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

• June 1, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Technology, in the form of videos, television, computers, tablets, and video games increasingly dominates our entertainment time.  In the United States, there are videos and other technology products available for children as young as a few months old. For many, as soon as babies have the coordination to sit up by themselves, we have them looking to screens for entertainment. The success of these videos geared towards babies and toddlers speaks to our growing parental dependence upon screens to entertain our children.

The problem is that, while this media does entertain our children and can even be educational, too much can create serious, lasting issues. According to the Mayo Clinic, too much screen time can lead to obesity, irregular sleep, behavioral problems, reduced play time (obviously), and other problems. (See Children and TV: Limiting your child's screen time, Mayo Clinic.)

So, living in this modern, media-addicted world, what are some ways to that we can mediate appropriate access to technology?

 

1. Limit time. Pediatricians recommend that toddlers continue to limit TV time and exposure to baby videos.  A little time each day (1/2 hour to an hour), especially before dinner, when your child may become cranky or your need to do chores or prepare the meal, will probably not be detrimental.
2. Choose educational content. Try to find age appropriate educational programming on PBS. Public broadcast companies work very hard with child development experts to make certain their content is appropriate and beneficial for young audiences.
3. Avoid highly commercial programming. This is a tough one, but the commercials on network television can “glorify” toys that your child really does not need, and create expectations around “buying” new toys that are neither necessary nor constructive for your child. As your child gets older and plays with other children, which you do want to encourage, he will probably be exposed to plenty of commercial television. This is your chance to keep it to a minimum, at least in these formative young years. 
4. Unplug your toddler to free their creativity. Try to avoid toddler computers and electronic books for children this age. A one to two year old needs to master walking, running and climbing as well as speech and language. Electronic books, toys and games do so much on their own that they leave little opportunity for your child to “invent” new ways to play with them or new things to do.

In the grander scheme, it comes down to a question of time. Every minute of childhood spent in front of a screen is a minute not spent doing other things. Imagine what those “other things” could be: playing outside; riding a bike; building a castle out of rocks and twigs; reading a book; creating a piece of art.

The more mindfully we can help our children manage their time when it comes to screens and how that balances with their other activities, the better off they will be in the long run.

Related Reading:

Fun Science Experiments for Classroom or Home

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, exercise, health and well being, learning through play, play, student growth, technology in education, toddler

Sensory-Motor Development and Learning in Children

• April 28, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Spring is always a busy time of year for our private providers who are ramping up to serve Scientific Learning adaptive learning software to more children and their families over the summer months.  So, we like to bring our private providers together with some of our most inspiring speakers at the annual Visionary Conference for a weekend full of engaged learning. 

This year's Visionary Conference was so jam packed with great content, I've been chomping at the bit to share some of it with the rest of you.  One presentation that received rave feedback was by Cheryl Chia of BrainFit Studio, one of our international VARs from Singapore. She presented on sensory-motor development and learning in children. BrainFit Studio is located in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia.

Cheryl’s team has developed programs for children to improve sensory-motor abilities and have a positive impact on their learning abilities and academic performance. She focuses on three aspects of brain fitness. The first two, Sensory-Motor and Visual Brain Fitness, she calls the “pillars” of her intervention: SMART Moves and SMART Vision. SMARTMoves, the Sensory-Motor pillar emphasizes proprioception ( the automatic awareness of the positions of our arms and legs), tactile sensation, and the vestibular system (balance and posture). SMART vision, the Visual Brain Fitness pillar, includes visual spatial perception, and visual memory—skills that are essential for handwriting and courses with spatial concepts, like geometry. Visual ability is also important for team sports and social skills. 

The third pillar is Computer-Assisted Brain Fitness Training that includes the Fast ForWord® family of products.

Cheryl shared her assessment protocol, a “cognitive map” prepared for each child that focuses on the three pillars. The cognitive map is used for determining which pillars to emphasize for each child.

View the full presentation to see video of the types of activities the children participate in under each BrainFit pillar and the outcome data. 

