What Educators May Not Know about the Neuroscience of Learning

• November 6, 2012 by Scott Sterling

On October 30^th, noted neuroscience researcher and co-founder of Scientific Learning, Dr. Paula Tallal, conducted a live webinar titled “What do Neuroscientists Know About Learning That Most Educators Don’t?” In her presentation, Dr. Tallal discussed her original research on auditory processing, its relationship to language development, and the far-reaching effects that deficiencies in those areas can have on learning.

Research continues to support the hypothesis that difficulty discriminating between small changes in sound is at the heart of learning problems both in students who have a diagnosed difficulty and those who do not.  Dr. Tallal described how oral language is the foundation for learning and for most successful educational outcomes, adding that oral language itself is dependent on the brain’s ability to discriminate and process auditory information. Children who have difficulty perceiving the many subtleties of language find the deck stacked against them in their educational careers. They can experience a variety of impediments to learning, including:

• Limited attention: Humans are less likely to pay attention to someone speaking if they only understand a portion of what is said. Recall the last time you spoke to someone with a heavy accent or were on a bad phone line.
• Difficulty following directions: When you only understand a portion of a spoken “order of operations” - like a set of directions – the chance that you follow the order decreases dramatically.
• Memory issues: As Dr. Tallal describes, if you have to concentrate so much on understanding spoken text, you are less able to move information from working to long-term memory, and therefore are less likely to remember it.

Students with this subtle level of auditory processing problem need specific differentiation that is not possible in most classrooms. The good news, as Dr. Tallal describes, is that modern technology can be used to address the difficulties these children face and help bridge these skill gaps. In fact, it is this level of research and development that informed the development of Scientific Learning’s software programs, including Fast ForWord.

To close, Dr. Tallal took questions from the educators relating to how these insights can be used to improve educational outcomes in all classrooms. Teachers left this insightful webinar with practical strategies that can be used to help learners of all abilities.

 

 

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Tags: academic problems, academic success, accelerate learning, at-risk, attention, brain development, brain plasticity, brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, dyslexia, Fast ForWord characters, how children learn, improving reading skills, language learning, learning disabilities, literacy, memory, oral language skills, processing, reading intervention, sequencing, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education, webinar

What Makes a Good Reader? The Foundations of Reading Proficiency

• July 3, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Have you ever wondered why some children seem to learn to read so effortlessly and others struggle? Have you ever seen a child who memorizes poems, math facts, and the alphabet without even trying?  Yet at the same time you might have also known another child who had trouble just remembering their own phone number or address. There are all sorts of reasons that learning—and reading—is easy for some children and hard for others, and believe it or not, it rarely has anything to do with intelligence.

Just as some children are good athletes from the time they are very young, others are great at music or art. We tend to think of art, music and athletics as skills or talents. But actually there are underlying cognitive abilities that enable those talents. For athletics, good hand-eye coordination and quickness can be keys to success. For music, certainly the ability to perceive tones is essential. For art, excellent visual memory is helpful.

It turns out that learning to read also requires some underlying cognitive skills. Children are not born good readers, of course; reading has to be taught. And for a child to be able to learn to read, four core cognitive capacities are needed: memory, attention, sequencing, and processing efficiency (speed and accuracy). It is helpful to tease out each one of these and explain the importance in learning to read.

Memory – Scientists refer to the kind of memory that is important for learning to read as “working memory.” It is the kind of short term memory that enables you to read this blog and remember what was written a few paragraphs earlier. When children have problems with working memory, reading can be very difficult. A child might have trouble remembering what sounds the letters of the alphabet stand for when they are first starting to read and so have a devil of a time learning to decode. Later in school the child with working memory problems might have trouble remembering what they read just a few sentences earlier and so re-read the same passages over and over again. How do you know if a child has working memory problems? Look for trouble following commands or remembering details of instructions or stories.

Attention – Learning of any kind requires good attentional skills. A student needs to be able to pay attention when the teacher is talking and ignore random noises in the room. A student also needs to learn to pay attention during reading. In learning to read, students need to pay attention to the letters and attend carefully to the sounds they represent. Later in school, students who have trouble attending are often those who can’t stick with a reading assignment. What to look for: the child reads a few sentences or paragraphs and then looks around the room, drops a pencil, or gets up out of a chair. It can take a child who has problems sustaining his attention a very long time to finish reading assignments.

Sequencing – Reading requires the ability to sequence letters into words (“saw” versus “was”) and grammatical endings (“the boy runs” versus “the boys run”), and words into sentences (“the dog chased the boy” versus “the boy chased the dog”). It is easy to see that when children have trouble sequencing, they will misunderstand what they read. Some children find sequencing things they hear very hard because the information is so fleeting.

