Getting Valid Communication

Okay. So, this is going to be about communication and getting valid open communication. So, I want you to first think about is readiness. What are signs that the student is ready to go beyond teach and choices to communicate reasoning or opinions? So, go ahead and stop the video and write that down and then come back.

Um, so when you're doing RPM, there are a couple things that I assign. Something I want to point or would suggest to look for. What I want to point out again is presently as I'm making this video, um I don't have like an official word from Soma on when to do it, but I just know from um watching her and my own experience different things that you should be looking for to get valid communication and to know that your skill with a student is where it should be, which some of you probably already know this. This is why you're in level three, but I think it's still important to go over. It's better to kind of overdo it than underdo it.

So, some things that you're looking at and is you're looking at I'm going to talk about this a couple times. Emotional, sensory, and motor readiness to look to know if the student is supposed to be going into open communication of some sort. And usually usually it starts with precommunication, but not always. So when you're in a session, there should be at least some regulation. It doesn't have to be perfect regulation, but enough regulation that you can get actual accuracy.

So one of the big things to kind of check for is motor readiness. For example, on motor readiness, what I tend to look for is that some of the gesture prompts are faded and that a student can do teach without a choice. That doesn't mean there's no more prompts for it, but directional prompts should be feeding some. And key thing that I look for is can they go to that first letter directly without any directional prompting.

So when I hold up the letterboard, let me just grab one out here. Sorry, I should have had this ready. So I pull up a letter board. uh whether it's rolled because of course if it's rolled you can start communication that way either by choosing rows or just doing precommunication that are um safe words and um or full or or whatever it is that you're doing. Let me just go like this. So for example, when you say to the student, we're going to be talking about kangaroos. What are we talking about? When you show them this row, they should go right to the K. Um, it doesn't have to be perfect, but usually they should be able to go right to that first letter. And that's why you want to be able to do this so that you could say to them, I'm thinking of what is um when it rains, what does rain come from? Or what's the white or gray fluffy puffy thing in the sky? You can go here and they can touch the C for cloud and then finish spelling it. So I'm looking for independence with that first letter that it's pretty independent and a number of them are whether that letter is over here in the center over here on the stencil the three stencils you know whether wherever it's on the three or on the full letter board to know if I can start into precommunication. So basically the key I look for is can that first letter be done without directional prompting. Um, so you can prompt towards the letterboard but not anything then they're motor ready is what I look for. Of course automatically if that's not being prompt and they're hitting that pretty much always correctly then the prompts will have faded with a number of the other things. So you need to make sure there's comfort there. And the level of AC accuracy from student to student may determine how far you go into open communication whether it's very pre where you're thinking of a word you both know but you didn't say or where it's more advanced um that you're asking for their own words or opinion fill in the blank or beyond that and that motor I suppose will change some there.

So, um, your motor rate is something you're going to be assessing from moving a course from one row to two rows to full board, uh, from three stencils to a full board, wherever you're at, you're going to be looking at that motor. So, you're also looking at the flow from letter to letter. Um, so asking them to spell a sentence, usually you're going to see more letters they can do accurately in a row before you do a ton of that. Although it is possible for a student to spell out a sentence letter by letter with you stopping after each set each um uh letter. The thing with that and different providers may have different rules for this. The thing with that is you need to be careful when you're putting that board down, taking away writing, putting the board down, taking away writing. Um then you do risk putting it inadvertently influencing sometimes that. So, you do want to kind of be aware of what kind of question am I asking people? Um, am I asking them a uh like a a really sincere opinion question or what am I doing? And it's not that you can't ever do it. Just make sure you're very confident they're getting their thoughts out. If you go into a deeper opinion, that's pretty clean that you're really not guessing at things. Um, so again there are different providers that will have different rules on that. I think what you need to judge is what does the student need for their confidence. What is the family looking for and how confident do you feel about and ethically about how they're spelling. So look at those things. So that's what you're looking for motor readiness. There should be more ability to go letter to letter. Um, make sure the board's held still. That's of course an important thing. So the motor skill is largely are you able to hold the board still for the student for them to hit that letter and do that independently um particularly when it goes beyond precommunication.

Sensory readiness would just be can they handle the letter board for longer amounts. So of course they don't have much sensory tolerance to the board. They that's part of also going letter to letter but also how long their response is going to be. Emotional readiness will be what type of questions they can have. So, they may be emotionally ready to do open-ended but not opinions or they may be uh emotionally ready to do opinion open-ended but not the reasoning kind. You're going to find different students are more uh comfortable with different ones whether it's hey my opinions I can always get right. So, I feel calm about that. But if you ask me for like a word that goes with the sun, I had a couple occasions where that was a scary question but saying their favorite sport was not. Usually it's reversed. Usually they're more comfortable saying a word association, a fill in the blank, a creative writing story kind of question and not the opinion if they have a preference um as far as the comfort. So just watch are they handling the type of questions you're asking. Is there an escalation when you ask more emotional? Is there escalation? What's more factual, open-ended? What are ways you can support that? of course, giving choices, doing a shorter response, um reassuring them it's okay to make mistakes that you will check in with them so they don't have to feel bad about their um production. So, that's just some things to be thinking about in terms of sensory motor and it and emotional readiness. And you're going to be assessing that over and over as you go along. Um, doesn't have to be perfect, but enough that you feel confident in what they're doing there.

So, so um I am going through this. Go ahead and check to make sure you've completed the first um few questions um on this. So, fading prompts again, you're going to have different providers that will say different things a little bit. Um, the idea is it's pretty much understood that when they're spelling an um opinion that has consequence particularly uh when they're having discussion level that you really need to make sure that they can navigate that full board with comfort. Sometimes there can be more playful opinion questions um or one-word association or just simpler answers that you can do some encouraging. Um that said, there are going to be some students to help them understand that you are not looking for them to communicate what you want to hear, but you are looking for them to communicate what they want to say so they don't try to look for cues to figure out what you want. um you will need to make sure that they um really solidly spell words that are unique, that are super clean at a at a a basic level. I really think personally that all students before you move on to much need to have really clean one-word responses for a lot of things, but sometimes you do need to move them forward a little bit further to help them know they're progressing to clean it up. So, it's really a know your student thing because there are some that it's very important to get super clean and solid on every level so that they um maintain their skill. Um, there's others that are so anxious that if you demand perfection and they get stuck in a spot. So, it is really a a balancing act, but the goal is that they communicate their thoughts, their opinions, um, that that it's something that they feel safe, that you're providing an environment they feel safe and comfortable expressing their thought process. So, that can be done in different ways for different students, right? you're going to have some that really need a little bit more prompts and encouragement to actually produce communication um in order to get them to confidently do their own. And there's going to be others that you need to really hold back on certain prompts strictly so that they don't look for a cue from you and develop this idea was to watch my teacher for cues. Um so so again every student's different on what you need to do and so you kind of can you'll find over time what you assess um with students what they need to do but the idea is it needs to get clean it needs to be clear and needs to be solid.

