Thread by @EminaMcLean

@StanDehaene: Education repurposes or recycles the preorganised neural circuits present in infancy. New cultural acquisitions such as reading must find their neuronal niche. #DSFConf

Reading: listening with the eyes #DSFConf

Spoken language develops quickly and effortlessly in most children in the first few years of life. #DSFConf

Phonology, lexicon, syntax & semantics are developed pre school. Ar school this knowledge needs to be connected to written language via vision & developing knowledge of the alphabetic code. Alphabetic code (written letter strings) connects to phonology knowledge. #DSFConf

Reading gives acces, through writing, to all spoken language areas of the left hemisphere. Hence reading further develops language and strengthens those connections. #DSFConf

Reading skill development in turn improves spoken language areas. #DSFConf

How beautiful! Reading development in the first few years of school. #DSFConf

This perhaps helps us to understand why it’s harder to learn to read the longer illiteracy persists. #DSFConf

Learning to read: perhaps our most important and powerful invention #DSFConf

The code must be explicitly taught. Only AFTER that can children self-direct. #DSFConf

Reading is never really whole word. It’s always at least in part decomposition until a point of absolute automaticity. #DSFConf

If only those promoting “brain based learning” would take a look at proper and purposeful neuroimaging. Phonics versus whole word approaches. #DSFconf

Don’t forgot to teach language comprehension! Decoding should not be in opposition to comprehension. They facilitate each other. They are multiplicative. Train it first orally then in writing. Music to my #slp ears. #DSFconf

There is no substitute for handwriting. We need to keep teaching that. That doesn’t mean we don’t learn to type, but handwriting supports reading development and should precede learning to type. #DSFConf