Processing speed and accuracy – Scientists refer to the way the brain handles information as “processing.”  Parents may have heard the terms “auditory processing” or “visual processing”. Those terms refer to the way the brain perceives and attaches meaning to information coming in from hearing or vision. Some students are inherently good at processing visual information. Those students seem to learn well visually and are very good at perceiving visual cues, like picking up on facial expressions or remembering how words look when they are spelled. However, some of those students may not process auditory information as well. They might frequently misunderstand words spoken to them or “tune out” when people talk to them.  Students with auditory processing inefficiencies might also seem “slow” to respond when others are talking to them. Certainly, if a child has trouble hearing the difference between the vowels in “bit” and “bet,” it makes sense that learning the correspondence between letter and sound will be difficult. In fact, there is a great deal of research indicating that children with auditory processing inefficiencies find learning to read very difficult.

We tend to think that reading is a visual skill that depends primarily on linking letters to sounds. That has led us to expect that reading problems must be due to either difficulties with recognizing the letters or matching those letters to their appropriate sounds. However, we now know that a core set of underlying cognitive skills: memory, attention, processing speed or accuracy, and sequencing underlie the ability to learn to read and later to read to learn.

 

 

References:

Berninger, Virginia. et al. Relationship of Word- and Sentence-Level Working Memory to Reading and Writing in Second, Fourth, and Sixth Grade. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, vol. 41, 179–193. 2010.

Bishop, Dorothy and Snowling, Margaret. Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: same or different? Psychological Bulletin, vol. 130, 858-886. 2004.

Burns, Martha. Auditory Processing Disorders and Literacy. In Geffner, D and Swain, D. Auditory Processing Disorders. Plural Publications.

Caretti, Barbara. et al. Role of working memory in explaining the performance of individuals with specific reading comprehension difficulties: A meta-analysis. Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 19, 246–251. 2009.

Gaab, Nadine. Neural correlates of rapid auditory processing are disrupted in children with developmental dyslexia and ameliorated with training: An fMRI study. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, vol. 25, 295–310. 2007.

Stevens, Courtney et al. Neural mechanisms of selective auditory attention are enhanced by computerized training: Electrophysiological evidence from language-impaired and typically developing children. Brain Research, vol. 1205, 55-69. 2008.

Stevens, Courtney et. al. Neurophysiological evidence for selective auditory attention deficits in children with specific language impairment. Brain Research, vol. 1111-1. 2006.

Related Reading:

The Reading Brain: How Your Brain Helps You Read, and Why it Matters

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: adaptivity, auditory processing, brain development, brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, elementary learning, how children learn, intelligence, learning to read, literacy, phonemic awareness, processing, sequencing, vocabulary

Preventing Summer Brain Drain with Dr. Martha S. Burns

• May 29, 2012 by Carrie Gajowski

One of my favorite webinar presenters here at Scientific Learning, Dr. Martha Burns, recently gave a webinar called “BrainPro:  Preventing Summer Brain Drain.”

Dr. Burns covered a number of points related to learning and retaining information

• How learners can benefit from current research in 3 areas: 
  • Psychology – the benefits of teaching to a child’s style of learning
  • Neuroscience and Technology – using neuroscience-based technology to individualize instruction to meet the needs of each individual student
  • Education – providing standardized content to learners across the US
• The science of how the brain learns.  The human brain has thousands of networks that work together and help us to do a lot of different things. Pathways in the brain get stronger and stronger with use.   The more we do something, the better we get at that activity.  The stronger the pathways in the brain, the easier it becomes for the child to learn and retain information. 
• Early difficulties in reading. If a child is struggling with phonological awareness, memory, vocabulary or comprehension, it may indicate a learning difficulty. The cognitive abilities of memory, attention, processing, and sequencing that are foundational to language can be exercised with the BrainPro program.

Following Dr. Burns, we heard from Jenny, a parent from Florida who had her teenage daughter use the BrainPro program to help her pass the FCAT (the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test).   Her daughter has a very high GPA and takes AP and Honors classes, but had difficulty in passing the FCAT reading test two years in a row. After she went through the BrainPro program, she took the FCAT for the 3^rd time and passed with a near perfect score on the test.  

View the webinar to for more detail and visuals about how the brain learns, and find out how the BrainPro program can help learners stay sharp over the summer break.