So safer open-ended questions usually involve things such as of course words you didn't say but you both know. That's a really safe one. It can be a great confidence building and lets you kind of know is their accuracy there enough that I can ask them for their own word and they feel successful because you have to help a child feel successful. So that would be that on those kind of questions when you do things such as um tell me the color of the sky during the during a sunny day pretty much students are going to spell the word blue. So, if you're on a roll board, you can go ahead and just show them this one row. You can show them the half board if they're ready for that or the full board if they're ready for that or the three stencils or the full stencil because after they touch the B, you can give some directional information like it's a teach task if needed. You still want to be fading it because you're trying to see also in addition to you're still working the motor to make it more interesting, but you're also planning and pathways and confidence, but you're also looking for them to really show you that they can move around. If it's heavily prompted for those kind of responses, generally speaking, you're going to keep your other types of promp responses like word association, one word fill in the blank, um their opinions or reasoning to choices. If you're fade able to fade out some of those prompts or they're very cleanly going with the prompts, then you can probably start letter by letter because if they can hit clean one letter without a directional prompt, then you can turn to their side and say, "Okay, where's your first letter at which column?" Because this is five five choices here, five choices here. So, if they're pretty clean on one row, just hitting one letter at a time, then they should be fine to do their open-ended here. If there's a lot of misamiming on this, then you might want to decrease that.

When it comes to words association, again, you're going to have some differences from what I watched S do. Um, there's a fine line between having a student like pushing a student into a word and encouraging what you can see happen. they're different. So, you need to feel pretty confident if you encourage a word beyond once or twice cuz sometimes you might kind of trigger them to spell a word to help build their confidence because remember you're doing something called scaffolding. So, when you scaffold, you're basically giving them the structure like in a building when they're framing a house. You may see that they have like the wood beams here and they they give basically the structure to to build the house so that you can have a comfortable house. They're just out of wood or whatever they're doing. Um, so you'll see the rooftop has the wood going across. This is kind of a bad looking house. My dad was a builder, so I saw scaffolding all the time. So it's just like a the the wood is there to build the structure of the house. The basic shape is there. So as they get more independent, this is this the support is faded. So the prompting is faded from directional to indirect. and you fade that more and more um in what you're going to do with a student. So that's called scaffolding. And then as they get better, you take away supports because they don't need the supports. They just need the um the they just need, you know, you to be there and then fad so you'll fade fade yourself out of that that situation.

Okay. So if they're spelling a word and I may have used this in level two if you're in my level two class this example but it's a nice one. So if say there's hope they're doing the full board as is and not picking a column just spelling it as is and you say give me a word that goes with sky and they pick C then they pick L they shift this way and start to hesitate. So there are some providers, but what you can do a couple things. One is put the board down and write CL reset and see what happens. So if you really just don't want to give any cue whatsoever, that's fine. Or you can say, "Yeah, keep going. That's a good one over here." So if you can encourage them to keep moving and say, "Yeah, you're doing it right." Some students need that to feel good and then it helps them build the skill of going to letter to letter without stopping. Um, it's not the end of the world if they weren't going to spell cloud and instead they were shifting to go up to here and spell clear. That's possible, but it's not a big deal. What you don't want to do is get stuck on the idea that it is cloud and force them to spell cloud. So, if they start making a shift up, allow it. Maybe they're thinking uh cling um cling clang, I don't know, they saw a bell in the sky or whatever. I don't know. Or clear or whatever it is. just remember that you don't necessarily know, but you're really dealing with a safe word, so it's not the end of the world if they really had another idea. Okay? So, you could encourage them to build their confidence. You can also stop and you can write down what they have. Um, something that I want to just point out here is that when I was training, I would pull the word up each letter to give them kind of a confidence reset. that can work very well, but it looks sloppy and so discouraged it. So, because you don't know if you put it down here or put it down here. So, what you're doing instead of lifting the board after each letter, the other reason being sometimes that makes a student feel like they're going to get it wrong, going to get it wrong. So, be careful that you don't pull it away for one when you do reset like that. If you do it like once or twice in a word, it's fine. If you're doing every letter, there's too much. So if you do that, make sure it's not they're going to miss a word and you're like, you know, so then just put the board down, write what they have, put it back up. The other thing is instead of pulling it away, you can also they touch and you can push into their hand to help their hand go back if that's an issue. But it should be that your wrist stays comfortable. You need to be careful because you need the pressure to stay the same, particularly as open and it gets more advanced so that you're not influencing by the pressure. And again, if people are watching, you also want to think about what it looks like when people are watching because they don't know necessarily if they can see the hand touched it and then you pushed the hand touched it and then you pushed. So, make sure they touch the letter, then you push it in. The rare exception, and it does happen, is you'll have students that are very scared. They'll sit there and hover over a letter. And I will say, "Go ahead, touch." And sometimes if they're hovering and so scared, I'll push the letterboard into their hand to build their skill cuz I'm doing with safe stuff. They are very clear. I've had kids sweating. You got to do something, not just let them suffer. So you can let them push in, but that's a rare exception. It does happen though here and there, which you have to accommodate for a unique student that needs that. But for the more part, they touch and then you can push in to teach them to pull their own hand back. Sometimes I'll push in and reset their hand at the same time. So I'll push in and then pull their hand back. So I am kind of doing like this or a little shake, but it's not removing so the board goes in a different spot. So just helping make sure it looks pretty clean and and nice for the student for people watching. And if you're all alone with the student, it's a little bit different. You can really focus on building confidence, but you still want to get it clean because you don't want to train a student to look for cues for for it. You have to prompt and you have to prompt. Absolutely have to prompt to keep them going indirectly. At first, there has to be directional prompting to train their eyes to track. So, I'm not discouraging that, but you don't want to be set even at this level on the word you think they're going to spell when they start spelling. Be flexible. Keep reminding yourself throughout your practice. You never have to stop reminding yourself to be flexible. you don't know all the words in the English language or whatever language you're teaching in. So, make sure that you're flexible with with the responses without getting too into flexibility that you're that you're completely denying your competence to see where they're going, of course. So, keep that in mind.