I hope you find it as compelling as I did!

Related Reading:

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

Let's Get Engaged!

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Fast ForWord

Tags: accelerate learning, brain development, brain training, cognitive skills, how children learn, Scientific Learning events, technology in education

How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function

• March 16, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Did you know that school is not just about learning new information; it is also about improving brain function?  Of course the content learned in coursework like social studies, science, geography and mathematics is very important. But, it turns out that learning to read does far more than impart a skill.  Recent research by the neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene indicates that learning to read actually improves the way the brain functions in several critical ways.
 
Dr. Dehaene and his colleagues compared the brain function of Brazilian and Portuguese adults who can read with those who had never learned to read. He reported the results in the journal Science in December. In the study the scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain function of adults while they responded to oral language, written language, and visual tasks. The adults were matched for socio-economic status (SES) so as not to bias the results by educational or income level. Thirty-one of the adults had been literate from childhood, twenty-two had learned to read as adults, and ten had never learned to read (were illiterate). What they found was that regions of the brain that all of us use to process visual information were enhanced among the adults who were readers; both those who had read from childhood and those who learned to read as adults. They also found that listening skills were better among both groups of readers than among the adults who did not read. The specific listening skill that was enhanced in readers involved the ability to perceive speech sounds more accurately.  
 
This research has important implications for those of us interested in education. It helps us to understand the importance of reading in the educational process, of course. But, perhaps even more important, it helps to explain why children who struggle to read fall so far behind in other school subjects as well. If, as Dehaene’s research suggests, the ability to read helps build parts of the brain that are essential for listening and observing, students who struggle to read may also have problems learning from auditory classroom instruction as well.  Thus they become hampered in three ways – they cannot learn to read, so will not be able to read to learn, and may struggle just as much with other forms of instruction.  
                                                                                       
Another issue is why children struggle to read in the first place. Dehaene’s research with adults controlled for this possible variable by controlling for socio-economic status and including adults who did not learn to read until they were adults. But in the United States as in other countries where education is mandatory for every child, there is a question as to why some children find learning to read so difficult.  Two new studies appear to shed light on that issue and seem related to Dehaene’s research. Bart Boets and his colleagues at the University of Leuven in Belgium have research that is to be published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities, that indicates a sort of double-whammy – children who in kindergarten have trouble with auditory perception, are likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia by grade 3.

Cassandra  Billiet  and Terri Bellis have also published research on the relationship between auditory perception and dyslexia in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research in February 2011 Both research studies suggest that problems with processing of rapid sound changes, like those that occur in speech,  may interfere with learning to read in the first place. When considered in light of Dehaene’s research, children who struggle to learn to read likely end up at a further disadvantage as school progresses  because auditory skills do not continue to develop which, in turn, will affect all classroom learning.
 
Most of us would agree that learning to read is one of the most important tasks a child undertakes when they enter school. This new research helps us to understand that reading depends on listening skills in the first place and then builds them as reading improves. The science described in this study is the same science upon which Scientific Learning’s Fast ForWord software is built, there is strong evidence of its validity, from a variety of schools/districts and independent research labs.  Reading builds brain functions essential for listening and learning:  good readers become good listeners become good students. Helping students as early as possible with the underlying cognitive skills that enable reading will have academic benefits for years to come.

 

References

Billiets, C and Bellis, T. (2011) The Relationship Between Brainstem Temporal Processing and Performance on Tests of Central Auditory Function in Children With Reading Disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.54 228-242

Boets, B. et al (In Press) Preschool impairments in auditory processing and speech perception uniquely predict future reading problems. Research in Developmental Disabilities

Dehaene, S, et al.(2010)How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language. Science 330, 1359

 

Related Reading:

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

Musical Training and Cognitive Abilities

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Categories: Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, fMRI, how children learn, learning to read, student reading growth

Goodnight Room: Story Strategies for Building the Best Bedtimes

• March 8, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Remember Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown? When I think of this book, I think about how the bunny is snuggled into bed, toys put a way, moon peeking in through the window, and everyone and everything is whispering “good night.” I’ve noted that the “old lady whispering hush” is rocking in her chair far across the room, and the book The Runaway Bunny sits on the bedside table; story time has ended for this little bunny and now it’s time for sleep.

