BrainFit Studio Accelerates English Learning with Brain Fitness

• November 22, 2011 by Cheryl Chia

BrainFit Studio is a Singapore-based network of learning centers designed to build brilliant brains and keep them fit. More than 8,000 children have passed through its classes over the past 10 years accelerating their learning, building fitter brains, and achieving continued academic success.

Five Brain Pillars

BrainFit Studio has designed a total brain fitness training program that builds five brain “pillars”:

1. SMART Moves enhances the Sensory Motor Pillar
2. SMART Vision strengthens the Visual Pillar
3. SMART Focus develops the Attention Pillar
4. SMART Emotions builds the Socio-Emotional Pillar
5. SMART Listening (the Fast ForWord^® program from Scientific Learning) optimizes the Auditory Pillar

SMART Listening, SMART Vision

In May 2011, BrainFit Studio launched the first of its four BrainFit Classrooms in Singapore. BrainFit Classrooms provide brain fitness training in fee-based learning centers to students from 4 to 12 years old who seek to improve their English language learning. 

The threefold English learning course curriculum is aligned with the Singapore Ministry of Education’s English Language Syllabus, brain fitness training activities, and the Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant™ products.  Students learn via a blended approach including both instructional contact time and online learning.  Just six months in, students are already showing improvements, including an increase in school examination grades.

BrainFit Studio’s latest offering, the Brainy Programme for preschoolers, was launched in September 2011.  BRAINY SAM and BRAINY TAD are two modules which, using an early childhood education approach, bring little ones through BrainFit Studio’s hallmark SMART programs.

BrainFit Studio has eight BrainFit Studios and ten school collaborations across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. The work of training fitter brains continues each day through these centers, with parents and teachers reporting significant changes and improvements in their children.

BRAINY SAM and BRAINY TAD are trademarks of BrainFit Studios.

Related Reading:

Scientific Learning Around the World

Unlocking the Potential of English Language Learners

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Categories: Brain Fitness, English Language Learners, Fast ForWord

Tags: accelerate learning, brain training, how children learn, increased test scores, language learning, reading comprehension, student growth, technology in education

Toddler Vocabulary Development: Shopping With Your Child

• October 11, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

There is no better time to teach your toddler the names of things than when you go out shopping together. The wonderful thing about shopping with your child at a grocery store or clothing store is that he can sit in a shopping cart and interact with you while pointing to all the interesting colors, shapes and objects around him.

Never mind that as he gets closer to two years old he may want you to focus on the candy aisle, or buy everything fuzzy or toy-like.  Use the time to provide names for all the wonderful objects you can see.

 “Wow!  Look at these oranges today—they are so big. They look like big balls don’t they?”

“Hey, those peppers are green and red and yellow, just like Christmas lights—what fun!”

“I see blue shirts and white shirts. What color do you like?”

As you talk about all the shapes and colors, your tot will begin to want you to tell him more names. If he can’t ask you “What is that?” yet, he will start to point to objects he wants you to name or let him touch. (Of course you don’t want him touching fresh food items or knocking down items on shelves, but there is no harm in letting him feel a soft cloth or looking more closely at the funny picture on a box of cereal.)

Here are some tips for making shopping both fun and educational for your child:

• Color, shape, and size: Notice colors, shapes, and sizes as you shop the fruit and vegetable aisle with your toddler. Tell your child that bananas are “long and yellow,” and that oranges, apples, limes and lemons look like “orange, red, green and yellow balls.” At the clothing store, “big pants” may be for “big daddy” and tiny shoes may be “just the right size” for your child.
• Texture and touch:  Clothing stores are all about touch. PJ’s are usually “soft,” and raincoats are “smooth and stiff,” while some coats may be “furry.” Your child will love feeling all the different textures.
• Questions: Note that celery has “leaves” and broccoli has “flowers.” Ask questions, “Why do you think cauliflower is named that way?” Point out that potatoes have “eyes” and wonder aloud, “Why do they have so many and we have only two?”
• My shopping cart: Some grocery stores have begun offering small grocery carts for young children to push around. You may want to wait until your tot is two or a little older, but it can be fun to let him choose apples, oranges or boxed cereals and push them in his own cart. At home you can use empty boxes to “play store” on a rainy day.