Um, then some other things. So, creative writing, one-word responses. Sometimes there can be encouragement, there can be choices, there can be some suggestions because it's creative writing or it's predictables. So, again, sometimes in order to scaffold to build confidence, you may give them more leeway with Miss Ames even. So, let me pull out a clearboard so you can see. So the other day I was talking to one of my students and I said to him, he is seven-year-old. If you could be any ocean creature, if you were not allowed to be a human anymore, what would you pick? So this is a harmless opinion question. It let you know about the personality. So I definitely want the students word, but I'm not dealing with something that we're going to actually go out and make him into this creature, right? I do want it correct and I want it to be theirs. So, this is one where I'm going to try and make sure if I give any prompt or something that I'm not that I'm feeling confident that they're moving. I don't want to force them into something although I may defaulted choices. So, this particular student touched the S. Okay. Now, when he touches S, it's easy for me to think seahorse shark. And those are the two ones that came to my mind afterwards. I was thinking about it. there was seal sea uh swordfish or whatever. Couple things to be thinking about. Is the student a ocean enthusiast? If they are, there's a lot more chance they may spell a word you don't think of. If they aren't, then you probably have a pretty good idea about the kinds of word they're going to spell, and that's fine. So, he went S, then he went to H. At that point, I probably got shark or shellfish or something like that, right? He goes up and he hits the B. So I was doing letter by letter. I He touched S, I wrote it down. I reset and he touched H. I wrote it down. H. And he went up there and he hit B. So here I'm said, "Yeah, go to the A." So I personally felt comfortable because clearly he's lunging for this corner. It's a little bit harder. We already know that he's going for pretty much the word shark. Again, I don't have evidence that he's an ocean enthusiast, so there's probably not a word he's spelling that I'm not thinking. Um, in that regard, that said, he could. So, if he didn't go to A, I'm not going to force him up there. Does that make sense? That's the difference. So, if he went down to the U, that's a legitimate letter. I can't think of a fish personally right now or sea creature that has that, but maybe you can and maybe the student could. So, I'm going to be open to it. But if I get shu and then I get like a I don't know w I'm going to be pretty sure that they probably messed up. I'd say maybe you're thinking and then I'll say maybe you're thinking of a fish I don't know or shoe or something like that. Maybe you're thinking of shoe something. Maybe there's a shoe word maybe. So it could be a misspelling and it could be he messed up and it could be he's thinking of something that I don't know. So I could say to him that looks like you might be saying the word shoe. Um, is that correct? Or depending on the context, I might say, you may have a word that you're thinking of, but I can't see a word from that combination. Sh makes sense. Possibly the U. Let's see what you want after the H again. So, it depends on the timing, the speed of the student, how much effort. If they're going way slow, then you might say, "Ah," say they want shw. You want a shoefish. I've never heard of one of those, but let's see. Let's go ahead and spell it. Here's how I would spell shoefish or something like that. So, you can play around with it that way. Or you might say, let me give you some choices. Do you want to say shellfish or shark? So, cuz that's what I would do if they went off track, but there's a couple letters that were legitimate because again, he may have a different idea, but because you're asking what would you pick, then you could just say them out of these two choices I'm giving you, what would you pick? So, now you just eliminated it to a narrower spot. Okay, back to this student though. He went S, he went H, she went B. And his mom and I both knew where he was going. Okay, we were probably right. So, I wasn't feeling bad about this. So, he was being like, "Yep, go ahead. You you got the A." Then he goes down here and he hits Q right next to the R. Okay. So, he's a little bit off, but by now it's pretty much going to be shark. This is where you may have differences in providers. Um, some providers would be always wanting to be really thinking that a student understandably can spell anything. And so if they're a little bit more, I guess broader, there may be more hesitancy with that. Whereas for me, also reading the mother who was right with me on it, we could see that he was going for shark. He was just one letter off for those couple letters. That's a very legitimate thing for him to spell and it makes sense. We also were given encouragement. So in that case, that's something that I felt good about. I didn't feel like we were influencing him in some negative way. It was not a big important opinion. No one's going home and doing anything with the information. We're just enjoying it. Um, and frankly, if he messed up and spelled one of those, it's still a fun idea that he was thinking shark. Or that he was trying for that word. This type of opinion to me is a more safe opinion, but he also was clearly indicating that direction. Um, and again, like I said, some people would not feel comfortable, maybe you don't. So, it's good for you to assess that. Do you feel comfortable with the students really close to the letters? What you feel? Um, at what point? Now, for me, if he started off one letter off, that doesn't work. Um, so I need to feel confident that I'm not predicting, but that I'm pretty much sure I'm right. So again, I had two solid letters and a letter right next to a vowel that made sense. I had a limited range at that point and I didn't see him as an ocean enthusiast, so I was pretty confident that I had it right. That's why I felt comfortable with that. there would be other words or categories or types that I would not have felt comfortable with that and I wouldn't want to be moving to long responses with the full board with that kind of accuracy.

Okay. So, I want to feel confident now with a different parent. If I had a very skeptical parent um um then I would be more likely to either try it with just the sidebar which I do a ton with that particular student at this point where I haven't picked the column or I would have given him choices from the beginning and said would you pick something like a shark well a dolphin and maybe I'd even stay away from the same column. So if you octopus shark, well I may have given him straight choices or something. So again, know your student, know your comfort level, but if you freeze up and you want too much perfection, for instance, this student, he has such a hard hard time with eyetracking that that's a huge progress when he's being that close to letters and he started out very solid. Um, so again, I'm knowing if I have a pretty accurate student, that would not be acceptable. I would want a much more accurate uh response because his missims then indicate something else to me. So, you have to kind of know the student. Again, if you are getting one letter off the entire time, that's pretty sloppy. You need to to um not do a big long responses with a student like that. It shouldn't feel like you're guessing the whole time and saying, "What is that what you want? Is that what you want?" constantly. Because if you are and you know the open and it's probably too broad and you need to do more choices even if it's hey let's let's see if we can create or figure out an ocean animal that you'd want to be. Do you want to start with the letter G or S? Okay. So then you're kind of pushing them in direction of something but they can start thinking that way. In that case though you are that might be kind of broad for that kind of context but you can say what's your first letter S sh and he gets kind of stuck you say is it going to be a next or E next so you may want to be careful with that might be too broad for that but you can do something like let's see if we can create a word together so you can do let's create an a ocean animal together let's start with either G or S that you could do otherwise you can sometimes give choices to help them finish a thought off it's again, if it's safer response. This is an opinion one. So, normally if you're going to give choices within outside of like just giving two word choices, like within like letters, you'd want it to be more like um predictables. Story writing some is a little bit different because it's still, you know, cuz but if you're asking them their actual opinion, it's different. So, yeah. So, for that direct opinion question, just two choices, not letter choices would be what I'd say. other than if they go sh and they kind of go over here, you could say, "Do you want a a or u because they've already shifted enough to show they want something in this column." Or if they go sh and they shift over here, you could say, "Do you want y, i, or e?" Because they're all over here. So, you can do that where you've been eliminated for the student or r, I guess, eliminated for the student the words that would make sense for the vowels that they have. Um, okay. So, I want to make sure I'm clear on this. If you're dealing with opinions, even like that, you want to be more cautious, but you want to be encouraging. Know the child, know the parent. If you're dealing with more like reason precommunication, those kind of things that are less important that you get it right for the student, you still want to be making sure that they're spelling their words, but there's um but there's more leeway if you need to help them a bit more just because it's not personal about them. So, I didn't do a good job showing shark with the two choices of letters. Okay. But you can do helping them see what could come next after their options based off where they picked. So, an activity you may find for yourself that's helpful if you're struggling with getting open-ended are these activities.

