Wiring Brains Lab starts this Tuesday, on the Gold Coast. Will be set up Nationwide over the next 18 months. Is Dyslexia really a gift? I havent met one student with dyslexia who thinks so, when it comes to struggling with reading and spelling. My work (and passion) revolves around teaching to the childs brain, not expecting every brain to follow a curriculum in the same way. All 25 or so individual brains in each class need to learn what they need to learn at the right time, pace and in the right way - or much of the learning is lost. It is why we hold sight of the skills and concepts every child needs to master (we know, from the science of reading, what they are) and scaffold this learning, but differentiate everything. A child is absent for 3 weeks? They can follow it at home, or slot right back into their learning journey, where they left off. However my focus is not just on what children need, but how to deliver it in a way that excites every child. Who doesnt learn best when interested, and inspired? And the earlier children read for pleasure, the more they read... SSP revolves around utilising the power of brain plasticity, and actually modifying brain networks. We can now scan brains. Its incredible! If a brain scans as dyslexic do you really believe that it cannot be re-wired within weeks, not years, and then scan as a normal reading brain? Then keep following this page, and my work. I dont advocate for dyslexia awareness - I advocate for an awareness of how to meet the needs of every brain, and to prevent difficulties for all. 88% of struggling readers have poor phonological awareness. Reading is a language skill -- fMRIs of students reading and listening have a 98% overlap. While early intervention is important, most reading difficulties can be helped at any age. Good readers have strong language processing skills that allow them to hear every sound in every word. They read using this language knowledge, called phonological word memory. By contrast, dyslexics typically have muddy phonological word memories. And so they are forced to use memorisation and other compensatory reading techniques that are at best inefficient and exhausting, and at worst ineffective. And what techniques are used in many classrooms? Those techniques. The guess from the pictures, carry on reading and guess from context, guess from first sound, use Look, Cover, Say, Write hundreds of sight words...the use of PM Readers and Benchmarking, before they have learnt to Code. Being YOU is a gift. Dyslexia is not a gift. Being able to read and spell, and to LOVE it, is a gift. A gift I aim to share with everyone. Human beings did not evolve to read, as we evolved to naturally and easily understand and produce spoken language. Every one of us who has become literate has had to change our brain significantly to turn the black squiggles on this screen into meaningful symbols. The more we read, the more our brains change. But in children who have dyslexia, the initial stages of this brain change do not proceed as in other children’s brains. Recent research led by Bart Boets, of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, indicates that the brains of dyslexics do form accurate neurological representations of language sounds. (This would explain why dyslexics have no trouble understanding spoken language.) When dyslexics go to put together these sounds into words, however, communication between the auditory and language centers of their brains seems to break down. This disconnection makes reading difficult for dyslexic children from the very beginning. Because reading is so hard, they do it less. And because they read less, their brains change less. Visual deficits, according to the latest thinking, are not the cause of dyslexia (sorry Alison Lawson.) They are a result of less reading, of experience. And experience of the right kind — intensive tutoring in phonological and orthographic skills, such as SSP — can undo these visual deficits,as well as significantly improve children’s reading skills. An important implication of current research is that normal and dyslexic brains may not be as inherently different as scientists once believed. Differences they once attributed to genetics may be a product of experience. For example, researchers have known for some time that the brains of dyslexics have less grey matter than the brains of normal readers, a difference that was often assumed to be genetic in origin. But when the right experience (intensive tutoring and more reading time) is introduced, the amount of grey matter in dyslexics’ brains comes to resemble that of normal readers. Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging have detected which parts of the brain become stronger as children with dyslexia develop their ability to read. Follow-up scans one year after the children received 100 hours of remedial reading from teachers showed that this increase in activation continued, reaching normal levels in the left parietal lobe. These fMRI scans reveal the vigour of neuroplasticity, the process by which neurons create new connections among themselves. We can change the way the brain works.New connections among neurons preserve memories and make learning possible, but they also fortify brain functions. Research has shown that a pianist, for example, through practice, develops neural pathways in the motor cortex that make subtle finger movements possible. Blind people who read Braille actually expand the region of the somatosensory cortex devoted to processing input from their reading finger. And children with dyslexia can strengthen connections in parts of the brain that enhance their ability to read. Teachers have long recognized that children with dyslexia can improve their reading ability, but imaging is just beginning to provide evidence of the changes in the brain that make this possible. And Im not the only one on this mission! https://youtube/watch?v=HZBEHgIchYY Go Martha! Wiring Brains Labs start this week at the Gold Coast Wiring Brains Education office - for 5-16 year olds. Call for more info 07 5510 9960 or email info@ReadAustralia Miss Emma
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 15:06:27 +0000
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