You might hear yourself saying, “not today” or “not now” as your child wants you to add everything to your basket (or his), but giving him the opportunity to explore the world around him is a valuable experience for both of you.  You get to cross a few items off your to-do list, while your toddler works on vocabulary development through conversation and play, with his favorite person—you.

Related Reading:

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

Story Strategies for Building the Best Bedtimes

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, early learning, how children learn, language learning, learning through play, oral language skills, play, toddler, vocabulary

My Nephew Was A Struggling Learner (Not Anymore!): Carrie’s Story

• September 6, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

This post is the third in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.

Carrie's Story:

My name is Carrie. I'm a Marketing Specialist with Scientific Learning, and I have a story about Fast ForWord with my nephew, Izaak.  Back in 2006, he went to kindergarten for his first year.  At the end of kindergarten, his teacher told my brother and sister-in-law that although he had a beautiful smile and that beautiful smile could get him through the third grade, it wouldn’t get him past the third grade. 

He started with the Fast ForWord Language Basics program.  It took him five days to get through the product and then he went in to Fast ForWord Language.  Three or four days into Language Basics for Izaak, he was able to have a complete conversation with my brother and sister-in-law and my brother was just amazed that Izaak was able to actually have a conversation as opposed to short answers or short sentences. 

He got through the Language program.  He got back into kindergarten for his second year in the fall of 2006 and today he is at the top of his class.  It’s just very, very exciting to know that these products are life changing and they can make such a difference, and I am very grateful to all the founders and the people that have made the software what it is today so that kids all over the US and the world can…have their lives changed forever.

Related Reading:

Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”

Leigh Ann’s Story: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, early learning, employee stories, language learning, oral language skills, student growth, success stories, technology in education, video

Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord

• August 25, 2011 by Andrew Ostarello

This study is a randomized controlled trial that investigated the impact of Fast ForWord Language software in 9 elementary schools.  The analyses that follow include data from 452 students in grades K through 5. 

Students were randomly assigned to be in either the Fast ForWord group or the control group.  The randomization was stratified within age and gender.

Students using Fast ForWord trained for 100 minutes per day for an average of 30 school days.  Both groups were evaluated using three assessments:

• Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language
• Phonological Awareness Test
• Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Education Battery

The average gains from pre-test to post-test were larger for Fast ForWord participants than for the control group for both Language Comprehension and Phonological Isolation.  Both of these results were statistically significant.

In addition, a large subset of students in this study were English Language Learners.  A total of 85 students did not speak English as their primary language – 53 of whom used Fast ForWord, while 32 served as controls.  The results for English Language Learners were consistent with those for native English speakers.  Both of these results were statistically significant.

In conclusion, Fast ForWord participation led to significantly larger improvements than the control group in a variety of early language skills. 

The vast majority of students made learning gains; these students averaged 1.8 years of language improvement in only 30 school days.

These results are consistent for both ELL students and for native English speakers.

Finally, note that this study was conducted on the original version of Fast ForWord Language.  Since publication of this study in 2004, a new and enhanced version of Fast ForWord Language has been released (Fast ForWord Language version 2).

Related Reading:

Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products

Reading in the Real World

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Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, elementary school learning, increased test scores, language learning, literacy, phonological awareness, technology in education, video

Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever It Takes

• July 28, 2011 by Cory Armes

Recently, while driving down the street, I saw this billboard:

While that may be a bit extreme, education has been evolving to better meet the needs of today's students, since many children have not been successful with the system employed in years past.  Oftentimes, the majority of these students ‘lost in the system’ were those born into poverty.

Research studies done over the last few decades on the impact of poverty on learning have established that the majority of children born into low income families enter school significantly behind their more affluent peers in language¹, cognitive skills (memory, attention, etc.) and noncognitive skills (patience, ability to follow directions, self confidence, etc.)^2, as well as general learning experiences. Even with special programs designed to develop and strengthen these skills, the improvements typically last only as long as the programs; there is little long-term impact on academic success without ongoing effort and support systems in place.

Geoffrey Canada was a child who began life in poverty, but his situation was unique--he had an educated mother who was determined to keep her children out of the typical downward spiral of failure. Canada determined to do something that would impact children in poverty and his efforts have been chronicled in the book Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough.