Related Reading:

Antidotes to Summer Brain Drain (Part 2): 5 Ways to Pull the Plug on Learning Loss

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

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, brain plasticity, brain training, child reading development, cognitive skills, early learning, Florida, high school learning, how children learn, increased test scores, memory, processing, sequencing, student growth, success stories, webinar

2011 Virtual Circle of Learning Customer Conference

• August 25, 2011 by Pam Combs

Customers, mark your calendars!   This year’s annual Scientific Learning customer conference, the 2011 Virtual Circle of Learning, will take place on November 4, bringing together Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant product users from across North America. Circle of Learning participants will get to hear the latest in brain research and learn practical applications that will benefit students immediately. 

This year’s Circle of Learning will be a 100% virtual event.  It will include the same caliber of comprehensive content and keynote speakers as in our past on-site conferences, and we’ll be actively using social media to connect participants before, during, and after the event. 

The Circle of Learning agenda features three engaging keynotes—including the ever-popular Eric Jensen (Teaching with Poverty in Mind) and Scientific Learning’s own Dr. Marty Burns (Motivating our Coaches and Teachers) and Andrew Ostarello (The Story of Data).  Breakout sessions follow, addressing the importance of attention skills, memory, processing skills, and sequencing skills, as well as a special breakout session especially for tech team members. 

Please plan to join us for this once-a-year, not-to-be-missed customer event!          

Oh, and did I mention that it is FREE?!

Related Reading:

Students who Struggle in the Mainstream: What their Homework Patterns May Tell You

Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant Investment

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: attention, cognitive skills, education conference, memory, processing rate, Scientific Learning events, sequencing, technology in education, webinar

Individualizing Instruction Through Understanding Different Types of Learners

• June 14, 2011 by Terri Zezula

For an educator, getting to know each learner is like experiencing a new book. Every child—every mind that comes into the classroom—represents a new discovery with every turn of the page, their own way of seeing and experiencing the world, and they each bring a unique library of experiences, hopes, fears and dreams.

Now, while that makes for a poetic discussion about the wonderful variety among students, it also makes for a practical challenge in helping every one of these individuals achieve their greatest potential. How can an educator present information such that all of these learners—with all their different world views and brain wirings—will get the most out of the school experience?

Researchers have generated multiple models of the mind, each providing its own way of understanding how we can conceptualize and leverage learning differences in the classroom. Such categories are simply ways for us to classify students and ensure that we are reaching every one as effectively as possible.

All these models strive to answer one single question: How does each individual learner experience and process the world around them? Academics have spent great energies on unlocking these secrets and developing models of how we learn. A quick trip through just a few of these theories (and there are many other theories out there) gives us an idea of the breadth of ideas posed by experts of note since the 1980s:

• David Kolb described four types of learners: convergers (who develop abstract concepts and then actively experiment), divergers (who experience the world and then reflect on their observations), assimilators (who develop abstract concepts and then observe and reflect), and accommodators (who experience the world and then actively experiment).
• Honey and Mumford labeled learners as activists, reflectors, theorists and pragmatists.
• Anthony Gregorc described how people perceive the world in two ways (concrete and abstract) and order the world in two ways (random and sequential), and developed a model with four learner types based on the possible combinations of these qualities.
• Fleming’s model described learners as visual, auditory, read-write or kinesthetic, classifying learners by the kind of information that they most effectively assimilate.
• Howard Gardner described eight different “intelligences,” including linguistic, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist.

 

In looking at these frameworks as a group, they all converge in certain ways and diverge in others. But one element remains consistent throughout, and that is the motivation for having them in the first place. There is a clear practical need for such frameworks in the classroom. Education is not a one-on-one teacher/learner proposition. As much as we would like, we as educators simply cannot provide fully individualized instruction for every student in a classroom of twenty or thirty.

The art and science of classifying how the human brain processes and learns is and will constantly change as we discover more and more about how the brain works. Whichever model or models are applied in the classroom (and again, the best educators will have a deep enough command of each of these models to leverage the best of each), it is up to educators to ensure that each learner is developing and cultivating the same set of core, fundamental cognitive skills: memory (the ability to store information), attention (the ability to focus on tasks and filter out distractions), processing (how fast a student can perceive and manipulate information), and sequencing (how accurately a student can order information).  These four key cognitive skill sets, when developed together, have been demonstrated to improve learning and reading. Thus, any teaching we do based on learner classifications must support the development of these skills.

That said, if these classifications add power and efficiency to the way we impart these skills to our students and classes, then we should make use of them as much as possible. In the end, any tricks we can use, any knowledge we can leverage, any technique we can employ—if the research demonstrates it to be effective—represents a valid bit of knowledge that we can use to help our students succeed.

