鈥淚 wish you to grasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable."鈥擵ladimir Nabokov
If educational psychologist had his way, most teachers would leave the neuroscience to the neuroscientists. Sure, a little neuroscientific knowledge can be dangerous and lead to instructional malpractice. But I鈥檓 letting my curiosity and common sense lead me. At the very least, a general understanding of how my students learn helps me sift through all the brain-based hype. (You can read some of my initial reflections on neuroscience and learning here and here).
Lately, I鈥檝e been exploring the science of reading. In this article, I鈥檒l share some recent findings, along with my reflections about take-aways for classroom practice.
Neuromyths: He鈥檚 a Right-Brained Kid, She鈥檚 a Visual Learner
In the past few decades, teachers have often been advised that individual students can only succeed when they are taught in particular ways. That is, many teachers believe they must account for 鈥渞ight-brained鈥� and 鈥渓eft-brained鈥� students, who have based on their presumed strengths.
Today鈥檚 neuroscientists refer to this way of thinking as because it perpetuates false dichotomies. A 鈥渓eft-brained鈥� person is characterized as being more logical, mathematical, verbal, and analytical. Meanwhile, 鈥渞ight-brained鈥� folks are considered more creative, emotive, and holistic in their thinking.
But here鈥檚 the thing: The functions of each hemisphere are not exclusive to one side. patients have demonstrated phenomenal compensational abilities to be logical, creative synthesizers 鈥� even when one hemisphere has been compromised.
Reading: One of the Most Complex Things We Do
Reading is not a natural process鈥攁fter all, our ancestors didn鈥檛 need it to gather berries, find shelter, or hunt down prey. Language symbols have only been around for a few thousand years鈥攁nd only recently became available to the masses. Despite language-rich environments, American adult illiteracy rates hover around and American students鈥� reading test scores show plenty of room for improvement. We have a lot left to learn about teaching reading.
Neuroimaging provides us with new windows to observe the rich activity throughout the brain. Scans have revealed how integrated the brain鈥檚 activity is when performing even the simplest task鈥攁nd reading isn鈥檛 simple. Multiple areas of the brain (in both hemispheres) help us to translate symbols on the page (or screen) to encounter knowledge, vivid imagery, and actions.
Here鈥檚 what our busy brains do when reading:
First, we see the word, which activates a specific area in the left hemisphere鈥檚 visual cortex. calls this the visual word form area (VWFA). This area is activated whether we see a real word or nonsense, and regardless of its font, size, color, or directional orientation. (Fun fact: the VWFA responds to the written word in remarkably similar ways across cultures, alphabets, and reading direction.)
From the VWFA, information is directed into other areas of the left hemisphere to extract meaning, decode sound patterns, and determine articulation.
Within the left hemisphere鈥檚 frontal lobe, decodes meaning when words are spoken, while other areas (in the left ) are more active in comprehension, speech production, and recognizing word patterns, forms, and whole words during reading.
Still other regions of the parietal and temporal lobes are most active when analyzing visual features of words. Different regions of the brain light up when words are presented with music versus without music, when words are new versus old patterns, when language is produced versus received, and so on. One area of activation can prompt the other, and the flow of information is typically multidirectional.
Meanwhile, our brains are also responding emotionally, comprehending how what we are reading fits into the bigger picture, taking actions based on what we are reading, preparing to turn the page or cursor down, dealing with distractions, and so on.
And these connections? They are occurring in a fraction of a second.
Changing Readers鈥� Brains:
Neuroscience has yet to be prescriptive in the realm of educating for specific cognitive deficits. However, we can apply some valuable findings:
1. Forget teaching to the right or left side of the brain and focus instead on the whole brain, the whole child. If learning is cyclical, it has to involve both hemispheres鈥攅motion, analysis, experience, reflection, abstraction, and actively testing knowledge. Not only are your students analyzing marks on a page or screen during reading, but they are using their translations of those marks to make sense of their world. Successful readers need their whole brain to be analytical, yet holistic; logical, yet reflective; and able to balance the concrete with the abstract.
2. Don鈥檛 rely on singular learning styles. No one form of comprehensible input can suffice for all learners, for all content areas, all the time. The brain is a dynamic pattern seeker, yet craves novelty.
Present your reading content with supports like visuals and storytelling, and explicitly seek patterns among vocabulary words. While you鈥檙e at it, let your students in on what you鈥檙e doing. Elicit feedback from them as to what helped them learn the most鈥攚as it the reading in the Prezi you showed them, the podcast they created for others, or the poster they wrote themselves?
Urge students to be metacognitive about their own decoding skills and reading comprehension abilities鈥攚hich styles of learning are most successfully tapped and when? With this practical awareness, we can more readily devise strategies to help our students negotiate reading struggles outside the classroom.
3. Include oral communication tasks throughout the curriculum. They align with Common Core State Standards, and are considered best practices for enhancing language learning, but there鈥檚 more. Neuroscience shows that phonological awareness is heavily implicated in developing decoding skills. Reading success is greater when there is to decode strings of letters as well as their correlating sounds.
The more we encourage our students to orally explain how they solved even their simplest math problems or to answer 鈥渨hat makes you think that,鈥� the deeper their connections to the written text will be.
4. Include a rational progression of word study. In particular, explicitly practice breaking down words into smaller parts, manipulating sounds, and heightening awareness of relationships between the visual and acoustic aspects of language. Struggling readers will need this continued practice, as well as instruction in regular and irregular patterns of spelling, syllabification, affixes, vowel structures, and etymologies.
5. I鈥檓 going to seem old school here, but incorporating handwriting can help the brain connect physical properties of letters with their corresponding sounds (phonemes).
Research has shown that the act of writing letters in Broca鈥檚 area, an area of the brain linked to language production. The physical act of writing鈥攚hether on paper or electronic tablets鈥攁lso enforces and integrates motor pathways in the brain, activating sensorimotor information to help us translate sounds into letters, and words into ideas.
Our job as teachers is to change brains. By all means, we should learn how those brains work. We should pay attention to what the reading experience is like鈥� dynamic, multidirectional, composed of many integrated steps. We can leverage that connectivity by breaking steps down, varying our approaches to activate different portions of the brain, and tying reading to acoustics.
We can also proceed with caution and attentiveness, knowing our students well enough to tailor our expectations and instructional techniques to support their progress. Yes, helping students to experience the complex miracle of reading takes time. But it鈥檚 time well spent.
Don鈥檛 you just love 鈥渉ow鈥� reading makes you think?
