[Reading-hall-of-fame] Has brain science changed how you teach about reading?

[Yetta Goodman]

Steven Strauss' work helps me understand how the brain works. Strauss is 
a neurologist and a linguist who works a lot with stroke patients. 
Strauss suggests that the brain researchers are finding evidence now to 
suggest that the cortex sends messages to the thalmus and it is not just 
the thalmus that sends messages to the cortex.  
Strauss did a workshop at the U of A for Tom Bever's class recently 
which Ken and I attended and he discussed a number of the the issues 
Dick raises below.
I think Ken sent a chapter of Steve's out on this list serve.  If you 
didn't get it, let Ken  (or me) know and he'll send it out again.   I 
also like Hawkin's book called On Intelligence who provides a lot of 
evidence about prediction and the brain. 

YEtta

richardallington at aol.com wrote:
> Here is the problem from my point of view (one informed by Strauss and 
> Hruby on the topic): We know almost nothing about how the brain works. 
> The "scans" that charlatans like Shaywitz use are so much scans but 
> snapshots. Anyone who has ever had an MRI has some idea of how this 
> brain evidence is collected. Get slid into a tube and have someone 
> flash words on the mirror you can see. Just when you take the brain 
> snapshot will tell you how your brain responded to a word flashed at 
> you in a tube. I don't know about any other members but reading words 
> flashed at me in a tube is not reading anyway and then to 
> construct/invent explanations of how the brain reads from these 
> snapshots is in itself enough evidence of naivete or stupidity but 
> that doesn't stop people from buying the books these fools write.
>
> Dick Allington
> University of Tennessee
> A209 Claxton
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tsticht at znet.com
> To: reading-hall-of-fame at nottingham.ac.uk
> Sent: Sat, Dec 5, 2009 6:32 pm
> Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Has brain science changed how you 
> teach about reading?
>
> Colleagues: In 2003, Sally Shawitz published Overcoming Dyslexia: A New
>
> and Complet Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level. Four
>
> years later, in 2007, Maryanne Wolf published Proust and the Squid: The
>
> Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Now, two years later, in 2009,
>
> Stanislas Dehaene has published Reading in the Brain: The Science and
>
> Evolution of a Human Invention.
>
>
>
> In all these books much is discussed about what areas of the brain are
>
> involved in various reading tasks as indicated by imaging techniques. This
>
> gives us a lot of information about how the brain functions during
>
> different reading tasks. All these books seem to point away from whole
>
> language and toward a phonemcs/phoncs approach to reading instruction,
>
> Shaywitz and Dehaene most directly.
>
>
>
> Dahaene says at the end of his book, "We now know that the whole language
>
> approach is inefficient: all children regardless of their socioeconomic
>
> background benefit from explicit and early taching of the corresondence
>
> between letters and speech sounds.This is a well-established fact,
>
> corroborated by a great many classroom experiments."
>
>
>
> How adout this? Is this a "well established fact" in your opinion?
>
>
>
> I'm wondering if any of you have drawn upon this new brain science
>
> information to change the way you teach about reading instruction to future
>
> or present teachers?
>
>
>
> Tom Sticht
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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