Okay. So, if you are feeling um as I said, if you're feeling a kind of stuck on getting open-ended communication, a couple things you want to check. You want to one, go through the alphabet, and this could be for anything you're doing just to get them to spell more clean. Go through the alphabet and after each letter know what could come next. Okay. So you have acronyms which are different and you can look at the context to see what you know about those. So always be open-minded to the fact that an acronym can happen but it's generally speaking not going to be the case. So you might have NASA um in the United States, NASA, MBA, um RPM. In other countries, you might have a little bit different different um acronyms. So you might want to be aware of that in some of the students life and you may not know all of them. So you do want to be careful, but it's not normally going to be what it is. So, just, you know, when you're trying to help them build confidence and and get them going, sometimes you you have to help trigger things or just build their confidence by giving them some just suggestions. So, don't get overly concerned that you have no idea what they're going to spell um there, but there's no rush. So, go through the letterboard check. Okay. After a, you've got words like Aaron, two A's. That's uncommon though. So if they're not saying a name, you don't have much of that. AB, you have like about, abort, ac add. Ae in in US English, that's not much of a combination, but every once in a while, yes. AF after. Yep. Ag again. Uhhuh. Ah, it's less common. It's unlikely. I can't think of a word right now that doesn't a happen though. Air. Um, this could be but uncommon. A ga is a compound adjunct. That could happen. So you can do it but it's not common but it's possible. A k again really uncommon. A l always almost. A m k a n. That works. A o. Okay. A l was an old internet thing but other than that it's really uncommon. Um a p that happens. Aq acquire. Yep. R. Um, that kind of stuff. So, you see how I'm doing that? I can go through the alphabet and see that lots of things after a work cuz it's a vowel. B, I've got vowels. If an Indian name, it's a BA, BH, BL, and BR. Um, there's not much of anything else that can go other than the vowels in Y and the BL on R. C. I have B, C H, C L, C R. um the vowels, but that's basically what I have for most English words. D. So, you see what I'm doing? I'm going through I can sit there and see. So, if you'll do that, it will help you start eliminating quickly for the student what you can or can't do. Um so, so that you when they start shifting, you can kind of start being aware of this student is lost. I need to give them a visual break. Their hands not going where they need to go. So if they're like D, they go like this and they kind of just hover. Okay, they could be going to the boards they are. But if they're hovering here, they're on an M dropping right. But if they're going down here and they're just slowing down, they're trying to get to there, they're probably going for R. If they're going like this and they go D and they kind of shift over here, this is no kind of nonsense area. Unless they're meaning to go like this or there. So sometimes you can tell based off the how they're moving if they're going to land on an incorrect respon. That's what I'm kind of looking at. Are you ready to land an incorrect word or are they going over looking and then going to shift up or shift down? There's a difference. And you'll start to if you're not if you're not already there, recognize the student is shifting to they're going to hit incorrectly DL or this kid is shifting and they're trying to get all the way down there. So then you might need to know, okay, do I need to stop and pause? Do I need to flip to the side? Have them choose the column to clarify that. So that's something you can always do with you're on the stencils or on this that if they're spelling along and say they're going like this c h and then they're like chur unlikely right it's combination that could work but I don't know of any word they're going for maybe they're spelling it something else so if that's happening they might be going for church in my head but or churn but or they're doing their word but to clarify you can say okay what letter what road did you need your letter on and then they say okay it's got to be one of these ones or whatever it is and see if they can correct it. So, you can always step back to have them pick the column or pick the stencil in order for them to show what words you're doing. To be clear, you can flip to this to the side or you can make a strip of paper. This is to help them um do communication. So to help you with other ideas, if you're not doing this, make a strip of paper that like a choice piece of paper out. And on the piece of paper, you fold it. If you're doing stencils, you can you can label it A to I, J to R, S to Z. If it's this, you can label it A to E, F to J, K to O, P to T, U to Z, or A to O if they're on ready to do halfboard, and P to Z. If you don't find this is working very well, you can go here and have the two choices there. Or you can get a number board out or stencil and say number one is A to I, number two is J to R, number three is S to Z. And you can even mark A to I, J to R to Z. You can um if they're like h um too happy to touch either of them, you could say K zero's A to I, two's J to R, four to Z, or you know, or you can say zero's A to E, one's F to J, K, two, two is K to O. Um, three is P to T, four is U to Z. So, you can label them that way if you want to, but for this, I usually find this works just great sideways. But you can do that for the stencils is different. Um, in some cases you can lay the three stencils out and the student can actually pick the stencil that they're wanting if they're good at three choices spread out, but they need to have mastered that first for that to work. Um, you could also put the stencils on the side and have them pick for one. That can be something else that you try as well.

Okay. So, strategies to help a kid be successful is you can always back off to the less letters and have them indicate the area that their correct letters at. You yourself become very familiar with word patterns so that you can start seeing where the students falling and and and and getting stuck. Um other things just to keep on checking. One is your board position. Are they freely able to get to all the corners? Two, do you need to prompt more or with a different rhythm in a different way or less to help them get more fluent on the board for knowing responses? Um, three, checking to see are you jumping too far? Um, are you stuck on a level and need to get out? The other thing is sometimes you need to encourage a word. So, you could say to a student, I'm thinking of a color. So, this is also not just for if you're starting to get open-ended, but for kids that are anxious. I'm thinking of something that's green. So, then to have a pre-communication, you might do something like that. They're like anxiously sitting there. So, and you put your finger right by G and then tilt the board to get them to R so they can spell something like grass. So, you may try to trigger a word in their head. This is not going to be done for something complex. It's going to be something like that to get them confident. So you may do it a few times to trigger words to get them confident. I would tell the parent what you are doing because if you don't tell the parent then some parents would either would not catch and they think they can just move their board around that their their kid hit it therefore they wanted it and they think that they're influencing us how you do RPM. Um others would or just do that in scale practice. Others would be so skeptical they wouldn't believe us. They need to understand you are doing this to support open-ended. You are aware of what you did and that this is not traditional practice to go around moving the board while they spell. So, it's something you're doing specifically for certain children that need to get their confidence boosted that they do have thoughts that come into their brain that they've got it and that you're also there to support them. Um, if you do it too much, there could be some students that just think that they're that they're supposed to follow whatever you want. But if you do it a couple times, it just gives a kid the confidence and then you can go back to still board and no movement. And that's what you should be doing. Just it shouldn't be like like a lot of times that you're doing that. But again, you can encourage if they're pretty far into the word them to be successful. Oh yeah, I can see you went off for these creative writing like one word fill in the blank creative writings or these more basic things. Just again, it should feel like they're doing it. They just have a little bit of aiming here and there and it shouldn't be used on more complex thoughts. Other providers have made rules that within a sentence if they miss twice they need to go to less letterboard. Um if that feels better to you do that. Um, I I more if I'm seeing a lot of errors that I back off the open-ended and get them to teach, spell some words for me, then try it again or just try shorter open-ended responses.

