn lists dyslexic thinking now as an asset that a person can put in their profile on their app. Okay. So, let's look at what that definition is, what dyslexic thinking is, is that an approach to problem solving and assessing information and learning, often used by people with dyslexia that involves pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, lateral thinking and interpersonal communication.

Okay. So, we're going to talk about this in the respect of using a particular student's cognitive profile. As I mentioned. And that student is going to be Emily. And Emily is in 10th grade, and she has ADHD and a learning disability on the right. She's qualified under a specific learning disability, as her primary qualified category. And she's also under the category of other health impaired because of her ADHD.

I'm going to use this as an example to frame some of the information that we're going to be talking about. And a couple of tests that I'm going to be describing. So, the actual cognitive tests and academic tests that are used are not that important. It's just that they produce information. And the particular ones I'm going to talk about are good, because I'm just used to them.

And I like the way they frame whether you frame things. So, the cognitive task is called the whisk, which is the Weschler Intelligence scale for children. And the second test, we're going to use is from the same company. And it's called the Wyatt, which is the Weschler, Individual Achievement Test. And the reason we're going to use these two is that it shows really clearly what dyslexic thinker profile looks like.

And we can spot some of these on the testing. So, first of all, at the whisk we look at a visual spatial skill. And we look at total IQ without putting in non-language-based items. So visual spatial skills verbal comprehends and all that goes into what a person's actual IQ is in terms of non-language-based functioning.

In Emily's case we look at her profile and we see that on her visual spatial skills. She's in the 99th percentile which is brilliant. She can be an incredibly brilliant visual spatial learner. However, on the other side she also has very low working memory skills and she has very low processing skills. Okay, so now what I'd like to do is to bring in the Wyatt, which is the academic test, and look at a specific item that's on there.

That's called orthographic processing. And I'll explain what this is. And the reason I'm bringing this into it, into the discussion is that I want to give you an example of what a specific, brain function looks like, and to say that someone has slow processing or they have working memory issues is not very descriptive. But I think looking at this particular, issue of orthographic processing will give you a clear idea.

Okay. So, we know she has low working memory. Again. We know she has low processing speed. And what orthographic processing is, is that that's the ability of a person to be able to read words fluently without thinking about them. That's the reason that most fluent, real, fluent readers can read down a page of text and know what the words are without having to think about them.

You don't have to decode words. Sight words are familiar, so you don't have to process those in any way. It's automatic. People that have, orthographic processing problems, they don't have that facility need to be able to memorize words efficiently. So, the average number of times it takes a person to learn, for instance, a simple word.

I can't remember exactly, but it's 6 or 7 times, I think 6 or 7 repetitions of being exposed to that word. For complex words, it's going to be more repetitions, but eventually the fluent reader will be able to know what a huge number of these words and just, you know, just be able to read automatically the orthographic, processor who is has low skills of this area can't do that efficiently.

So, this is the person that going to have underlying good. Skills in terms of phonemic skills. They're able to efficiently, decode words, but they just do it in a very slow manner with sight words. It takes them many repetitions to be able to remember sight words. And even then, it's not it's not completely fluent. Okay.

So, this gives you an idea of how something like slow processing working memory relates to something that goes specifically into a classroom. And you can see how this child's going to have all kinds of problems with spelling and reading and all the other things that go on to add to what dyslexia is. Okay, but it's not only poor spelling and reading issues that come up.

You think about it was in happening in a classroom. So, there's first of all, lecture-based teaching most of the time, which is, not in this in this child's, you know, strengths. And then you think about it that there's, there's no taking, there's interacting with peers or staying organized, and all of these things quickly become too much for the person with these issues.

And these are because, again, it's all language-based disabilities that that are the that are happening at the base of this. If you look at these from the perspective of how these folksŐ function in society, after this, we're going to talk about some specific examples here in a minute. But what you do find, in a practical sense, going from special education to school, in school to adult life, is that the large majority of students that had a disability in school no longer have a disability once they leave school, in terms of their ability to be able to, be able to function, to be able to be successful in society, their basic weaknesses

and that were haunting them in school, that had to do with all of those, those, you know, the processing skills and so on. They don't need the same supports because theyŐre being in a language-based environment. And you'll find most of these people go into fields that are strong in visual spatial skills. So, these are musicians, these are artists.

