Ever picture your mind as a bustling metropolis? On this month's episode of Literacy Matters: Empowered Conversations, Dr. Carolyn Strom talks with Cheryl about how humans learn to read. Her “Brain City” mental model is sure to blow you away─and change the way you teach.
Dr. Strom is an early literacy expert who works with preschool and elementary educators, families, and children to improve reading outcomes. She is currently a clinical assistant professor at New York University, where she was recently awarded the Distinguished Teacher Award. From explaining why we aren’t wired for reading to likening being multilingual to a superpower, Dr. Strom makes all the facets of early literacy diamond bright.
Build On Spoken Language
Our brain comes set up with a system for spoken language, not written language. As Dr. Strom says, “We've been speaking for between 50,000 to 200,000 years and we've only been reading or writing for about 5,000 years.” Written language is a cultural invention and requires building a new system in our brains. This system needs to be wired to convert letters on a page (which may simply look like squiggles, lines, and dots to a novice reader) into speech. What does that mean for classroom instruction? The biggest implication of this is that speaking can develop with immersion and be caught, whereas reading and writing require instruction and have to be taught. And we have to do it in a way that purposefully builds on top of spoken language. In other words, the reading brain is built on top of the speaking brain. In order to read, we create a new system by connecting meaningful words in the speech stream to individual sounds and letters. In the Brain City graphic, these three aspects of words are stored in different neighborhoods - Meaning Mountains, Sound City, and Vision Villages.
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing
In the classroom, developing a foundation of oral language, conceptual knowledge, and vocabulary is critical. Simultaneously, we need to systematically build phonics skills through explicit attention to the teaching of speech sounds (phonemes) and how they are written (letters). Says Dr. Strom, “We know from decades of research that calling attention to individual letters and letter patterns in words really helps kids as they learn to read.” All along the way, we are helping children recognize letters, and groups of letters and map them to sounds and words faster. And throughout our teaching, we keep in mind that reading and writing are two sides of the same code. “When you're learning to read, you're learning the same code that you're then going to write. Reading and writing are two sides of the same code,” says Dr. Strom.
Handwriting Hub
Teaching young learners how to write legibly and clearly helps them as both readers and writers. Handwriting is not about penmanship—think of it as a practice tool. Writing words helps us read words because we're training the circuit in two ways. We’re developing this neural specialization for letters, which is ultimately, where reading starts. Research has shown that when we teach kids how to form the letters and get very intentional about the gestures right from a very early age and teach them the handwriting moves, they activate the brain systems underlying reading.
There are more superhighways and villages in Brain City to travel!
To further explore with Dr. Carolyn Strom, watch her full episode of Literacy Matters: Empowered Conversations.