Okay, let me just pause for one now. I just want to check my notes what I had. So for you, it just kept going with me doing that, but I had to stop there for a second. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about influence. So, if you've been in the RPM world enough or you had your own experiences, there's a lot there's talk about telepathy. Now, you can have all sorts of beliefs on that. You can believe it happens sometimes, it happens a lot, and it doesn't ever happen. Um, you can, you know, that's fine. What you want to know is what your goals are with the students and what we're trying to get. So number one, RPM is not a methodology that assumes telepathy, nor as a provider have I seen that to be the norm. I do not think that that's what's going on in most cases. It's influence is a big deal and it's what normally is happening from my experience. Um, so we're not assuming telepathy and if you are assuming telepathy in students that all of them can do it like that overarching belief in in that and there are those who are claiming that I think you're going to get yourself into some trouble in trying to get their own thoughts um due to the type of influence that you're likely to give. um my experience, I've had a lot of just different things that I've done and I'll give you a few of them just because I'm not convinced that that's what's happening. What I think is usually happening when people are claiming that is that they either only worked with their child, which if you're a parent, your child knows you quite well, and so there can be a lot more sharing of the minds, I guess, um is how I'm going to put that there. um or they're just an they haven't got their skills far enough along that they have got the students to a really good point where they can really spell. So, it's possible they're maybe pushing for open-ended that the students not fluently and moving enough around the board for them to see the students spelling. The other thing can be that people mistaken prediction with um ability to predict easily with with telepathy. Um if a student if you say um like for instance tell me a place in Europe they go f suddenly you think the word France that doesn't mean that you are telepathic it means that you can predict right now what you want to do though is keep your mind open because it could be Finland. So if you keep your mind open to the fact they go to I or R or that if you don't think Finland that there's a possibility that France was not the right one. So why it's important when you recognize that you do predict that you don't get set on it so that you don't inadvertently influence.

Okay. So so if you go fur enough along in RPM process and most of you probably are there but if not it's okay. You will find that students spell their own thoughts or you can hold the correct answer in your head and they don't spell it and they don't know it. I have done that multiple times and they're not able to do it. That said, there are times that a student spells what I think if it's happening frequently. I check my board. I check my videos. Um, I check how I'm phrasing things to see or the the tension in my body or the emotional attachment with students that they may be feeling. So, you're going to have different levels. Some students are, I'm going to say it, more intuitive than other students. Um, and of course, their six sense would build. So, here's a couple things that I want you to So, I'm saying this to know I've worked with 800, maybe a thousand kids by now. And I am convinced that my thoughts are completely safe inside my head that they don't know my personal this or that. And I think that's important. So, a couple So, I'll talk later on a little bit about maybe ways to avoid or help, but I want to talk about types of influence. I think I've talked about this before in level two, but I'm just going to go over it again. So, you have technical. So, the technical influence

Is the actual physical outward practice of what you're doing with the letterboard prompts, etc. Then you have, um, the emotional influence. And this one, in some ways, is more dangerous because this has to do more with our ethics, as well as our emotional state when we're teaching students.

Um, dangerous in that you can get kids that feel completely tied to you and captive of your mind, your beliefs, your feelings, and it can be overpowering for some students, even if you don't mean it. So you may be aware of this. So technical influence would be things such as moving the board while they're spelling, gesture prompting while they're spelling, open-ended communication. Um, anything that's beyond like a one-word response. Um, I, I shouldn't say that. Anything that's more, if they can't get themselves around the board, you pretty much avoid most types of opinion questions with the exception of those fun creative ones that you may do. But you need to feel confident that they can get their opinion out, or they can clearly indicate their row and pick their letters. So they don't have to be completely fluent among the full board, but fluent enough with being accurate with their choices. So technical would be then it's just a little bit sloppy. So if you feel like a student's spelling what you're thinking, just double-check that. Double-check that you're not assuming too much. That kind of thing. So it could be how you're holding the board. Um, prompts, outward things. A lot of times people can say this, say this. So I'll have, for instance, a well-meaning parent just trying their best gets their kid to spell for them and they're like, they say, "Give me a word." And then I see that they're prompting a little bit, gesturing a bit, and the student spells the word that they thought. They're like, "Whoa, a telepathic moment." I'm going, "No, I could see what you were doing." So sometimes we don't aware be aware is what I'm pointing out.

Um, they can pick up on small smart cues or small cues. They are smart. So without overdoing this because we're humans, we might move a little bit. That doesn't mean that you're influencing all the time because you may have moved a little bit because of how they moved, or it may have just been something that moved. It didn't. The student could tell it wasn't a movement because of something you're thinking, but just because you're a human that shifts a tad. But yes, if they go M and you go like this, they're knowing you're thinking A. If they go M and they go like this, you're knowing they're thinking A. So you may move after that. That actually matters. If you, not saying you may move as in you should, but as in that may happen inadvertently. So a little movement M like this, that's a movement to A. This and this are not much different because everyone can see that the A is the only thing that makes sense after M. How much a student is influenced is also their personality. Are they determinist about what they want? They have real strong feelings, or are they a people pleaser? It kind of depends on. So you don't want to train a student to watch for small movements or something like that. So be careful without getting freaked out because if you sit there all scared about it, you'll also influence them not to perform because you're so anxious. So that's also an influence, which goes into the emotional influence category. Okay? So know that small movements can influence a child, but if you move a little bit here and there, chances are they went like this and you shifted. So if you're influenced by them, this is less deadly than if you moved forward. Deadly as in problematic, if than if you moved first. Um, but sometimes it's hard to see. I'm just saying, um, when I first started, my technique wasn't as good and students still spelled things I didn't know that I could confirm with the families. Um, I'm saying that to say just because your board wasn't perfectly still doesn't mean that you always influenced. It just means that it's a big probability and it's understandable if someone's skeptical. All right? So gesturing during open-ended, um, shifting the board around during open-ended, those things should not be happening, um, other than the very first part of getting them confident with pre-communication. All I was talking about with some of the giving them credit for these different things was not supposed to be a long-term thing, but a short-term thing when they get started into open-ended when you do like, "Okay, accept one letter," off those types of stuff. They need to be clear and clean.

So technical evidence, um, influence also could be that they're being sloppy and you keep on checking in. "Is that what you wanted?" So often that they just start agreeing to it. You need to back off. This is important. If they're doing so much misaiming, you need to back off. Get them cleaner before you keep pushing open-ended because then you get the risk of the student just going, "I can't get there. Yes, whatever you say is what I meant." So you shouldn't be checking in constantly if they meant stuff. You can do that some here and there. Um, but don't do that. Sometimes I'll say to them, "Is this what you wanted?" I won't make you resell it. And then I can be more confident to know if they're really telling me the right choice. That way they don't have to work again if they can tell they're tired. But if you're doing tons of that, a little air is fine and cross-checking, that's fine, but a lot of that, you risk students, you know, ending up wanting to just agree to it because they're tired. Some students.

