Lesson 5

1. Language. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Language. After watching the video, answer the following questions:
1. Describe the research presented on the Changing Brains site related to language development.

Because of Sensitive Periods, young learners can learn more language and language skills than older learners. On the one hand, this applies to our first language: children need to hear voices and language in utero, and need to hear language used in the first months of life. Children need to be read to, and need to have conversations with adults where adults use long, complicated sentences with difficult vocabulary. While the child doesn’t understand those words or structures, the child will be better off with language skills later down the line.

This applies to language skills for bilingual students as well. Because the language centers have such a sensitive period at this age, research shows that it is actually good for students to speak one language at home and one language at school.

It would seem through this research that language is a kind of investment with interest: if you make early investments in language during sensitive periods, more returns will yield further down the line with a more eloquent, sophisticated identification with language.

2. List three activities that parents can do to help their child learn a first language.

1. Parents can read to their children.

2. Parents can have long conversation with their children involving detailed, complicated, long sentences.

3. Parents can answer questions with fully detailed answers, and can ask questions back that engage their child in conversation.

3. Summarize the latest research on learning a second language, including the 'Sensitive Period."

Because the language centers have such a sensitive period at this age, research shows that it is actually good for students to speak one language at home and one language at school. According to the video, America’s recent push to include bilingual instruction side by side with learning a first language is actually good for the young brains, because there is no evidence that children need to learn and understand their first language before they learn and understand a second language as well. Learning the two languages side by side allows the language centers to develop as early as possible.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Language.

4. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.

While I knew that sensitive periods were why we learn languages like Spanish and Latin in school, I had always grown up in school systems that taught me Spanish from middle school through college. I had no idea that modern research suggests higher retention in bilingual speaking abilities from an even lower age. It makes me wish I were growing up now, at least to the point where I could take Spanish from a younger age. From middle school on I must have taken about 7 years of Spanish collectively and all I remember is food words: I only remember food words, and that because I worked in two Mexican restaurants.

5. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

I have a few ESL learners and always felt bad that all I remembered from taking Spanish was food words. This new research relieves some of that self-imposed guilt: I love the idea that their reading comprehension is actually strengthened by their ability to speak one language in one environment and another language in a different environment.

I also love the idea of using big words and complex sentences verbally with my students. I already do this and have made sure students have a safe environment where they can stop and ask me questions if they don’t understand what I’ve said, but at least practicing these more complex words and meanings in front of them lends more of a possibility of their ability to listen and understand way beyond merely seeing a word in a book and thinking they know what the meaning is.

2. Reading. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Reading. After watching the video, answer the following questions:
1. Describe milestones in reading development.

According to the video, some of the major milestones in reading development include both reading under the guidance and instruction of a parent, but at a stage in sensitive periods when nursery rhymes especially make a difference. Once young learners move beyond the nursery rhyme stage, they can identify a relationship with words better.

Phonetics help with this, too; students who can learn to group words through phonetics are more adept readers further down the line.

Students who don’t read or experience nursery rhymes in sensitive periods end up behind left behind in education. Often these readers because dyslexic because they can’t see the similarities in words: they need to hear them.

2. What does research suggest about the activation areas in the brain for at-risk children vs. those that received pre-reading skill training?

Children who received pre-reading skill training had areas of the brain that lit up similar to where an adult’s brain does while learning (of course not an exact match, but well on their way). Children who were at-risk and had no pre-reading training with language and comprehension had brains that did not light up at all. It was like they weren’t even reading.

I’ve experienced this in my own small way through two high school students. They were traumatized in their youth by abusive parents who didn’t read to them or care for them in the way those boys deserved. One of them ended up in foster care, and another had to have a day go into prison to relieve the abuse. Both of these boys, now, struggle with reading comprehension and with abstract concepts because neither of them have the foggiest idea what nursery rhymes are and therefore missed that early identification with language, with words relating to one another, and rhyming.

3. What method was used to test these children?

These children were tested in MRIs with brain images compared next to the brain images of adults, and the brain images of their peers. These images, then, were compared next to images of their peers after a three month period.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Reading.

• Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.

Perhaps the most I got out of the lesson was the phonetic relationships and grouping words. I found the most interest in the point of data that argued that when students could learn to group words based on their phonetics and not solely on their meaning, these phonetically advanced children ended up being 30% ahead of the rest of the class in reading comprehension further down the line. This is fascinating to me because 30% is a huge jump, and I never would have thought that general reading comprehension was tied to how the words sound.

• Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

This information will help me in the classroom so that I make sure to stop and spend more time on the words themselves. While I teach high schoolers who likely have already built their reading skills before they come to me, I love the idea that I can continue to have them read out loud and stop them occasionally to make sure they understand what they’ve read in our text.

After watching the videos on Language and Reading, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

I don’t think I’ve ever realized quite to what degree the importance of speech patterns on language and reading. I am the kind of teacher who often repeats a phrase or a story because I want everyone to benefit from that knowledge. I have a set of adjectives (like everyone does) that becomes my slang, and I try very hard for those words I use to be words that aren’t common. I’ve always attributed this to my being a writer before I was a teacher, and I wanted to have a good vocabulary in my writing so that my prose didn’t seem so simplistic.

As a teacher, I realize that the repetition of those more difficult words are actually good for students because they can see those many uses verbally. In fact, one of my learning outcomes for them is to see that words can have many meanings, that I can use more complex words in several different situations and have them still understand its use. Part of this is context, but part of it is honestly the bad habit of my using the same set of words.

Because I have a few dyslexic learners, I see now that this is actually a good thing: dyslexic learners often don’t see the relationship between words on the page and words spoken, so hopefully I’ve smoothed this transition between using these words online in our learning management system and my saying them aloud. I also make my students read aloud. We play “pass the pug” which is very much like popcorn: I read for a while so that they can see what level they need to try and get to (speed, breathing, intonation, diction, etc.) and then I pass a pug Beanie Baby plushie to a student who, then, reads. When the student reads a minimum of one paragraph, he/she passes it to another student. Everyone gets a chance to read aloud. I now see just how valuable that lesson is.