Everything is perfect and quiet. What might the perfect story time have looked like in that “good night room” 15 minutes before the book opens? First of all, the old lady would have been sitting much closer, maybe on the edge of the bed. And her soft, clear voice would be helping that little bunny not only relax, but learn to love books as well as solidify the rudiments of language.

Whenever possible, make a consistent habit of 15-30 minutes each evening to tell or read stories before bed. Just as it did for your child at a year of age, for your tot it will serve two purposes: quiet him down and prepare him for sleep, as well as introduce the repetition of words and sentence forms that build the school-important left hemisphere. As your two-year old begins to develop a love of specific books or stories, you will have a wealth of material to settle her down on car and plane trips where sitting still for long periods is mandatory.

And remember, a bedroom is usually the quietest room in a home. All the soft materials (the bedding, window coverings, rugs, and even “goodnight socks and bears”) actually absorb what hearing specialists call ambient noise, rendering your speech clearer and easier to perceive.  Reading in this quiet room helps your child learn to discriminate the subtle differences in speech sounds. As a bonus, if you read or tell stories to your tot in the bedroom, where you will be sitting right next to him, you will be providing the best speech signal available.  The easy rule I use to describe this is, “An arms span, from mouth to ear, makes sure all bunnies’ hearing is clear.”

It probably doesn’t matter what stories you tell or read. It is the natural clarity of the speech signal that occurs in a ”goodnight room,” the repetition that results from your child’s own preference for certain stories, and the closeness and attention that the child receives from the most important people in her life that make this short period of the day so important to your child. And, it goes without saying that the benefit to you will be that after this small investment of time, you will have some time to yourself to relax, read, enjoy a favorite television show, or just interact with your spouse.

Related Reading:

Creating Reading Intention to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills in Students

Sleep: An Essential Ingredient for Memory Function

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, language learning, learning environment, learning to read, phonemic awareness, sleep, toddler

How Much Sleep Do Children Need?

• February 1, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Sleep is essential to health and well-being as well as performance in work and play. Sleep and wake cycles appear to be regulated by the brain. And, although sleep allows for renewal of organs of body, it is also vital to cognitive skills in children and adults. Just a small amount of sleep deprivation affects performance for days thereafter.

There are two kinds of sleep that adults and children cycle through during the night, non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS) which accounts for about 80% of sleep and occurs more frequently during the first half of the night and rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) that accounts for the other 20% as is more prevalent during the second half of the night.. Rapid eye movement occurs when we dream as our eyes dart back and forth under our closed eyelids. Despite this complex nature of sleep performance during the day is dependent on the total number of hours of sleep.[i]

Children need much more sleep than adults and it is important that they have schedules and an environment that conducive to adequate sleep. There is a great deal of scientific evidence regarding the importance of sleep to the developing brain yet our nations’ children are not getting enough.

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) conducted a Poll in 2004 to determine the amount of sleep our nations’ children are receiving and factors that are affecting the quantity and quality of sleep our children receive.[ii]  In general they found that our nations’ children from birth through adolescence are sleep deprived: infants are getting one to two hours per day less sleep than experts recommend and toddlers through school aged children average from one half hour to two hours less per day.

Expert recommendations are provided below with U.S. averages in parentheses.

• 14-15 hours sleep per day for children aged 3-11 months  ( U.S. infants average is 12.7)
• 12-14 hours of sleep a day for children aged 1-3 years (U.S. toddlers average 11.7)
• 11-13 hours per day for children aged 3-5 children  (U.S. preschoolers average 10.4) 
• 10-11 hours for 1st through 5th grades children (U.S. children average 9.5)  

Children who do not get adequate sleep are more likely to develop problems getting to sleep and staying asleep at night. But most important, when children do not get adequate sleep experts report that, unlike adults who act lethargic during the day, children exhibit hyperactivity.