Emotional would be more what they're feeling the pressure of. So, I see this more often with parents, but it can happen with a provider. Um, don't get stuck on this student only knows this information, can only spell this kind of stuff out because you can't remember every conversation that you were around or the student knows. That said, yes, if they're a seven-year-old who spells a word that you didn't learn until you were 30, then you may want to just cross-check it. Some I'll say, "Say, 'Wow, that's interesting. You spell that word. What does that word mean?'" And then that helps me kind of know if that's what you know what it is. And then I can also check myself. If they know what it is, then they probably spelled it. If they don't, then they either got lucky or maybe I did something. So the emotional influence can happen when the parent, I usually see with parents more than providers, but it can happen when the provider, you need to be aware, are determined that a student has a certain opinion. So if they're like, they've always seen a child obsess over water, like, "You like water," and they're going to be pushing the yes. Well, that's understandable, they're looking at it, but maybe the student wants to say no, "I'm sick of water. I'm just can't stop asking for it," or something. So it's being free that the student gets to be the one who communicates those things, that we don't decide their opinions before asking. Um, it's allowing any type of opinion there. Um, the other thing that can happen here, and this is where people, um, if a student, and you may not be doing something that's wrong necessarily here, they may feel influenced just because they think they want to please you. And so then it's learning how to ask questions to the student and say, "I don't care what you think about this. I really want to know what you think. I don't care, you know, it's great if we disagree, that could be fun, or it's great if we do agree. Doesn't matter which one." So emphasizing those kind of things to the students so that they know that you are fine with them having any opinion. So if you have a strong political opinion, for for example, you need to be in the mindset that you can allow any student to have any opinion. So can I, I'll give you an example. I had a student that during the elections when it was between, um, Biden and, uh, Trump in the United States, the first round, that spelled after the election about stolen votes. Okay? And I don't care to reveal this to you, but I personally did not think the votes had been stolen. And I did not think the mom did either, but I didn't know for sure. So the student spelled it out and luckily I was able to talk to the parent and that was, I was correct. We both didn't think that. So he must have heard it, overheard it out at a school and spelled it out or was just testing it out. So, in that case, we did not influence it. My point in bringing this up, number one, is he spelled an opinion I didn't agree with. He spelled an opinion that his parents didn't agree with. In other words, this student is emotionally free to spell. It's what you want. So, you need to be able to have a student spell something that makes you want to throw up and they feel comfortable and safe spelling that, and that you don't determine in your head, "I'm a competent person. People think like me. The student will think like me. This family's going to think like me." That no, the competent people think opposite of us all the time. So, make sure that you're always in that mindset that a student can have a different opinion than you and that you're not set on a certain way of thinking. Um, be open to the idea that students can spell out ideas that you didn't have and be comfortable with that. Um, that they can come up with shocking information about different things and that's that's fine. So, emotional influence goes down to pressure, feeling that they have to please you. Um, when you come into a room, this is where I think sometimes people who are newer to RPM, so I don't know that you, any of you at level three, will be in this category, but you may have sensed it when you first started. Are you needing something from the student? Um, or do you need them to validate you? This is where you're going to get over the top praising constantly. Of course, the students can say thank you to you, but it should not be excessive, just like a student can say thank you to a teacher. Um, if you're getting a lot of praise, um, check yourself. Do you want that somewhere inside? Um, are you asking questions? Are you keeping it, not not doing enough education that that's all they can do is just compliment you or whatever it is. Um, are you emotionally feeling one way or the other? And you can come in honestly feeling any way. It's just that you need to be ready to be emotionally present for the student. So, all of us have different self-esteem levels. Example, some of us have high self-esteem. Some of us have medium self-esteem. Some have a lower self-esteem. But that student's job is not to build it. Your job is to teach and to build a student. So, making sure that you're coming in emotionally stable and ready to do your lessons. If you've gone through a hardship, cuz we do, and you still have to go to work and teach a child, that you are ready to not have that child be your psychologist. That that child needs to come in for an education. So if you need to pick lessons that will veer away from this child feeling pressured to be your psychologist. If a student starts to play your psychologist, then it's important for you to step in as a teacher and say, you know, "I appreciate that you care about me, but as a 12-year-old, this is not your concern. You know, you you can have a, you know, my job is to teach you and I'm sorry you feel the pressure, whatever you need to say." Um, we can comfort students and teach them, but they should not be coming to that. So that's the other thing is feeling the emotional need from a child to validate you. Um, so keeping yourself in a stable situation where you can allow the student to, you know, have their session irregardless of how you feel and some of them are very sensitive to those things and so again, prepare your lessons and your questions in a way that keep the student not feeling like they have to be with you in those things. Um, sometimes you can't avoid it completely. I've had times when the person came and observed me and I'm so used to being observed, but every once in a while when I get a little bit anxious and of course it goes onto the student and it, it can, it can bleed onto them a little bit. Um, and we can't always avoid all of this, but just be aware of it. Um, the goal, it's not that it happened once that's so terrible because you are going to influence a student and then you're going to learn from it. That's just what's going to happen. We're human beings. We influence each other. It's when a student feels tied to us and controlled by us. Um, those are the types of things that you want to be aware of. So, just keep those kind of things in mind when it comes to influence, technical and emotional. Think about ways that you can avoid both of those. And you may have other ideas beyond what I've said or just other experiences that I want you to share.