These are big thinkers. These are, you know, mathematicians and people who, who do very well in non-language-based fields, engineers. There's a whole the whole list. You can think about this, you know, the disability, the underlying issue that doesn't go away. But in terms of being a disability, it just isn't anymore because of their ability to be able to adapt to it in, you know, a much larger society.

Now, let's talk about it in again, another way in a school setting and just talk about how difficult this is, because what you're doing is that you're taking a visual learner who processes information through, you know, interacting in the world without a language-based filter. And what we do is that we make these children, translate basically language into their way of their way of learning.

And so, what we're doing is putting them into this, this particular type of learning style for their entire, their entire school career. And then they get out of school and they're not using those skills that they learn in the language-based environment most of the time. You know, obviously the remedial reading and those sorts of things are very important for, you know, being successful in society.

But it just becomes much less relevant. So, by putting them into this sort of this foreign environment, it puts it, it puts a handicap, it puts the disability, it creates that disability for the child. With that as background, I'd like to talk about a YouTube video that I watched and made a transcript of, and it was of a symposium put on by the Yale Dyslexia Center, and it featured people who are dyslexic and are very successful, and they just like to read the transcript here.

Doctor barrel been a CRF, a world-renowned radiology and Harvard Medical School professor. In talking about avoiding reading in school, nobody ever really caught up with the fact that I never really did read normally, and I would be very cagey. I would count the number of girls ahead of me when we were reading out, live in class and try to memorize the paragraph that I thought was going to be mine.

Lots of things like that, as you do. I actually flunked a three-hour exam in English in seventh grade, actually flunked it because it was on great expectations. And I thought, if I want to see the movie, I wouldn't have to read the book. And of course, the movie in the book. Well, there were some differences in the book and that got laughter.

Sam Jensen, a former U.S. congressman. The only times I'd get in trouble. I remember once with another immigrant family in Boston, and that was probably somewhere between 8 and 10, and she went to a Boston Latin or whatever was the equivalent of Boston Latin or were very smart kids went, and this was Mona and Mona, please read for us.

And then Mona read, and then Sam read, and then Sam. Why don't you read as well as Mona did? I was wished Mona great. Great. Harm trouble speaking easily in class. Young students who know the answer may freeze or say the wrong word when called on for dyslexics. Difficulty with world word retrieval persists throughout their lives. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Philip Schultz.

That's something. I get caught on a word and I can't say it, and I instead of just doing the obvious thing, which is to skip it and go to the next one, I can't. I've had a number of occasions where I get stuck and I disconnect. My brain goes blank. I lose any conscious ability to move. Now it's maybe only a few moments, but in my mind that's a century.

But a couple of times it's noticeable. So, people afterwards will ask me what's happened. I mean, you just didn't. I remember one organization, one person head of an organization and came up and said, does that happen to you often? And I lied and said, no, but it's really interesting. Now I know what it is. Is word retrieval, right?

I mean, even though I've written a word, it's there on the page. And then when I come upon the word, I can't remember how to pronounce it. Okay. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, I want to go back to UDL, Universal Design for learning, and I'll describe a little more fully, what we're talking about.

And the framework that UDL uses in looking at how information is taught, how it's processed by the student and how that information is then, elicited from the student to show mastery. They call it the why, the what and the how of learning. Okay, so let's take our sample. Student Emily, remember, she had the very high visual spatial skills and the low processing and working memory skills, and she's I'm using this kind of loosely.

I'm not, you know, plugging her into everything we're talking about. But to give you hopefully a clarifying, explanation of a couple of these things. So, Emily has a deep interest, like a lot of dyslexic kids, in technology and, a lot of times these interests can be quite intense. And for Emily, she has an interest in computer-based learning and also on social media.

Okay. So, her Y needs to include her area of interest with which is technology. The lesson doesn't need to necessarily be about technology, but it needs to incorporate some of that into it. So, what we find in in the research is that these students need to have information that's presented to them that's relevant, that ties past learned information into what's currently being taught.

Because if there's no relevancy, there's no by. And so, the student has to have a why. What is the interest in the upcoming lesson we're going to talk about? The author of the lesson calls it the hook. What's what do we get it to get this this student involved in this, the what is how students perceive and make meaning from the information.