Two problems that experts say decrease the amount of sleep children get are consumption of caffeine during the day and having a television in the bedroom. The poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that 43% of school-aged children, 30% of preschoolers and 18-20% of infants and toddlers have televisions in their rooms.

Another reason some children have trouble staying asleep is sleep apnea (brief stoppage of airflow at night that causes a child to awake). Doctors and parents may not suspect sleep is being affected by snoring because children do not exhibit the same behaviors as adults when they get insufficient sleep. Unlike adults suffering from sleep apnea who complain of fatigue and sleepiness, children may exhibit hyperactivity and aggressive behavior. So parents should tell their pediatricians if their child snores or wakes frequently during the night but also check for sleep deprivation when their child is showing increased activity or aggressive behavior that seems out of character for the child.

Related Reading:

The Imperative of Cultivating Healthy Adolescent Sleep Habits

Sleep: An Essential Ingredient for Memory Function

[i] Kruger, J.M., Rector, D.M., Roy, S., Van Dongen, H.P.A., Belenky, G. and Panksepp, J. (2008) Sleep as a fundamental property of neuronal assemblies. Nature Reveiws Neuroscience. 9, 12, 910-919

[ii] The National Sleep Foundation website contains a paper which summarizes the 2004 poll.www.sleepfoundation.org.

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Categories: Family Focus

Tags: behavior, health and well being, sleep, toddler

The Speech and Language Connection: The Nursery Rhyme Effect (Part 2)

• December 30, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

In my November blog post, I shared information about how speech and language develop and also spoke about the importance of nursery rhymes.  This month, we are going to continue the discussion about the teaching tools of nursery rhymes for young children.

Sounds are one of the many teaching tools of nursery rhymes. They also teach word order, grammar, and rhythm. Each of the content words– Peter, Piper pickled, peppers, picked, and peck are repeated four times each. But to build an appreciation of the flexibility of word order, each repetition puts the words in a different position.  The subject noun Peter Piper, is repeated four times in the subject noun position, but two of those times it comes early in a phrase and twice it comes later. Pickled peppers, an object noun phrase, occurs twice after the verb pick, which is what we would expect, and twice before the verb. These are all grammatical sentences, so the child is not being exposed to language that is incorrect or inappropriate. But what a joy for a child, who is trying desperately to learn how to order words into sentences, to realize that part of the joy of language is the variety and flexibility. Language is not just about meaning (how many two years olds care about what at “peck” is) but about sound, rhythm, rhyming, and variation.

                Little Miss Muffet

                Sat on a tuffet

                Eating her curds and whey

                Along came a spider

                Who sat down beside her

                And frightened Miss Muffet away

In this nursery rhyme different, but at the same time early sound patterns are emphasized. The phoneme /m/ is one of the easiest for a child to produce and in this rhyme is contrasted with the /s/ in spider and  sat as well as the /t/.which ends sat and starts and ends tuffet. Never mind that the average two or three year old will have no idea what the words tuffet, curds, or whey actually mean. Nursery rhymes are not so much about vocabulary as they are about the rules of combining sounds into words, rhyming, and alliteration (all prerequisite to phonological awareness which is going to lead to the ability to phonically decode words in a few years.) That fact that our language contains words we do not understand does not limit our ability to enjoy language. And introducing your youngster to that knowledge will enhance her curiosity about words and the magic of language.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: early learning, emotions in learning, how children learn, language learning, learning through play, oral language skills, phonemic awareness, toddler, vocabulary

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

• November 16, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Between two and three years of age your child will learn and use almost a thousand new words and learn the rudiments of grammar. By the end of this year she will be able to speak in short sentences, use pronouns like “me”, “you”, and “mine” and even start using a few adverbs like “fast” and “slow”.

