Building The Reading Brain

Patricia Wolf and Pamela Nevills wrote a great book with this title for the PreK-3 grades.  

check out the book's online Table of Contents preview

Is this a book parents will find useful? It is geared more for teachers.  However, what you as a parent do at home for your children even before they go to school is very important and the authors provide more than enough data supporting the importance of early intervention/education.  For a parent, this book outlines some great at home starter practices!  As a homeschool parent, this book is my starting point for pre-reading practices.

The authors also take time to provide help for pre-reading and reading comprehension issues along the way.  In fact, this book is one of the places where I was introduced to the Fast ForWard program (see my blog page for our FF journey).  It is highly recommended as an early intervention for children who have deficits in the brain's auditory processing areas! (Has your child had lots of ear infections? Understands the gist of what is said but not many details? I'll do a post on this next :)

Two important pre-reading skills that are essential in the home environment are the knowledge of books and the alphabetical principle that letters equal the sounds that form words.  This early stimulation with books and the written word will help make brain connections easier for them later when they put the "sound picture" with the "written symbol/picture."  As I mentioned in another post about eye tracking, the left to right movement of your finger under the words and sentences starts to wire the brain correctly (for English readers).  

I cannot stress enough the benefits of observing of the movement through text as opposed to casual observance or active play on computers or Apps.

Remember all those little nursery rhymes?  Amazingly, these little songs learned at a young age are wiring the brain for hearing the patterns in sounds.  

Research has found that early knowledge of nursery rhymes greatly develops processing skills and reading ability.  

 In the brain, the repetition of sounds set to a rhythm (a common memory strategy) helps develop word processing skills.  As a parent, further this development with interaction by commenting on the similar sounds, encouraging predictions of sounds and word patterns, and by finding your own rhymes.  These activities build the awareness that individual sounds exist, can be manipulated, and stored in long term memory for ordered recall.

Having fun with print and singing nursery rhymes are a great way to "build the reading brain!"

Skill vs. Strategy

Do you know the difference between a skill and a strategy? 

Skill: end product of practice
Strategy: used to get the skill (process, or transaction)

A similar illustration is instructions vs. instruction, or directions vs. teaching.

If you are looking for techniques on teaching reading comprehension, then I highly recommend the book: When Kids Can't Read.  Included are pages and pages of clearly detailed and specific strategies ready for explanation to students.

(above notes taken from pg 45 in text)