Okay. Now, I'm going to go more into when a student's spelling what you're thinking a little bit more. That's going to happen in some cases with certain students. So, if you know the student is doing that more often, I sometimes find it happening more at the end of the day. So, just double-check your board work. Um, stop and write more often if you feel like you're like ready to kind of shift or you're feeling tense or awkward with your body. Stop and write. You want to get more loose. So when you're really confident with a student spelling more, when there really can be lots more discussion, it's when you're just kind of sitting there, you're feeling more loose, just kind of, "Okay, they're spelling, writing, spelling, writing." You want your body to be relaxed. So check your body for straining muscles. Watch your videos. Some nod to get keep the rhythm, but nodding in the direction is different. So just check things. You may be surprised sometimes on how you moved or didn't move. Um, so just keep keep tracking yourself. I still do it to myself to this day. Um, there other things you can do. So stop and write. Other things that I will start to do. Some people have mentioned saying a different word in your head. I am trying to, for myself, that does not work because then I have this word in my head. I am not able to focus on what they're spelling. So it doesn't work. I've tried it a couple times just to see if it worked. It doesn't. And I don't, I feel like to me that's kind of a worry base that I don't feel worried because I, I have all the time retained the answers in my head and they don't spell them, um, like answers in my own thoughts. So I don't, because I'm not personally a big believer in that. I believe it happens. You know, I've seen evidences in the world that, you know, I'm not an expert on it, but I don't believe it's going on all the time. So I do have sense that some of what I think. So if that's happening, I check my board work, check my face, check my body. Um, I say things like, "I don't know what the student's going to spell." Um, sometimes I start following their hand intently and making sure my eyes aren't roving around the letterboard. So, or they'll touch G and I'll be watching their hand. Okay, there's A. I'll just be following it for the next letter and kind of keep my mind blank. Um, predictions are not problematic. You just want to make sure that you don't inadvertently influence because when you get kind of tired, you just think they're going to go there because it makes sense after they spell a couple letters or whatever. You just need to watch that you don't move the board or do something inadvertent. So then just check yourself if you're doing that. Maybe stop predicting and go into what I said. Okay, M. They're moving up. Must be an A. And instead of thinking the words, think, "Does that pattern make sense?" I don't feel like it needs to be worked hard. What you do is because again, you, it's not like I have to work really hard at it. Just kind of check. Okay, stop and write more often if they're getting stuck. Um, and loosen your body up. Don't worry about it. Don't be stressed about it. It's going to happen. It's all good. And, um, and then just keep saying, "They don't, they don't know what I'm thinking. I don't know what they're thinking." And then if you have good word board work, it's looking clean. You've reassured the student that they can spell what they want to spell. You become more in tune with maybe what they are concerned about emotionally. Don't worry about it if here they spell what you think. Um, it's not a big deal if it's happening all the time. I said you can get rid of that. Um, I, I don't have students that I feel like I can't get rid of that with them. Um, that's that's that's by my experience personally. So that I could be wrong about it. I may not be remembering a situation, but that's that's how it's been for me. So, in other words, if you're feeling like it's always happening, there's a way out of it. It doesn't have to stay and it doesn't require the board being propped or flat in order to get so that you feel like the student's spelling their thoughts. It's very possible.

Okay, that said, then there's other things that are going on in the student, which is why I think it's very important when there are people who are really emphasizing the telepathy, which again, if you're a big believer in it, that's fine. But, um, I know the students are not reading my mind all the time. It's just not the case. It's very visible and clear to me that they are not. There are other things that are happening. So in regards to episodic memory, that is a real thing. Um, so I've even played around with parents who were convinced their child always read minds and does all these supernatural things where I showed students the picture, showed parents the picture, I didn't know what there was. And since the parents were claiming that the child and them could read minds all the time, then it should have been that the students spelled exactly what was in the picture and they didn't. I do that task not to test for telepathy. I never have. I've just done that sometimes to help the parents see, look, they could read your mind there. Why didn't they? You know, I do that to help kind of see where the students encoding were not when we're not privy of the information and we're demanding specific information. I do it when I can get the child to spell and the parent can too. These students will frequently have spell things I didn't know that the parents knew about. Um, so I know it's not an influence thing that I'm talking about here. What other than the confidence? So with time students get better at that task and some do fine from the beginning. I'm pointing this out to say I've had a number of times where students were not able to spell even when their parent knew the picture was. Um, so it's not like if there's telepathy, it's not like they're constantly doing it. I think it's important to talk about because you're going to run into people asking you all about this. Um, and so you can have your own opinions, but you just need to kind of know I've done things that it doesn't add up to me. Um, and like I said, I feel very comfortable. I've played a spy with a kid, kept the word of what item in the room I was having them guess for, and they couldn't guess it. So there was right there for them to grab if they're reading my mind and they didn't. Um, and that's happened a ton of times. So, these kind of things, I'm not worried about it. I'm just, I'm saying this to you because if people are constantly worried their child, the child has all this power to know what there's in their mind, then you're likely to influence or do things or just, I don't know what you do to build up that kind of a scenario and it doesn't need to be that way. So, if you're in level three, you're probably not doing that. But, if you need to talk to parents about that, that's something to know about.

Um, let's see. There are a lot of other things they'll do like, um, but I don't think I need to go into it. If you want to talk to me more about that, you have concerns, that's great and I am not trying to invalidate anybody's personal beliefs. It's just my experiences add up to that and we need to be very ethical. So this kind of goes back into communication again. What's the intent of our communication? Even if a student has telepathic powers, whether that's completely not the case for any of them, some of them, or sometimes, or the goal, or all of them, the goal is that they spell their own thoughts. So what do you need to do if a student also ways to avoid it if a student is, you know, doing that a lot is make sure you teach thoroughly. This does two things. If they did telepathy, then it ensures that they have reason to think about things and not try that. Um, if it's not telepathy and it's influence, then it ensures they don't have to look for influence and they can think about it and get it right. So, we teach things thoroughly. That being said, we're not going to baby them down. We use the rational empirical methods. So, if you teach them how it's done, you taught them how it's done. Um, is you don't have to get all worried about it, but make sure you teach them things. If they seem to be having knowledge that there's no one that's aware of where they heard it from, make sure you educate them on those things. Work on their skills because some of these kind of super skills like picture, um, photographic memory doesn't always seem to be under their control. So, teach them how to track even if they claim to have it. Um, it's not our job to go around testing skills, but if you want to help a parent if they're getting on to it and you're concerned that the child's not getting an education anymore, um, then the things to do would be, okay, I'm going to show them a book I haven't read, they need to read it, read the page or whatever. You put it down and check that they can give you detailed information. If they can't, it either means they don't have enough independence to be comfortable telling you about things that you don't know when you demand it. Because that's a big thing. There are many students that pull up and you probably already experience this all the time. Things you don't know about. When you go and specifically ask for a specific event at specific time, then you have a little bit different situation. Um, so if they can't, then of course we should just build the skill. It's the safest assumption is to teach them how to read, make sure they're taught the content. We don't go with superpower skills as the default. Um, if they have it, cool. That's beyond the scope of RPM. There are some stories and things out there in connection to telepathy or these things that just not a part of of RPM's practice. And so parents can believe what they want, students can believe what they want, you can believe what you want, but it's, it's beyond RPM scope. Um, so that's that's just something to think about. It's not like we have to prove these different things or disprove them. They're just, you know, people can go do studies and research. That's fantastic. Um, and you can believe what you're wanting to believe, but you just make sure ethically as a teacher, you need them to spell their thoughts. Ethically, as a teacher, that's what your goal is, is to be an educator. You teach skills. You teach the content. You teach the reasoning so that they have a reason and a way to know things. And if they know them from some other way that's unexplainable, that's fine. But our job is to teach. So we're not have to deny it or whatever it is. Our job is just to teach and and make sure that students are progressing in their sensory integration, their skills, their full development in the full goals of RPM. And if you'll focus on that, then you'll be fine. And then they can have cool skills if they have cool skills and whatever. We don't need to, you know, behoo them or whatever it is. Let them them go with things. But just make sure your practice is ethical because influence is a real thing. And like I said, I want to repeat this. Even if a student had some kind of super skill, influence is more likely than the super skill. Um, and so that's why on our end, our ethics has to be eliminating that as a possibility. And helping parents do so so that students aren't captive of the letterboard or captive of a person but are really able to spell their own thoughts and that's important.