The brain of a two-year-old is remarkable – it is a pattern analyzer and predictor. Your child can hear a string of words that have no audible break in them, like “Ihearyou” and parse the sentence into three words, logically figuring out that the second word is “hear” even if he has never been exposed to the word “hear” before. If you say “Iseeyou” it might be a little more difficult for your child to determine whether you said “icy you” or I see you” because in English we have many words that end in the  “s” sound.  But we have no words that end in “h”, (“Ih ear” you is impossible in English) and your two-year-old’s brain has figured that out. My daughter Heather around two responded to my plea “Heather, please behave” with “I’m have-ing” mommy”, because she misinterpreted this knowledge to assume “behave” was two words, “be” and “have”, as in “be good”. But for the most part, this ability to statistically figure out where one word ends and the other begins will help your child figure out not just vocabulary, but grammar as well.

The language learning mechanism that cultures around the world have developed to assist this statistical learning of language by two-year-olds is “nursery rhymes”. Linguists will tell you that almost all cultures and languages have nursery rhymes that are told and repeated to two to three-year-old children. Nature, through our adult mirror neuron system, has provided an intuitive mechanism to help our young children figure out the syllable structure and phonological (sound combination) rules of their native language so that during the second year of life a child can master 900 new words in their native language. Keep in mind that nursery rhymes are literally like “music” to the young child’s ears – the rhythm and melody helps the child learn how intonation of sentences conveys emotion in language and the alliteration, (repetition of initial sounds) as well as the rhymes, helps a child develop phonological awareness – knowledge of how words are made up of sounds and sound patterns and an understanding of grammar, not to mention rhythm, rhyme and alliteration.

To appreciate how much language learning can be built into nursery rhymes take a look at this example:

               Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
               A peck of pickled peppers, Peter Piper picked.
               If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
               Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

From the standpoint of sound, the repetition of the stop consonants /p/ and /k/ provides a young child with the opportunity to contrast sounds produced with the lips /p/ and those produced with the back of the tongue /k/. The repetition of the stop consonants (by that phoneticians mean consonants in which air is stopped for a short time before it is released) – allows the opportunity to learn to contrast and discriminate sounds that seem to have a popping sound from those that are continuous, like the /z/ sound in peppers and where’s – produced with the tip of the tongue. The fact that /p/ and /k/ are among the earliest sounds children produce (note the use of /papa/ and /kaka/ as early language forms) means that a child can begin to practice repeating a nursery rhyme like this with his parents.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, cognitive skills, early learning, how children learn, language learning, oral language skills, toddler

What Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby’s Developing Brain (Part 2)

• October 28, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

In my August post, I discussed how the primary job of the infant brain is to detect relevant information about language and the environment in which the baby is born and to design itself, in a relatively short period of time, to be an expert at that language and environment. This month, we will continue the discussion of how the brain develops in a young infant.

The genes more or less provide the blueprint for the brain’s hardware and early wiring, but after a child is born, and perhaps even for several months before, the stimulation in the world around the infant sets up the experiences that the brain uses to wire itself for later learning. Whether that stimulation is beneficial or detrimental is a matter of expectations: if our goal is that a child be good at attending to brief segments of information (so called, “sound bites”) but not be as good at sustaining attention for a longer period of time (as might be expected in a first grade classroom), then hours of watching television might be viewed as beneficial. But since teachers do not talk in “sound bites,” and most education, from learning to read to learning algebra, requires extended periods of concentration to relatively unchanging stimulation (a teacher’s lengthy explanations, for example), television watching may prepare the brain for attentional skills that are not beneficial for school success.

Parents can help their babies and young children prepare for the “listening” demands of school by spending time in activities where Mom or Dad talk, read or sing to their child in a quiet setting for fifteen minutes to half an hour (for children over three) at a time. Even infants under six months of age can be encouraged to “listen” to adults. Young infants are very interested in facial expression and voice melody but they need to see a parent’s face and hear their voice together to build up the brain networks that sustain their attention to speech. Mom or Dad can build this network by holding the baby within a foot of their face (lying on a parent’s lap or being held close a parent can talk to the baby about parts of his face for example, “You have such a nice nose, here is your nose, look at Mommy’s nose; and here is your ear and this is Mommy’s ear.” As the baby gets older and can sit up, Dad and Mom can begin to pay games that further attract the baby’s attention to their voice and face, like “Peek-a-Boo.” Babies under a year often enjoy these activities and can attend for several minutes at a time, preparing their brain for later attention to speech.