Learn more about the four essential cognitive skills of memory, attention, processing, and sequencing. For further reading:

Kolb, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Honey, P & Mumford, A, (1982). The Manual of Learning Styles. Maidenhead, UK: Peter Honey Publications.

Mills, D. W. (2002). Applying what we know: Student learning styles. Retrieved May 22, 2011.:

Gardner, Howard (1983; 1993) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books. Second edition published in Britain by Fontana Press.

Related Reading:

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

AMPing Up Our Teaching to Increase Intrinsic Student Motivation

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, cognitive skills, how children learn, Innate abilities, learning environment, memory, motivating students, processing rate, sequencing, student growth, teacher effectiveness

HABLA Program Helps Disadvantaged Early Learners Lay Foundations for Success

• January 4, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

One of the key members of the Scientific Learning community is Dr. Virginia Mann. A consultant for Scientific Learning, Dr. Mann is also Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine and Director of a program called HABLA that serves disadvantaged 2- to 4-year old children and their parents.

HABLA, which stands for "Home-based Activities Building Language Acquisition," and is the Spanish imperative for "speak", is "a broad-spectrum Latino-focused educational outreach program" whose goal is to go into homes and help parents learn to better speak and interact with their children to build their language and school readiness skills.

Dr. Mann’s research is discovering that the key precursor skills for reading are those that we tend to take for granted, such as understanding and articulating language, naming things and letters, and having a sense of rhyme. All of these skills grow and work together as children develop the foundations that will allow them to succeed in kindergarten. The HABLA program leverages this understanding and, through regular home visits (42 each year for two years), helps parents introduce these skills—in their native language—through reading, speaking and music activities as they talk and play with their children.

The results thus far are promising:

• Children in the program perform significantly better than their counterparts in the community in terms of these key communications skills. They are above normal where their untreated peers lag behind.
• As participants learn these core literacy skills, they also learn counting, colors, shapes and more, building the basic concepts and organizational and sequencing skills they will need to succeed in other areas, such as math, science and more.
• The gains that HABLA establishes in Spanish form a scaffold for learning English in school. Not only do HABLA participants excel in Spanish, they also excel in learning English and continue to surpass untreated children in preschool and kindergarten classes.

To learn more about Dr. Mann and the HABLA program, visit www.socsci.uci.edu/habla/.

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, English Language Learners, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, at-risk, child reading development, cognitive skills, early learning, how children learn, language learning, oral language skills, sequencing

Learning Difficulties in Children

• December 28, 2010 by Terri Zezula

Today, you are nine years old and in the third grade. You enjoy playing on the monkey bars at recess and drawing pictures of your dog and your fish. You also like watermelon hard candies, mac and cheese, and, to your friends’ bewilderment, you have an affinity for tuna fish sandwiches, especially when your mom has mixed crunchy celery in with the tuna.

But also unlike your friends, you have often felt that school seems harder than it should be. For some inexplicable reason, you tend to make more mistakes than your classmates. You have a hard time grasping math concepts that they seem to get easily. You don’t remember geography facts as well as they do. And because of those difficulties, you feel different and separate from those around you. You feel incapable. You feel like a failure. And because of it, you feel angry, sad and alone.

While this is a simplistic snapshot of the thoughts typical of children with learning difficulties, such an exercise reminds us of two things: the magic of being young, and the loneliness and frustration of a youngster who lives with these challenges.

According to the Child Development Institute, six to ten percent of school-aged kids in the US are learning disabled. The causes of learning disabilities vary from genetics to nutrition to pre-birth and early childhood injury, and the challenges that children with learning difficulties experience tend to fall into five different areas: spoken language, written language, math, reasoning and memory. They may simply work slowly. They may have disorganized thinking. They may have difficulty in sequencing tasks. They may have poor impulse control. They many experience these difficulties in any number of combinations and groupings.

All children have problems. They all experience challenges with school and in social relationships. But when these problems begin to appear in combinations and clusters, or if they persist for long periods, we as educators must take a close look and ask ourselves whether the student’s challenges fall within normal ranges, or whether they should be evaluated in more detail.

If an evaluation comes back with an indication that a student has a learning difficulty, it is absolutely essential for educators and parents to team up and support that student in every way possible. If an IEP (individualized education plan) is in order, everyone needs to be informed and on board to support the student’s new path.

What exactly can we do for these children to boost their self-esteem? Writing for the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois, clinical psychologist Aoife Lyons offers a number of recommendations:

1. 1. Help children understand what the label means. This gives them a degree of ownership and control that they did not have before.
   2. Help them recognize their areas of strength as well as their areas of difficulty.
   3. Help them feel special and appreciated.
   4. Help them develop problem-solving and decision-making skills.