Canada's target area has been central Harlem.  From the start, he knew that significant changes had to be made in family practices from birth and beyond to give these children a chance at success. He believed that if he began with the final outcome he wanted to achieve, and then determined what was needed to realize that goal, he could create a process to change the cycle of poverty.  With the help of many people, he has created a continuous, cohesive and comprehensive system designed to change the overall culture of the area.  This neighborhood ‘safety net’ is called the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The Harlem Children’s Zone began with efforts to improve parenting skills that would help mothers and fathers work on educational skills with their infants and toddlers.  Over time, additional programs have been added to provide extensive support from birth to kindergarten so these children would be prepared for school in a way that few Harlem children had ever been in the past.  For children that have reached “school age”, the provision of extra time in the classroom to focus on individual needs has set the Harlem Children’s Zone apart from other well-meaning efforts.  And now, the Harlem Children’s Zone model has moved beyond Harlem, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announcing last week that some of his state’s cities will begin using Canada’s community-based approach.

Children who learn critical skills at an early age are better able to master more complex skills later.  The best way to escape poverty is through education, and that education must begin at birth – or before.  The Harlem Children’s Zone has shown that if you provide the key skills needed to offset the disadvantages of a child’s birthplace, you may be able to remove the seemingly insurmountable obstacles seen in the cycle of poverty of the past.  Truly, we all must be willing to do whatever it takes.

References:

Paul Tough, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)

1 Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: P.H. Brookes, 1995). 

2 James Heckman, “Lessons from the Bell Curve,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 5 (October 1995).

Related Reading:

Limiting Young Children’s Screen Time for Long-Term Health

Engaging Children in the World with Words

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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, achievement gap, at-risk, below grade level, cognitive skills, early learning, emotions in learning, language learning, learning environment, learning through play, oral language skills, toddler, vocabulary

Left vs. Right: What Your Brain Hemispheres Are Really Up To

• July 12, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

In the 1980’s, brain researchers viewed the two sides of the brain as dichotomously opposed: the right hemisphere was seen as a gestalt processor, good at “seeing the big picture,” while the left hemisphere was attributed with detail processing skills. Other views at that time attributed the left hemisphere with being more logical and analytical while the right hemisphere was considered more intuitive.^[i]

Some went so far as asserting that men and women exhibited different right vs. left preferences: men were attributed with stronger left hemisphere skills and women better right hemisphere skills. Although this male-female distinction was never empirically verified through research, the somewhat “pop-psychology” view that the right hemisphere is important for skills like music and art, predominated. In fact, there were books written instructing individuals on how to “draw with the right hemisphere” or how to “teach to the right hemisphere”.^[ii]

It now appears that some of these notions need to be revised.  A current view is that, for the majority of us, the right hemisphere is a pattern recognizer that may develop before the left. From this perspective, the right hemisphere enables a child to attend to and appreciate the gist of a sensory experience within each cognitive domain. For example, in acquisition of mathematical concepts, the right hemisphere may enable a young child to appreciate quantities in terms of more vs. less prior to assigning numerical values to the quantities (which would involve left hemisphere skills). There is research demonstrating that babies can discern a group of dots in terms of general aspects of quantity.^[iii]

Patricia Kuhl at University of Washington in Seattle has shown that typically developing infants show an interest in human voices over other environmental sounds like a car horn or doorbell, and direct their attention to human voice when it conveys information that is interesting.^[iv] Ultimately this may lead to an understanding of how the melody of a voice is used to convey a person’s intent.  In other words, recent research suggests that the right hemisphere may be best at processing patterns like voice contour, facial expression, aspects of size and quantity, gestalt aspects of the world which, from a developmental perspective, represent the way children begin to learn about cognitive areas like music, art, mathematics or language.