For children over a year, parents can establish a routine “quiet time” to settle a child down before bedtime. A fifteen minute to half-hour quiet time where Mom or Dad sit with the child on their bed and look at books together, or talk about something special that happened during the day, or sing nursery songs before bed can provide a perfect opportunity build listening skills. If a child gets accustomed to sitting for 30 minutes listening to songs or stories he will have he will have established the attention skills that he will need when he gets to school.

As a case in point, the American Pediatric Association has recently published research indicating that too much exposure to television during the first two years of life seems to increase the likelihood that the child will be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder in the early school years.¹ From a neuroscientists’ perspective, attention deficit disorder may not represent so much an abnormal brain as a brain that has developed in a way that is not well suited to sitting and learning in a classroom environment.

That does not necessarily imply the child is not “intelligent” (although parents may be led to view the child that way) or that the child is not “well behaved’, but it does bias the child against being viewed as intelligent and well behaved in an environment that places emphasis on “sitting still and listening”, namely the typical public school classroom. And although one option might be for parents to remove the child with a “short attention span” from the public school environment and either home school the child or pay for a private school that is not as overtly punitive, ultimately, the child will most likely eventually have to sit and concentrate for long periods of time, either at college, or at work. So, it would make sense to build the child’s brain in such a way to allow him or her to successfully compete in a world where listening or watching and concentration to one task are important.

That does not mean, however, that the brain is inflexible, unable to multitask, or incapable of handling rapidly changing information as well. Think of a professional basketball player, who has developed a genius of sorts for a sport, who must maintain concentration on his or her team position as well as an expected play while at the same time following the ball and observing opponents and team members as they move around the floor. So, it turns out, a brain that is good at sustained attention to a single task can also be good at multitasking as well as handling rapidly changing information.

The human brain appears to be remarkably equipped to develop these capacities and to utilize them in almost all aspects of learning in which one might find himself, be it a classroom, a sports arena, a symphony orchestra, or a multitude of other performance.² The key is preparing the brain for these potential capacities during the first few years of life.

^[1]Journal of the American Pediatric Association, 2007
^[2] Merzenich, M. Personal communication, 2008

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, brain development, early learning, how children learn, infant brain, play

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

• August 4, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

So here you are! In front of you is a newborn, a tiny miracle; a little person that you and your loved one created. This little person looks a little like your aunt Ruth, your father, and you. You have never experienced anything like the love and affection you feel for this little person and you want to guide his or her life the best you can.

What do you do? Does it matter how you hold it, feed it, talk it, attend to it? The short answer is ‘yes’. But the longer answer is that what the infant brain needs in terms of stimulation from parents is relatively simple and very natural. The baby’s brain is a “learning machine” set from day one to absorb and adapt to the world around it.

The parent’s job is a reasonably simple one—to provide an environment that fosters development of skills that will be helpful in later life. If it were an overwhelming task, humans would have died out as a species eons ago. But babies in a host of variable cultures, and subject to many different child rearing practices, in the main, grow up remarkably similar—they walk, talk, play, and eventually become productive adults. However, there is some new research that can guide parents on their journey.

Current research[i] has demonstrated that the primary job of the infant brain is to detect relevant information about language and the environment in which the baby is born and to design itself, in a relatively short period of time, to be an expert at that language and environment. If a baby is exposed to the English language, for example, the brain quickly begins the task of sorting that language into its smallest meaningful elements—the speech sounds—that signal differences in meaning from one word or another.[ii]

In a similar way, a newborn begins to explore his or her environment by observing how objects change in size and position when he or she is lying in a crib and later by observing how objects change when the child can move toward them and manipulate them. In just four months, the research shows, the infant can begin to pick out relevant visual cues that will help to recognize familiar faces, understand space, distinguish two versus three dimensional objects, and perceive a whole object even when only part of the object is observable, such as when a ball is partially hidden behind a block. [iii]