Okay, I've talked about a couple different things and I've tried to talk about ways that you can prompt and fade prompts to scaffold skills. Um, just want to repeat as a general rule, if the word is something that you both do not know, then you don't give directional information. Um, if it's a word that you both don't know, then your board needs to be held still. Um, you can stop and write. You can, you can give them visual breaks. You're going to need to at first. That's an important part. But keep that in mind. One more thing I want to talk about. This kind of goes back to the question about what to do if you're feeling like you're struggling with open-ended is, um, oftentimes teach because your goal in teach is to help them fluently scan, track, and move around the letterboard. So, you're going to do more gesture prompts and such. When you go to open-ended, the skills different. So, for teach, you may be holding the letterboard up for them to spell the entire word without stopping. But when you starting to teach ask, um, particularly when you go beyond a word that you both, you both know but you didn't say, then you're frequently doing one letter stop, right, reset, stop, right, 'cause now you're building because you don't want them to think, "Oh, there's cues for this. This is now your thought." So I'm putting it up in the performance field, you're picking, I'm stopping and writing, that gets good. Okay, now try two letters. So you're going to have two different levels of prompting. Teach ask is happening, um, with with more gesture prompts and verbal directional prompts. Open-ended, that's eliminated and you're doing a lot of stop and go to build up the visual stamina for that. So the teach ask is important to maintain and continue doing throughout RPM to build new skills and to maintain the cleanliness of the board work, the movement without stopping to build that skill for teach when you cannot prompt. So, if you're struggling with teach, one of the big things you're going to be doing is not prompting enough for teach. Sorry, if you're struggling with open-ended, you may not be prompting enough for teach. So, that's another strategy is to make sure that you're helping the student move along and build their skill well. Um, there. So, don't be hesitant to do stop and go if you need to. Don't be hesitant to do modified stencils or letter boards or you have them pick sections to do those things. Um, feel free to default to choices when you need to if they get stuck. You don't want to get them missing and missing and missing, frustrated, so slow.

Um, I should also go back and say for influence, one other thing I wanted to mention is if they start slowing down, freezing, not being confident, it could be that they're tiring. So, they need to, you need to work on having them spell shorter responses. And it could be that they're hesitating. Look at what they're what they're writing. Are they maybe going somewhere that they don't really want to go? If the hesitation, don't shove them into it. Um, otherwise that can influence them to feel like they don't have any freedom or they just, you know, they don't, they can might end their response in a way they don't want to do it. Um, sometimes they're just slowing down because they're tired, the performance fatigue is there. So then shorter responses for those. But if they normally can do a long response, they start slowing down, it's more emotional, then you may need to just say, "Do you want to finish your thought? Are you feeling uncomfortable with that?" So always just kind of be thinking too about the complexity of a human. We all have our reasons and our thoughts and different days and things happen to us and that can change where we're at, why we do things and we don't always know. And so keep thinking of your student as a complex complete human that has a variety of ways and be thinking about what will embarrass them, what will humiliate them, what will make them feel good, what will make them feel more independent or willing to try out different things. And those things also help you avoid influence by being more in tune and aware of where they are at and for possible reasons and how you need to interact with each child will change just like anybody else. Um, and what you allow. But, um, yeah, keep going. You'll get it and and it will happen with time. Um, I do want to pull out some other skills. I notice some kind of jumped around just because some things come to my mind that I didn't write down. So I think it works.

Okay. If a student's getting tired of a letter board or if you're, um, needing more help with some teach, you can take a word or two from your lesson. So just say you're talking about volcanoes, put the word volcano on the board or on a piece of paper and say, "Let's find words on this." My turn. O N. Your turn. And the spell might the student might spell can or no. You say, "My turn. Let's do." And your turn. Van. My turn. Let's see. Non. Your turn. Cool. Like that. So they can take turns and find words and it's a low emotional one and it also changes up the letter board. So some students will be willing to do this. Other students, if we can talk about this later, but you can change the skill, speech, handwriting, typing, just different things on the letterboard. Okay? So keep that in mind. Those are that's another thing you can do. Other things you might do to kind of keep it safe if you need to have some prompts still to get the confidence or just to get going. Do rhyming words. Um, do opposites. Opposites are kind of like the no one responses. Um, adjectives about an object. Um, groups of words that when they start spelling, you know, like tell me a planet, tell me a color, um, tell me a month, tell me a week day, those kind of things that have a groupings, but there's a there's a limit to the groupings can also be a way that you can help work on open-ended because again, when they start spelling, you know, like R is going to be red most likely, or it could be rose if they're more advanced, so they do re, but then they could be saying red, orange. So just keep in mind like, but there's still a limit to where they're at. J for a planet, it's going to be Jupiter. M could be Mars or Mercury. So you check for the next letter. So you can do things to also build by keeping the categories smaller that they can choose from to help you with that as well to help you predictable. So there's some different ideas. So on your questionnaire sheet you're going to have things kind of in different orders, but that's okay. You can just go through that and then feel free to ask if there's any clar they need any clarification, particularly as I talked about the prompts. Um, it's not extremely clear when you fade certain prompts, so that's why I said as a general rule, if it's open-ended, no directional prompt, no board movement. If it's teach, um, and pre-communication, there can be sometimes a little bit of prompts to encourage. It's a little bit different, not to force, but to encourage or to build confidence and you can allow a little bit more air in the students spelling and and curves them along. Um, sometimes you can tilt the board a little bit or encourage them to spell a certain word when they very first start with safe kind of teach or teach, sorry, open responses, um, for a little while just to build their confidence. Individualize your teaching for different students and that should make it work out great for everyone. So it's a very, very important thing because our goal is to get our students to spell. So, um, you may also come up with some of your own philosophies on it.

Things that are a no-no for RPM is touching the arm. Um, supporting the arm or hand anywhere while they're spelling. That's facilitated communication. We do not do that in RPM. Whether it's effective or not, it's a different thing. Um, you can touch the other side to help stabilize them and go in there and touch their arm. You can motor model in the middle of it, but not give them the next letter. You can correct their hand posture when they're going forward. Let's say they're going like this, all go like that. You can reach in there and grab their hand but not move it to a different spot. You can pull their hand to the back of the center of the board or you can pull it up from where it's at and let go. But it should not be touched as it's going forward and going down. And you want to be careful sometimes when you reset that hand up there because you can influence and just become aware of what you're doing and the possible intentions that they could feel, particularly if you are determined or feeling high pressure for for different things. Okay.