Considering the cognitive domain of music, for example, the right hemisphere appears to have a fundamental preference for recognizing melody, which allows a young infant to be interested in and ultimately reproduce early nursery songs. In the realm of visual processing, the right hemisphere has been shown to be better at perceiving the form or outline of an object than the details contained within the object.^[v]. And, similarly, although many people regard the left hemisphere as dominant for language, newer research has shown that the right hemisphere is superior at processing information like vocal inflection (prosody), and perhaps going directly from word to meaning, especially in very familiar phrases like idiomatic expressions (eg., “it is raining cats and dogs”) while the left hemisphere is more important for processing aspects of language that depend on analyzing the specific sequence of the sounds and words which are essential for understanding grammatical form of language and perceiving internal details of words.^[vi]

Several neuroscientists have accordingly revised and expanded the early right-left dichotomy to see the right hemisphere as preferential in processing form, structure, and perhaps, direct links to emotion,^[vii]  while the left hemisphere handles complex, rapidly changing stimuli, in which discerning the specific sequential order is critical to perception (as in speech perception, for example, where one must discern and order very rapidly changing complex acoustic events very quickly.)^[viii]

Another revision to the older view of right versus left hemisphere complements the view that the right hemisphere is preferential for pattern analysis, and comes from developmental neuroscience which has reported research that supports the contention that for most cognitive skills the right hemisphere matures before the left.^[ix] This certainly seems to the case when one looks at the early stages of neuronal development and migration in the fetal brain,^[x] and also the building of early axonal superhighways, as well as the research on myelination.^[xi] In fact, it may be that when this typical right to left maturation does not occur, developmental neurological abnormalities result. For example, there is some early research evidence that Autism Spectrum Disorders may represent one example of developmental deviations in this typical right-to-left developmental hierarchy.^[xii]

Although it may seem somewhat of a stretch from the early research in this area, one can observe how this organization might be reflected in early childhood development in the stages children pass through in the gradual mastery of skills. For example, when a child first begins to enjoy music, the observant adult notices that the child moves his or her whole body to the musical rhythm. For nursery songs, like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” the child often begins by humming the melodies. In both cases, this may represent right hemisphere processing.

In most cases, it will be a few years before the child will be able to read musical symbols which would presumably involve more left hemisphere skill. We do have research that shows that when three month old babies are first listening to oral language, the right hemisphere is much more active than the left.^[xiii] Patricia Kuhl has shown that mothers instinctively seem to match their speech to babies’ early developing perceptual preferences by exaggerating melodic inflection with young babies, probably reflecting their intuitive knowledge that they need to exaggerate the language cues (intonational contour and vocal inflection) that the right hemisphere seems to process preferentially while deemphasizing the production of the speech sounds themselves (left hemisphere preferences).^[xiv]
 

[i] Deutsch, Georg and Sally P. Springer. Left Brain, Right Brain: Perspectives From Cognitive Neuroscience . W.H. Feeman and Company/Worth Publishers. 2001.
[ii] Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Penguin Putnam Press. 1999.
[iii] Xu, Fei et al. (2005) Number sense in human infants. Developmental Science. Vol. 8. 2005.
[iv] Kuhl, Patricia. Early Language Acquisition: Cracking the Speech Code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Vol 5. 2005.
[v] Devinsky, Orrin and Mark D’Esposito. Neurology of Cognitive and Behavioral Disorders. Oxford University Press. 2004.
[vi] Hickok, Gregory and David Poeppel. The Cortical Organization of Speech Processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2007.
[vii]Cahill, L. et al. Sex-Related Hemispheric Lateralization of Amygdala Function in Emotionally Influenced Memory: An fMRI Investigation. Learning and Memory. Vol. 11: 261-266. 2004
[viii] Tallal, Paula. Improving Language and Liteacy is a Matter of Time. Nature Reviews Neuroscience Vol. 5. 2004.
[ix] Huttenlocher, Peter. Morphometric Study of Human Cerebral Cortex Development. Neuropsychologia. Vol. 28. 1990.
[x] Galaburda, Albert et al. From Genes to Behavior in Developmental Dyslexia. Nature Neuroscience  Vol 9. 2006.
[xi] Herbert, Martha et al. Brain Asymmetries in Autism and Developmental Language Disorder: A Nested Whole-Brain Analysis. Brain: A Journal of Neurology.2004.
[xii] Herbert, Martha et al. Ibid.
[xiii] Hickock, Gregory and David Poeppel. Ibid.
[xiv] Kuhl, Patricia. Ibid.

