Teaching Beginning Reading Based on Brain Science

Learning how to read is one of the essential and most beneficial proficiencies our kids will ever master. And when we’re homeschooling, a lot of our time and effort goes into teaching beginning reading. It’s hardly an easy task, yet we can make a strong start on successfully teaching this language skill by understanding how the brain processes reading. And then transforming this knowledge of the science of reading into simple and practical strategies to raise strong and confident readers. Let’s find out how we can easily get that right. 

All About Reading 

Strong reading capabilities have proved to be imperative since the majority of our skills and information gained through school life, in one way or another, stems from our reading activities. It enables us to understand ideas and theories and incorporate them into our existing knowledge networks. Previously, the concept of reading was simplistically suggested to be a process of mining and supplying information. But nowadays, we recognize that it’s more of a multifaceted cognitive process. It relates to understanding data by activating various brain structures and processes, based on the purpose of our reading activities. Then followed by the practical application of the newly gained information.  

We often hear educational experts naming different types of reading, ranging from previewing, scanning, or skimming eyes, to extensive or intensive reading. But more important than the type of reading is the integral relationship between skilled reading, fluency, and actual brain volume change. This suggests that reading can actually change the brain circuitry and structure. And, highlights the importance of understanding how the brain learns to read when we wish to successfully teach beginner reading. This focuses our attention on the important fact that all reading skills 

• start with continuous practice 
• are influenced by environmental experiences, and 
• are perfected through brain maturation.  

What Part of the Brain is for Reading? 

Although the complex process of reading within the brain is not fully described, we have identified specific areas playing a role with the use of functional MRI scans. And rather than being localized to a dedicated brain area, reading is supported by various brain areas and structures. This collaborative interaction allows for processing all types of information needed to become a strong reader.  

Temporo-Parietal Cortex

Let’s have a quick tour of the areas of the brain involved in reading to help us understand the process when teaching beginning reading. We’ll start toward the back of the brain, where we find the temporo-parietal cortex. It plays a role in phonological and phonemic awareness and processing and helps our kids to discriminate sounds. These areas, therefore, assist in deciphering speech sounds and the meaning of words. These are foundational skills because kids can only decode and analyze unfamiliar words by breaking them down and sounding them out.  

Occipito-Temporal Cortex

Next, we’ll pause at another area at the back of the brain, called the occipito-temporal cortex, which helps us recognize objects as we read. Processing within this region allows kids to take reading to the next level, from sounding out words to quickly identifying them based on sight word recognition. This is also the area where the human brain stores what words look like and what they mean. And continuous activation of these eventually leads to automatic, fluent reading without the need for sounding words out. 

Frontal Lobe

Moving on to the frontal lobe, where reading fluency is further developed, is where we can pinpoint the areas helping us understand simple as well as more complex grammar. And it’s essential for speech production, grammatical use, and comprehension. The last step of reading, which entails written word pronunciation, gets processed within this inferior frontal cortex. And, this progression allows skilled readers to speak, process, and finally comprehend fluently, and with ease. 

It is thus clear that reading is a complex task that takes so much time to master. But rather than holding us back, this should motivate us to keep teaching foundational literacy skills until all the gears fall in place and our kids start to enjoy reading. There are so many different structures and processes involved, not only in reading but also in the additional areas stimulated by reading, like those associated with social and emotional skills and memory. This means we have so much more opportunity to grow their brain networks and improve their life achievement skills by simply teaching them how to be good readers. 

Teaching Beginning Reading 

If you are teaching beginning reading, you might be wondering about things like, what are the beginning reading skills, will reading make my child smarter, are slow readers less intelligent, what are the best strategies in teaching beginning reading, or even, can I predict how well my child will read?  

Let’s spend some time answering these before we discover how we can rewire our kids’ brains for better reading. And, since we already understand how the brain processes reading, we can look at how to leverage that knowledge to pinpoint practical ways to help our young children become confident readers. 

What are the Beginning Reading Skills? 

Learning how to read is not a natural process. Kids need to be taught the skills like the alphabetic principle to decode written text, recognize words, and understand their meaning. They also need to learn fluency, expand their vocabulary, and practice sentence construction and cohesion. All while learning reasoning and using background knowledge making use of working memory, focus, and attention. That’s a whole lot of skills! 

And since reading requires the interaction of all these complex skills, we can understand why reading does not come naturally to the brain. But as we’ve already mentioned, it gives us the opportunity to teach several learning skills at the same time.

So how do we do it? And the answer is simple. We need to increase the brain activity in the reading-related brain structures with continued practice and direct and systematic instruction. And when we consistently do this through our teaching practices, brain networks are strengthened and expanded. Not only to master reading skills but at the same time improve memory and concentration to help our kids develop into confident and fluent readers.  

Our contribution does however not stop there. It’s worth noting at this point that kids learn a lot from being read to, and this is an easy win for us as parents. Reading to our kids exposes them to a wide range of vocabulary and helps them expand theirs, as they naturally learn to understand more when they listen. This is a fundamental start to our kids learning to read by themselves and becoming successful readers. 

Will Reading Make My Child Smarter? 

A scientist suggested in a child developmental journal ‘… better reading ability may improve knowledge of specific facts, but it may also allow abstract thinking skills to be gained via the process of taking on the perspectives of fictional or historical characters or imagining other worlds, times and scenarios.’ 