How do they process it? How do they best take the information in? And again, what we find in the research is that it needs to be structured. So, it needs to be a clear framework for it. It needs to be goal focused. It can't be for nothing. It has to be something that there's a purpose to it.

It needs to be relevant, which we talked about that it has to tie that old information into the new information and it needs to be understandable. And when I talk about understandable, I'm talking about the fact of how the input is going in terms of, you know, say multiple media and so on. But I'm also talking about explaining to the students in a pre-lesson or before the lesson what language means in the lesson that they may not know.

And also, symbols. So how do things fit together. How are you know, somewhat symbolic language used in this and that needs to be explained, that needs to be explained to the student. And last is the how of learning. This means that assessments that are accessible to all students, that provides an equal floor of opportunities, that they're able to display mastery of the subjects in ways that favor their learning style.

The other part is that students are guided to organize, because that's often difficult for these learners to set goals, which, again, is a part of that, that importance for them and to plan their own learning, which, again, is part of that, that hook. And last, let's take a look at a lesson that works. The lesson I'm going to describe has to do with students learning about a Gen I chat box.

And if it's possible to get it to hallucinate. And this is taken from a lesson by Michael Kingston from AI for education. I believe he's in Great Britain. And I've put a reference, included in the episode notes. So, the lesson that Mr. Kingston developed, it meets several English language arts standards and also computer science standards that are Common Core in the U.S and also standards in Great Britain, in Australia.

But before I do that, I just have to describe my experience with an open AI platform. And I've never, gone on AI before. I've never done anything with AI before, and I just wanted to get a sense of how it works. And so, I just, went on and did the 4 or 5 questions, and it was quite a weird experience because I, I asked the, the whatever it is, how to force it to hallucinate.

And so, I had these four questions and when I found out I had to do is I had to make the questions more and more specific. But I think the third question, I recognize what the, the I was doing, the program was doing is that it was actually dodging what I was asking for, and it was pretending to be clueless of me of my intent.

And I'm not sure if it, you know, if it if it's built for this type of particular question and it could be but it, it kind of makes me suspicious of the whole enterprise. It was felt like a lot like playing whack a mole. But with the added feature of having to deal with something that did not want to be outwitted.

But it was exactly what any human with any sense would say if one was trying to obfuscate the issue. And so, I have to say, also, I rarely look at the AI generated answers when I'm looking for research or information on special education. When I have looked, I have found two problems the least. And first is that there's either too much information to sort through.

And then the second problem is, is that the curation of the resources is, kind of dicey. I just don't I don't like a lot of the websites that they're referring to. They're not ones that I would give as Mike as my first choice. So, the resources are often not credible. Or they're for clearly commercial purposes. I found a lot of times.

So, I come into this lesson that I'm going to describe with a pretty high degree of skepticism. But also take into account, you know, with a huge grain of salt, that I have no idea what I'm talking about with this. So, this is, you know, my very anecdotal response to it. So. All right, so what I want to do first is take a minute to read the story behind Mr. Kingston's lesson and why the lesson becomes important in this context.

Okay. So, this is a story from May of 2023. In a New York courtroom, lawyer Stephen Schwartz smiled to himself. He was representing a man who had been injured when a metal drinks cart hit his leg on a flight the airline didn't want to pay. The man shouldn't have had his leg in the aisle in the first place, they argued.

If his leg wasn't in the aisle, he would have been fine. They wanted the judge to throw off the case, but Mr. Schwartz, a lawyer with 30 years of experience, had a secret weapon. He had a ten-page brief for the judge, which included eight similar cases Martinez versus Delta Airlines, Vargas versus China Southern Airlines and Zuckerman versus Korean Airlines.

In every other case, the airline had to pay up. Mr. Schwartz was confident that the judge would take one look at these examples and force the airline to pay his client. But there was a problem. Find any of the cases Mr. Schwartz referenced in this ten-page brief? They went back to Mr. Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz was confused. He was sure that the cases existed.

