Resources
About the Brain and Literacy
Children of the Code is a PBS Series in the making. 50 interviews with top experts in the field of literacy: neuroscientists, psychologists, reading researchers, educators, historians, economists, technologists and policy leaders. Eventually there will be 100 interviews on the site.
Excellent bank of parent-friendly articles that debunk some commonly held myths about learning to read, and describe what good reading instruction looks like.
Mel Levine’s website – articles and tips on all kinds of unique minds, and what you can do to address math, reading, writing, attention, communication, and behavior.
Neuroscience for Kids – a University of Washington website that makes every possible aspect of the workings of the brain understandable to children.
The Council for Educational Development and Research created a K- 12 list of “checkpoints in reading”--- to help parents better understand their child’s reading development.
The Essential Ingredients of Reading:
PHONEMIC AWARENESS is breaking apart words into individual sounds and putting them back together. This is an essential pre-reading skill that also needs bolstering in some older students who struggle.
PHONICS is instruction in specific sound/spelling patterns. Decoding is the ability to smoothly pronounce these patterns - in short or long words.
FLUENCY is reading fluidly, with the pace of someone talking. Automaticity is the unconscious, correct retrieval of words. Some children move into fluent reading in 1st grade, and others take several years to acquire fluency. VOCABULARY is the amount of words we know to read and write effectively. 75% of comprehension hinges on understanding the meanings of individual words.
COMPREHENSION is the reason for reading.
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Monitoring comprehension - being aware of when meaning-making breaks down, and using 'fix-up' strategies
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Graphic organizers - visually representing key ideas and relationships
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Making connections – bridging the book and one’s own life experience
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Visualizing - improving memory by creating a constant “movie” in the mind
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Generating questions - asking ourselves and the author guiding questions
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Recognizing text structure – Awareness of the way content and events of a text are organized
Summarizing - determining importance, papraphrasing, and synthesizing important ideas.