Related Reading:

A Gymnast, a Cursor and a Monkey Named Aurora

7 Amazing Discoveries from Brain Research

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Categories: Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: auditory processing, brain development, cognitive skills, infant brain, Innate abilities, language learning, memory, musical training, phonemic awareness

5 Paths To Brain Health: Tips From Dr. Paul Nussbaum

• July 5, 2011 by Carrie Gajowski

As the webinar coordinator here at Scientific Learning, I hosted yet another fascinating webinar about brain health with Dr. Paul Nussbaum in early May called “Brain Health Across the Lifespan”.  Dr. Nussbaum combined humor with interesting facts about the brain and the webinar ended up being one of our best sessions to date.  He provided a simple yet comprehensive look at the brain and how it functions. 

One interesting story Dr. Nussbaum shared was about the development and eventual delaying of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease based on lifestyle choices.  He cited research that has been done at autopsy that shows that there can be evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain that has never manifested in memory problems during a person’s life.   

Dr. Nussbaum concluded that if you look at the individual’s life, you might find that they had a higher education level or more demanding occupation or participated in complex and varied activities throughout life, building up a stronger and more “fit” brain and delaying the onset of the disease.

He then covered 5 important aspects to brain health and suggested some activities that can keep your brain fit and healthy throughout your lifetime:

1. Nutrition:  Eat more “good” fats including Omega-3 fatty acids, more fruits and vegetables, and fewer “bad” fats and processed foods. 
2. Socialization:  Stay involved with life and develop a personal mission and hobbies along with building networks of family and friendships.
3. Physical Activity: Be mobile and active.  Walk, play, run, garden, exercise, bike, hike.  These activities can help reduce the risk of dementia later on in life.
4. Mental Stimulation:  Learn a second language, learn sign language, travel, play board games, and either play or listen to music.
5. Spirituality:  Slow down, meditate, and learn relaxation procedures.  Identify what your stressors are and how they affect you and then identify ways to handle them.

To find out more about Brain Health, watch our previously recorded webinar or visit Dr. Nussbaum’s website.

Related Reading:

Lifelong Leaning and the Plastic Brain

Educating Kids about Nutrition and the Brain

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, cognitive skills, effort, exercise, health and well being, language learning, memory, musical training, play, Scientific Learning events, webinar

68% of Students Improve MEPA Proficiency Significantly after Fast ForWord®

• May 12, 2011 by Andrew Ostarello

This study looked at 118 English Language Learner students who used Fast ForWord® products in the 2009-2010 school year from Everett Public Schools in Everett, MA.  A small minority of the students also used the Fast ForWord products in the previous 2008-2009 school year.

These students were tested in both 2009 and 2010 with the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment, or the “MEPA” for short.  The impact of Fast ForWord products was dramatic and positive.  Following Fast ForWord participation, students averaged about 15 and a half scaled score points of improvement between 2009 and 2010.  

In addition, no student scored at proficiency level 1 (the lowest proficiency level) after using Fast ForWord products.  On the other end of the spectrum, the number of students in the top two proficiency levels (levels 4 and 5) more than doubled, from 33 to 74 students. 

Finally, 68% of participants improved one or more proficiency levels; 26% maintained the same proficiency level they had in 2009; while only 6% dropped a level.  This shift is statistically significant.

Related Reading:

Unlocking the Potential of English Language Learners

Scientific Learning Around the World

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, improving reading skills, increased test scores, language learning, literacy, reading test gains, student reading growth, technology in education

Bilingual Babies: Language Delay or Learning Advantage?

• May 3, 2011 by Cory Armes

Over the years, many people have speculated about the advantages and disadvantages of exposing an infant to a second language.  On one hand, it sounds great to think that children could be proficient in two languages by the time they go to school but, on the other hand, there is the concern that adding a second language could cause confusion and even delay language development in very young children. 

Fortunately, Janet Werker, a psychologist at Vancouver's University of British Columbia, and her colleagues discovered that learning two languages simultaneously does not cause confusion and, in fact, can give young children cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers.  It now appears that bilingual children develop enhanced visual sensitivity to language as well as the auditory sensitivity that we would expect.

Most people in other countries speak multiple languages and researchers have not found real evidence of language confusion in children who learn more than one language at a time.  Of course, infants and toddlers who grow up in bilingual homes often will mix the two languages and that ‘mixing’ even has a name: code-switching.  By the time these babies are three years of age, they will move back and forth between the languages but they also naturally learn to follow rules that govern that movement. For example, if one parent is not bilingual, they stick to the dominant language for that parent but will code-switch with the bilingual parent. 

