The value of reading to infants and toddlers has been well documented by recent research studies. Reading aloud with young children, talking about the pictures on a page or even paraphrasing words expands children’s imaginations and encourages language development. Reading aloud allows infants and young children to hear the sounds of our language combined in words and sentences.
Reading Support
Create a Reading Habit
Bedtime stories are a long-standing family tradition in my family. Growing up I was read to every night before bed, a chapter here, a story there, and now do the same for my two boys who are three and five. Each night after brushing their teeth, my boys pick a couple of books off the bookshelf and the three of us hunker down in one of the big beanbag chairs we have sitting on the floor.
Cool Literacy and Learning Links
Do we all have “attention deficits”? Or is there something else going on? Let’s try this little experiment, conceived by Simons and Chabris for their classic study on sustained inattentional blindness (1999).
Dyslexia: Failure is Not an Option
I wish I would have known what was going on when my eldest daughter, Madeline, started learning to read. She hated it. She loved all of her other subjects but reading was painful. She used to hide under the table to avoid it. The most frustrating thing about this was that the school kept telling me that Madeline was fine.
Interesting Literacy and Learning Links
Ted Talk: Nancy Kanwisher: A Neural Portrait of the Human Mind. Brain imaging pioneer Nancy Kanwisher, who uses fMRI scans to see activity in brain regions (often her own), shares what she and her colleagues have learned: The brain is made up of both highly specialized components and general-purpose “machinery.” Another surprise: There’s so much left to learn
Interesting Literacy and Learning Links Round-Up
Brain Teaser:
This one has caused a lot of debate! What do you think?
Take a new test aimed at the world’s English Language Learners. Wondering how your English skills stack up? Try the sample questions at the end of the article on testing ELL students and see how you would fare. Do you agree or disagree with the answers?