Through experience, the infant brain matures to become a specialist for the world the child is born into.[iv] A French child becomes a specialist in French, the Russian child a specialist in Russian. In this way, the infant brain “maps” itself to the world around it, with groups of brain cells (neurons) in a particular community like the auditory part of the brain, becoming specialists for processing specific types of information. In this way the brain builds itself to become a remarkable machine, eventually capable of understanding new and complex sentences and paragraphs, learning new vocabulary, solving complex new problems that have never been encountered before and realizing the world is full of individuals who have different, yet valid views and opinions.[v]

Since the experiences of the infant form the starting point for the development of the eventual brain architecture, it is important that those of us who are entrusted with this early experience, parents, caretakers, and day care centers, understand the role we play in the building of the brain’s architecture. It is also essential that researchers help those of us who guide an infant’s early experiences to understand which types of stimulation are “beneficial” to brain development and which could be “detrimental”[vi] as I will discuss in next month’s blog post.

What have you noticed about how babies master their environment?  Share your observations on our Scientific Learning Facebook page!

 

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Categories: Brain Research, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, early learning, how children learn, infant brain, Innate abilities, language learning, phonemic awareness, play, processing, vocabulary

Teaching Children to Read

• July 6, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

According to the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read Reports of the Subgroups, the capacity to learn and grow as a reader depends on five essential skills:

Foundational Skills for Beginning Readers:

1) Phonemic Awareness: The insight that every spoken word can be conceived as a sequence of phonemes. Phonemes are the speech sounds that are represented by the letters of an alphabet.

2) Phonemic Decoding: The ability to capture the meaning of unfamiliar words by translating groups of letters back into the sounds that they represent, link them to one's verbal vocabulary, and access their meaning.

Skills Needed to Read for Meaning:

3) Vocabulary: Understanding the words in a passage, including the specific dimensions of their meanings or usage that matter in context.  For example, knowing that “tree” when reading about a “family tree” has a different meaning from “maple tree.”

4) Fluency: The ability to read with sufficient ease and accuracy that active attention can be focused on the meaning and message of the text and the text easily retained.

5) Comprehension: Thinking about the meaning of each segment of the text as it is read, building an understanding of the text as a whole, and reflecting on its meaning and message.

Teachers today are fortunate to have access to a wealth of scientifically based research into what works when teaching children to read.  The links that follow are courtesy of the National Institute for Literacy:

Birth to Early Childhood

Children begin building literacy skills long before they go to school.  Even very young children can be prepared to become successful readers later on.  Research has identified certain skills that are important for later literacy development; these skills include knowing the names and sounds of printed letters, manipulating speech sounds, and remembering what has been said for a short time.  Here are some ways to teach younger children these pre-reading skills.

Childhood

From kindergarten through third grade, young readers are actively developing all five of the core reading skills from phonemic awareness to fluency and comprehension.  Research has shown that teaching children to read successfully during this window requires a combination of strategies and instructional approaches.  Teachers must know how children learn to read and be able to tailor instructional approaches to individual children--especially those who are struggling readers.  Here are some instructional approaches for the five essential skills.

Adolescence

While many adolescent readers have mastered phonemic awareness and decoding strategies, they are often still challenged to fully understand what they read.  In middle and high school, it is common for literacy skills to be developed not only in language arts courses, but also in a variety of different content areas.  To prepare students for the literacy challenges of secondary school, language arts and content area teachers need to focus on the last three components of reading: vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.  Here are some approaches to teaching vocabulary and comprehension skills.

 

Related reading:

Sing the Alphabet Backwards Sometimes: Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Activities

Sharing the Practices of Phonics Practice: 5 Instructional Approaches

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Categories: Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, early learning, elementary learning, elementary school learning, fluency, high school learning, how children learn, improving reading skills, intervention, learning through play, learning to read, literacy, memory, oral language skills, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, vocabulary