The study[i] also tested visual-language discrimination with four, six and eight month-olds and found that at the two earlier ages, infants can distinguish between two spoken languages when looking at a video of a person speaking with the sound muted, even if they are only familiar with one of the languages.  By eight months of age, the babies’ brains can even discriminate between two unfamiliar languages simply by watching someone speak. Further studies will determine how long this ability is maintained in childhood but it does appear that there is a lasting influence from early exposure to additional languages. 

Research also indicates that babies growing up in a bilingual environment are better able to attend to perceptual cues such as a change in voice tone or facial expression, in both languages and can apply this ability to distinguish things in the world as well.  Additional research [ii] suggests that bilingual children also could have more flexibility in learning.  

So, if you speak two languages fluently, share them with your babies from day one.  Expanding infancy with a second language could provide stronger cognitive skills, more perceptive social skills and better learning in general.  Don’t worry about videos, flash cards or other fancy options for teaching babies a second language - just talk and read together!

Related Reading:

What Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby’s Developing Brain (Part 1)

Engaging Children in the World with Words

[i] Moskowitz, Clara. What Bilingual Babies Reveal About the Brain: Q&A with Psychologist Janet Werker. March 01, 2011.

[ii] Hsu, Jeremy. Bilingual Babies Get an Early Edge. April 13, 2009.

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: auditory processing, brain development, brain plasticity, brain training, early learning, infant brain, language learning, oral language skills, processing, vocabulary

Engaging Children in the World with Words

• April 26, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

As we all know, the rudimentary elements of language are established at the earliest ages. From a baby’s first months, they instinctively begin listening and forming the neurological groundwork for what will become their abilities to understand language, as well as speak and read.

While there are numerous studies around the topic, I’d like to take you through a simple series of imaginary scenarios to demonstrate the importance of this point—for children as well as for those of us in charge of their learning.

First, imagine the world from the baby’s point of view. They observe, see the shapes and colors around them, and as they do, they hear the voices of their parents, and they begin associating certain sounds with the surrounding world. Now, imagine how the understanding of that process—as a teaching tool in the hands of a conscientious parent—can shape that child’s abilities from the earliest of ages.

Scenario 1: A parent—let’s call her Jane—is walking down the street, slowly because she is holding her young toddler’s hand. Suddenly, a loud siren screams and around the corner comes a gleaming fire engine. Jane quickly points to it, looks into her child’s concerned eyes, smiles and says, "Loud!" As the fire engine goes by, it splashes through a great puddle in the road, spraying the two with water. Jane says, smiling and laughing, "Ohhh, no! Wet! We got wet!" Jane’s child begins to smile and laugh, too.

Scenario 2: Another parent, Carol, has her child in a stroller and is walking at a brisk clip. She is conducting business with the cell phone in one hand and is pushing the stroller with the other. They are enjoying the sunshine, and the child is calmly, quietly watching the world go by. Suddenly, a loud siren screams and around the corner comes a gleaming fire engine. Carol says, "Oh, darn it. Can you hold on a sec?" into her phone. Her child, startled by the loud noise, begins to sob, but Carol doesn’t know it because she’s watching the fire engine pass and can’t hear her child because of the siren. As the fire engine goes by, it splashes through a great puddle in the road, spraying the two with water. Carol, with fury and frustration in her voice, says, "DARN IT! Can I call you back later? I just got soaked." By this time, Carol is genuinely angry and her child is wholeheartedly crying.

In these brief images, with so much playing out in terms of outward attitudes and reactions to circumstances, and we can even look ahead to possible bonding issues. But let’s think specifically about language. What has the child—as well as the parent—in scenario one gained and the child in scenario two lost?

While Carol’s child has witnessed frustration and fear in the face of incoming stimulus, Jane’s child has experienced the world through a comforting, loving, happy interpretive filter. In short, we cannot underestimate the importance of simply being engaged with the children in our lives. As teachers, encouraging the parents we encounter to be as connected and involved in their children’s lives as early as possible.

Related Reading:

The Speech and Language Connection: The Nursery Rhyme Effect (Part 1)

Let’s Get Engaged!

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, early learning, emotions in learning, how children learn, language learning, learning environment, toddler