The good news is that, for the student who has experienced years of frustration and difficulty and loneliness, a positive diagnosis can be freeing. It gives them a clear explanation for why they have been experiencing all these feelings and difficulties. It allows them to once again be proud of who they are and see their differences in a new light. And, given the research, expertise and research based interventions available, it gives these students a clearer path forward to define--and achieve--their own success.

For further reading, check out:

1. 1. Self-Esteem and Learning Disabilities, Aofe Lyons, Ph.D.
   2. How Can Parents Foster Self-Esteem in Their Children? Dr. Robert Brooks, Ph.D.
   3. About Learning Disabilities, Child Development Institute

 

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning, Special Education

Tags: academic problems, academic success, cognitive skills, decision making, learning disabilities, math, memory, self-esteem, sequencing, struggling students

Where is Superman?

• December 7, 2010 by Terri Zezula

Why wait for Superman?  Students across the country are making great academic gains with great teaching, rich content and outstanding educators.

Take a look at Patterson High School in St Mary Parish, Louisiana where Kenny Hilliard could barely read at the level of a second grader when he reached high school. After a few weeks of doing the Fast ForWord program at school, he reads at grade level and he understands what he reads. Once at risk of dropping out of high school, now Kenny is headed for Louisiana State University on a football scholarship. Kenny had great teachers, a rich curriculum and a community that supported his academic and athletic goals. Yet Kenny, like many other students across the country, needed an intervention to help build his cognitive skills of memory, attention, processing and sequencing – the skills necessary for reading and learning.

“What changed is that Kenny did a computer program called Fast ForWord,” said Patterson High School Principal, Rachael Wilson. “He is such a talented football player, and his talents can carry him far, but recruiters are looking for kids who have talent and good grades. The first two questions recruiters ask me are ‘What kind of kid is he?’ and ‘What kind of grades does he make?’ Thanks to the progress Kenny made in Fast ForWord, he does not need to rely on athletic talent alone.”

Kenny says he was a little nervous at first, but he decided to give Fast ForWord a try. It is a program that is proven to accelerate learning and increase reading proficiency in students from kindergarten through high school. The software consists of brain fitness exercises and actually improves how the brain learns.

“It worked,” said Wilson. “Within weeks, Kenny began to see a change in his ability to focus. Over time, his reading comprehension improved dramatically and that’s helped him in all subjects, and he has the GPA and ACT scores required for enrollment into a four-year university.”

Today, Kenny continues to break records playing football for St. Mary Parish School District and is planning for his college courses at LSU. To learn more about Kenny and his amazing story, watch this video.

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, academic success, accelerate learning, ACT, at-risk, attention, below grade level, brain training, cognitive skills, high school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, Louisiana, memory, processing, reading intervention, sequencing, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education, waiting for Superman

Video Interview from Brain Summit in Seoul 2010

• July 30, 2010 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

I recently gave two lectures at the "Brain Summit in Seoul 2010" that focused on brain based approaches for learning English.

The conference was sponsored by Neuroscience Learning, a South Korean based learning company.

The following interview was conducted by the local Seoul newspaper and posted to their web site as part of their coverage of the Brain Summit in Seoul 2010.  It addresses these questions: 

• What are the implications of brain plasticity for children and adults in terms of language and learning?
• What are the best ways to improve cognitive skills that influence learning, such as memory, attention, processing, and sequencing?
• How can we balance the development of both sides of the brain?

 

Do you have questions about how the brain learns? Share your questions on our Scientific Learning Facebook page and we may answer them on our blog.

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Family Focus

Tags: attention, auditory processing, brain development, brain plasticity, cognitive skills, memory, processing, sequencing, video

Brain Research, Learning & Literacy: Webinar with Dr. Bill Jenkins

• May 28, 2010 by Norene Wiesen

In this pre-recorded webinar, "Addressing Literacy Through Neuroscience," Dr. Bill Jenkins discusses brain development and plasticity, takes us on a tour of the parts of the brain involved in language processing, and reviews some recent research findings on language impairment. 

You will learn about the strong correlation between auditory processing and language development, the importance of timing in our perception of speech, and more.

Be sure to take advantage of this unusual opportunity to learn from an expert about what happens in the brain when we learn language, how oral language skills influence learning, and what we can do to help children learn better.

Subscribe to this blog to get new blog posts right in your inbox and stay up to date on the science of learning!

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

Categories: Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: adaptivity, attention, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, crosstraining, early learning, frequency, how children learn, innovation, intensity, intervention, language learning, learning environment, literacy, memory, motivating students, processing, processing rate, reading intervention, sequencing, technology in education