Don’t get me wrong. I’m not doubting the professionalism of my colleagues. However, as the Literacy Support I/C who is tasked to smoothen the learning journey of students with dyslexia in my school, I felt compelled to teach my colleagues to learn how these neurodivergent students should learn spelling.   Of course, to make my micro lesson more attractive for my colleagues, I promised them that they would learn a funky Japanese word at the end of my sharing. “Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check” is a strategy that leverages how dyslexic students are typically visually-inclined and think in terms of pictures instead of words.   First, I wrote down “shinrinyoku” and got my colleagues to draw an outline around it. I then asked them to observe its visual shape and tell me what it resembled. Being adults, they were stumped. I reassured them that their students would come up with something, perhaps a water gun 🔫. The idea was to get learners to notice how the letters “h” and “y” stand tall and dig low.   Subsequently, I asked if they could pick up a small word within this long word. A colleague volunteered “in”, which I affirmed. I then asked them what we call the front part of the leg below our knee. This elicited my target word “shin”. I pointed at my shin, encouraged them to do likewise and asked them to remember it.   Next, since they were not familiar with this word, I got them to underline all the vowels so that we could divide it into syllables. When completed, “shinrinyoku” would read as shin-rin-yo-ku. When my colleagues knew how to pronounce this word, I got them to repeat it three times after me. Here’s one step I forgot to ask them to do: sky-write the word. Sky-writing a word apparently activates the arm muscles in our bodies and utilises our gross motor skills to aid our memory. So if they want to tap on their students’ kinesthetic skills, this could be it.   After saying “shinrinyoku” three times, I got my colleagues to cover the word on their worksheet. They then proceeded to write it on another box. The last part of this method involved them removing their hand and checking to see if they had spelt “shinrinyoku” accurately.   This method sounds tedious, but hopefully when students do it many times, they will attain automaticity and apply it on autopilot without having to expend mental energy. Fingers crossed.   Btw, “shinrinyoku” means bathe / spend time in the forest aka nature therapy. Ending this with an example of how I got my own students to learn the spelling of “courageous”.