Amy Coffey

The Olympian Gymnastics of Reading

The State of Language Arts Education in Today’s Schools

A Grassroots Endeavor in Language Arts Education Revision

A Four-Part Series by Amy Coffey, M.Ed.

Previously, the first two parts of Grassroots revealed the truth regarding our nation’s poor student reading scores, based upon NAEP reading tests at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grade levels.

Next, we surveyed the history, driven by politics and profits, that lead to how we got to this point.

Now, let’s take a fascinating look at our miraculous brains; how do we read? What happens we see letters, words, sentences? Today’s science is far from having all the answers; however,

what we do know inspires curiosity and intrigue, and mostly…AWE..

Part III: How Our Brains Read

For most of us, it’s so easy. Our eyes fall upon some symbols on a page and within a fraction of a second, we have processed written language. We don’t even think about how we do it, we just do it.

The fact is, though, that our brains run through an entire gymnastics workout. The neurons firing in our minds jump from the trampoline, to the balance beam, and then to the parallel bars, all within the time it takes to blink.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter whether the gymnast is American, Sudanese, Chinese, or Indian. All humans use the same brain circuitry when they read written language. “All over the world, the same brain regions activate to decode the written word.” (Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read; Stanislas Dehaene, 2010)

It is truly remarkable, but we were born with 100 million brain cells, called neurons, that were ready to receive information externally via our senses. Before we were born we had already begun to process language because we heard our mothers’ voices. As we grew, we processed speech sounds, patterns, syntax, and semantics.

Children who are exposed to frequent spoken language thus process a greater vocabulary. This supports the idea that reading to children is beneficial to their language development. “Studies show that children with larger vocabularies tend to have better reading comprehension skills.” (Stahl and Fairbanks)

When children are engaged with language, hearing it and speaking it, then adapting it to the skills they need for reading is an easier task. “Researchers show that children with strong oral skills tend to be better readers.” (Snow, Burns, and Griffin).

So, the big question is: How does the human brain learn to read?

Just as a baby’s 100 million neurons are processing the language they hear, they’re also visually processing the shapes of faces, objects, colors, and light variations.

But when children begin to learn the letters of the alphabet and their associated sounds, these neurons split into different jobs; some remain focused on faces and shapes, while others focus on letter shapes.

The splitting process continues as children are exposed to more letter variations, each new set of neurons assigned to more and more specific letter combinations. When young readers are exposed to letter blends, then word parts, and whole words, there is an explosion of neuronal code into what is called phonemic awareness.

Next, the recognition of letters is relayed to another part of our brains that associates them with the sounds they represent. These “sounds” in the brain are akin to the silent voice you hear in your head when you read.