Reading Welcome back to our Connections blog. This edition is brought to you from the Oasis teams at Jumeirah and Arabian Ranches Primary and Secondary. We hope this, and future editions, will allow families across the JESS schools to have a progressive understanding of different aspects of learning. We are now in our second year of the blog, and in our tenth edition we will explore some of the barriers that may impact your child's journey as they learn to read.
Engage - Enable - Enrich
Reading and Neuroplasticity Although a small percentage of children may at some point be formally identified with a specific learning difficulty, such as Dyslexia (related to reading and spelling), many children may face at least a degree of challenge when learning to read. Believe it or not, humans were not designed to read - at our most primitive we were meant to hunt, gather and make campfires. 'Reading is an act of improvisation - - when you read, you're actually using parts of the brain that were designed to do other things. You are, as it were, patching together several different technologies' (to read more on this fascinating perspective follow the link). Reading literally changed history by altering the brain! Research into neuroplasticity (the ability to 'rewire' the brain) demonstrates the significant impact of reading; developing new pathways and an ultra-speed processing system that allow us to complete individual component tasks simultaneously allows us to decode and make sense of text... it is no surprise many of us have some challenges in this area! This video is a helpful 'introduction' to reading - it touches on some of the processes involved...there really is quite a lot to it! As adults we often forget just how tricky it is, once we are able to read automatically.