Scientific research has shown that kids who read well by age seven are likely to be more intelligent in later years. When performing teen IQ tests, scientists discovered that good reading ability during primary years results in better abilities in abstract thinking, general cognition, and pattern recognition. And that’s why the answer is yes, reading undoubtedly increases intelligence.  

This fact is confirmed by studies revealing that the more kids read, the higher their reading test scores as well as their general intelligence test scores. But reading does so much more than increase student achievement. Reading gives us knowledge and expands our ever-growing vocabulary. It strengthens our brain function and circuitry and gives us greater imagination to improve our understanding. In addition, reading matures our abstract thinking skills which in turn improves how kids fare in other subjects like mathematics, science, and logic.  

Reading also affects our kids’ writing skills. A correlation between reading ability and writing success was confirmed. So much so that reading comprehension contributes almost 35% to writing achievement. Reading thus shapes the foundation of the majority of the school curriculum. And making sure we strengthen this base as much as possible, can potentially shield our kids from the added stress and overwhelm experienced by struggling learners.  

What Predicts How Well a Child Will Learn to Read? 

Is there any way to know in advance if our kids will likely struggle to learn to read? A valid question. But we can do better than predict possible problems. We can likely avoid reading difficulties by recognizing the following predictors of learning to read in young kids: 

• their knowledge of phonics, or how well they know and understand sounds and
• the size of their vocabulary because the more words they know, the easier and faster they will learn to read.

These predictors, which also form the foundation for the simple view of reading, clearly identify what we as parents and homeschoolers can do to help our kids learn: We can enrich their vocabulary and their sound system of language. We can start when they’re two, three, or four years old already, well before they even start to learn to read a couple of years later. So rather than trying to predict whether they will struggle we should rather empower them with the best possible chance to succeed. 

What are the Best Strategies in Teaching Beginning Reading? 

When we help our kids learn to read, one of the first decisions is whether we should choose reading programs that teach whole words using the whole language method or single letter pronunciation using explicit instruction in phonics. This is a decision you need to make based on your learning practices and what current research tells us. The latter suggests that the reading brain processes each of the different letters and does not look at words as a whole. This leads us to believe that the best technique to learn to read is teaching letter to sound correspondence.  

It’s proven to be the fastest way to acquire reading and comprehension. And, as the reading wars have shown, the most effective instruction comes from focusing on phonics instruction and phonological awareness from a young age to make learning to read easier. If you’re currently teaching your kids to read, you should find this comprehensive guide, comparing the use of sight words versus phonics, very informative.  

Now for the fun part where we’ll discover how we as parents and homeschoolers can successfully teach beginning reading, improve our kids’ reading skills, and rewire their brains to become strong readers.

How to Improve Reading Skills 

We’ve discussed how cognitive science shows that learning to read changes our kids’ brain structure, circuitry, and executive functions. And for most kids, basic systematic instruction and practice are enough to train their brains to read. However, the extent of these changes is based on a child’s reading ability. When they start to read, we see more activity in the parietal temporal region where words are analyzed. As kids get more experienced in reading, the parietal temporal region supporting word recognition, is increasingly activated. So how can we stimulate their reading ability and therefore the extent of these brain changes, which is essential in readying the brain to learn how to read? 

Remember we said that our cortical maturation, IQ, and reading skills are influenced by environmental experiences throughout life. This means there are many different ways to easily help our kids’ brains grow more receptive to acquiring strong reading skills, like phonemic knowledge, decoding, and word recognition. We need to simply provide them with rich, language experiences, starting early life and continuing throughout their school-going years.  

Where To Focus

This journey toward teaching and improving our kids’ reading skills thus starts with them 

• reading every day 
• learning and applying key reading strategies and 
• practicing how to apply what they read. 

But it doesn’t stop there. We can further modify the brain’s inner-chemical systems and circuitry to help kids focus better and thereby grow their reading skills. We can help them rewire their brains for better reading by learning in CLEVER ways. We’re lucky in the sense that our brains have certain plasticity throughout life, giving us the continued opportunity to learn new things. And to make sure our kids’ brains are receptive to learning, we need to provide them with an optimal learning environment. This starts with us covering the brain health basics of quality sleep, adequate hydration, regular physical activity, and loads of brain foods. We can easily provide this optimal brain milieu with the help of the CLEVER Brain Challenge. Check it out when you’re ready to learn how to boost your kids’ brain power, memory, and focus, and make teaching beginner reading even easier.  

Let’s Summarize 

We’ve discussed the importance of reading skills and discovered the brain science behind learning how to read. This knowledge clarified how we as parents and homeschoolers, can use best practices to successfully help our kids learn to read. We now know that it starts with choosing intensive direct instruction strategies that allow for systematic and deliberate reading practice, to strengthen and expand neural networks and build strong reading and learning skills. And, that it positively ends in us proudly watching our kids excel academically as well as in everyday life.  

References 

• Hudson, N., Scheff, J., Tarsha, M., & Cutting, L.E. (2016). Reading comprehension and executive function: Neurobiological findings. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Spring 2016. 

• Houston, S.M. (2014). Reading skill and structural brain development. Neuroreport, 25 (5) 

• Seidenberg, M. (2018). Language at the speed of sight. New York: Basic Books. • Cunningham, A. & Rose, D. This is your brain on reading. EdWeek_OpEd5. • Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain. New York, Penguin Group.

Thank you to Dr. Estie Alessandrini from CLEVER Learning Method for writing this guest post!