Language and STEM
This is a guest camp blog from one of my kids at Ecology Connections summer camp. When I run summer programming on my applied STEM Urban Farm, I really encourage kids to hand-write scripts for filming their presentation of learning videos. It’s a real challenge for most kids — they don’t write by hand often - but it is a real issue for kids with Dyslexia. Rather than excuse them, I repurpose this opportunity to encourage them to problem-solve, build confidence, and practice new skills. This is how I tie language to STEM.
Nature Doesn’t Invent; She Remodels
The system I use to help kids practice their learning and writing journey is based on the Palm Pilot (OS) handwriting App called Graffiti. I find that the mono-directional and algorithmic nature of Graffiti is easier for kids to tie learning to, at least initially. It was useful to me then and it remains useful to me 30 years later.
The Graffiti writing system - courtesy Wikipedia and Paalm Pilot (OS)
The Graffiti system was strikingly complete when it was created in the mid-1990s. I learned to use it when I had a Palm Pilot. I was fascinated by how easy it was to use and how quickly I was able to write using this system. I still use this system when I feel like writing quickly, and want kids to be able to read what I am writing. Kids can’t read cursive, but Graffiti gives them enough visual cues that they follow along easily, even if reading is a barrier.
The system is bit too much to present to middle school kids all at once. So I reduced the system to just capitals and an easier single-line system that I use today. I created a tool to teach them the directional system lower left or upper left to right or up and down. It removes guesses from 7-8 to just four crossing letters “H, Q, T, and X” and the “E” that defies the left-first pattern. These cross letters share an interior volume that can read as a negative space. I overcome this by reminding the kids NOT to lift their pen until the path is complete. If they still get the “E” backwards, I don’t sweat it. That “E” is very unique.
My tool for teaching physical single-line and directional matrix for the alphabet.
I am NOT a language expert. I am an inventor, educator, and a novice anthropologist and neuroscientist. I am fascinated with neuroplasticity and the way the brain can create new connections when you reframe a problem. I love finding hacks that can help us all learn in new and novel ways.
I have a theory that if we can move “writing” from the visual cortex and language centers in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, perhaps we could remove obstacles to writing. I suggest repurposing the visual cortex, the corpus collusum, the primary motor cortex, and the hippocampus to build new ways of short-circuiting the impediment to hand eye and memory issues that traditional language models seem to have.
Of course I have no data or research, but I do have kids that feel a sense of real growth and breakthrough when they no longer worry about MATCHING letters in their mond with the scratches on the paper. What they have is an algorithm of how thry can overcome the “edge crisis” of recreating and writing letters with negative spaces and dimensional aspects, negative spaces, and vague directional cues that do not have a logic that is consistent.
Muscle Memory and More Research
The inclusion of muscle memory, mathematics, logic, algorithmic thinking, and the motor cortex “muscle memory” does help kids remember the physical logic of letters and improves their confidence and anxiety with writing. Having a landscape and logic model that ties all letters (and numbers) together with a monolithic representational system is the genius at the heart of Graffiti. I loved it then, and 35 years later, kids love it today. If you know of a study that is researching this or you have insight, please leave a comment here.