He had gotten some help in writing his brief, he admitted, but he had checked the cases. It turned out that Mr. Schwartz, stressed and short on time, had asked ChatGPT to write the brief for him. He checked the chat box work by asking if the cases were real and answered yes. The chat box wasn't exactly lying. It had used his training to combine a series of words into sentences and paragraphs that looked and sounded like an experienced lawyer's brief.

The problem was that all the cases in the brief were made up. So were the quotes. ChatGPT had been hallucinating, giving out reasonable sounding information that is totally false. While the latest version of ChatGPT has passed the bar exam for lawyers as well as the SAT, no person or company has yet to solve the problem of chat box hallucinations.

Generative AI chat boxes like ChatGPT can sound like a human expert, but as much as 20% of the time the technology will make up answers. It will even generate false links to books, articles and YouTube videos to support. Made up is made up answers and often one question, like in Mr. Schwartz's case, the chat box will insist that it's right now arguing his own case before a judge.

Mr. Schwartz, as Mitzi greatly regrets outsourcing his work to ChatGPT, he promises he will never do so in the future without, absolute verification of his authenticity. Unintentionally, Mr. Schwartz mistake is a valuable lesson for all chat box users. Now, this was just an example from one of these. It happened. I found tons of them online. I guess these are pretty common, and I look to see if updates had, taken care of this problem.

As of early 2025, when this podcast is being made, I can't find out what it says has been corrected. But again, I'm certainly a new person in this field. So. Okay let's go now to Mr. Kingston's lesson. It's called hallucination Detective. The title becomes obvious based on Mr. Schwartz's experience. So, the lesson overview says it best. In this lesson, students play the role of a hallucination detective by investigating how and why generative A.I. chat boxes sometimes produce answers that contain incorrect or made-up information, known as chat box and lucid nations.

To do this, students first select a topic they have an expertise in, then proceed to test and fact check in a chat box as answers. Students use this data to create a short presentation on the risks of chat box, hallucination and methods to combat it. So, if you look at the at the lesson from the links in the notes, the lesson breaks down the parts of it into manageable pieces that that's called chunking in education and putting it into pieces that are better, much more doable.

And it also provides an organizational framework that help keep students on track. So, remember that for an organizational piece, things need to be broken down, organized, and translated. So, for dyslexic thinkers, this is a really good lesson because it allows them to bring in previous knowledge. The assignments again use the area of students, as students interests as a subject, if you remember, and is of high interest obviously, obviously, because it's of a student's interest area, is relevant to the studentŐs life outside of school, it meets several common Core and international standards, and it's a lot of fun.

So, the lesson in this type of instructional creativity, it breaks the mold of the lecture in language heavy teaching that's truly anathema to these kinds of dyslexic thinkers. The traditional learners are not abandoned by the change of teaching. There's still a strong component of language-based materials in the lesson. And it's not just heavily emphasized as in traditional methods.

So UDL is the change agent needed to bring schools in line with their studentsŐ needs. It's simplicity of function, the use of its strengths for each individual student. So, the barriers created by learning differences are eliminated. And it's a very elegant concept. Well, effective implementation is more complex in the basic idea. The tens of thousands of schools are using UDL effectively.

And I've also, worked in school districts, one was a UDL district and the other had UDL schools. And, as special education director, I was involved in some of the implementation of accommodations. So, I know that, if it's done with fidelity, if it's done with good training of teachers are aware of what they're doing, it's very, very effective.

So that's it for, for this one. But I do finally want to give my thanks and acknowledgment of the contribution of information from the sources. I listen to the episode notes. And that's the New York State Digital Technology Initiative, which is where I got the lesson. And also, a lot of the information that I, that I presented, and the Yale Center for dyslexia and great creativity and also the lesson plan that I am going to put into that I'm going to put in for Mister Kingston.

Well, that's it for this broadcast of this podcast. Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us. Remember to call our helpline at (800)  578-2592 for further assistance. Our parent advisers and matrix parents at Morrinsville are here to help. Take care now. Bye.

Well, that's it for this broadcast of this podcast. Thank you very much. We appreciate you joining us. Remember to call our helpline at (800) 578-2592 for further assistance. Our parent advisers at Matrix Parents at Marin CIL are here to help. Take care now. Bye.

© 2025 Marin Center for Independent Living (Marin CIL). Podcast author, David Poeschl, Parent Advisor at Marin CIL.