SECRET STORIES

Research-Support Base

 Importance of ‘Spotlighting’ Phonemic-Awareness/ Connections

Throughout ‘Existing’ Reading and Writing Instruction

“Teaching children to manipulate phonemes using letters produced bigger effects than teaching without letters.”   National Reading Panel, Alphabetics, Part I, Phonemic Awareness Instruction, Reports to Sub-Groups, page 2-4.

“Phonemic awareness a precursor to phonics, is important to teach from the very beginning…there are high correlations found by others between preschooler’s phonological awareness and later reading skills.”  

The Alphabet Principal and Learning to Read, by Isabelle Y. Lieberman, Donald Shankweiler and Alvin M. Liberman.

Marilyn Jager Adams states: “low readiness pre-readers can hear the difference between phonemes as well as a high-readiness pre-reader can.” (Cronnell, B.A. 1970)  “The difference is that the low-readiness pre-readers are simply unprepared to think consciously about the sound structure of words in this way.”

Beginning to Read: Thinking and learning About Print.

 “Quite apart from anything the teacher does…the student, being human, is a pattern finder, and a pattern maker…”  David Bronson (1977).

 “It is wise for a teacher to take advantage of the natural inclination to seek patterns when teaching reading.”

Frank B. May, Reading as Communication (1990).

Use of Movement/ ‘Motor-Muscle-Memory’

for Immediate and ‘Non-Conscious’ Learner Skill-Retrieval

Children learn by touching and doing. Eric Jensen says this: “For younger students, learning has simply got to be hands on, experiential, and relevant for patterns to develop.”  Eric Jensen- Teaching with the Brain in Mind- 2001

(On Body Movements and Learning- “When the Body Moves, The Brain Remembers.”)

“Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence is the using of one’s mental ability to coordinate one’s own bodily movements. This intelligence challenges the popular belief that mental and physical activities are unrelated.”

Howard Gardner, Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983)

*Arnold Gesell says, “mind manifests itself in everything the body does.”

*Jean Piaget reinforced this when he pointed out that “the highest forms of logical intelligence can be traced back to the origins in the body.”

“It may seem ridiculous to say this, but children take their bodies with them wherever they go…As more parents and teachers begin to recognize the ignorance of the body in learning, we’re likely to see a sharp decline in the number of so-called disabled learners.”  Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., In Their Own Way.

 (*Piaget and Gesell’s comments are included in this text.)

James Asher states this, “My book ‘Brainswitching’ is all about how to use both sides of the brain for learning, problem solving, counseling, motivation and so on. I can offer you three ideas for persuading the ever-vigilant and blatantly suspicious gatekeeper which is the left brain to swing open a huge cathedral door on the right brain to let information gallop in unimpeded. The first strategy is body movement. The student’s body is our best ally for transmitting and receiving messages on the first exposure.”

James J. Asher, Brainswitching- A Skill for the 21st Century

“Caretakers communicate with the infant when spoken language is uttered to direct physical behavior. We have discovered that the language-body communication also works for students…When the instructor skillfully uses the target language to direct the student’s behavior, understanding of the utterance is transparent, often in only one exposure. Also, the understanding is achieved without stress and then retained for weeks, months, and even years.”

James J. Asher, Learning Another Language Through Actions

 “Contamination occurs when you have too many events or materials embedded in the same location (like months of learning in the same seat, in the same classroom in the same school)…the information is there, but it’s nearly useless. This often happens to students who really do know their material but lack the specific “hooks” or mental “file names” to retrieve all their learning…Forgetting occurs because such cues are rarely present when the recall is needed.”   Eric Jensen, Teaching with the Brain in Mind

Use of  Visual / Pictorial-Mnemonics

(Posters/ ‘Character-Story’ References)

Rohwer (1996) investigated various kinds of associative mnemonics in young children and found that the best connectives for remembering pairs of pictures or words were meaningful “actor-action object” relations…many other studies confirm that paired-associate learning in children is much improved when learners create or are provided with concrete, meaningful, interactive, and imaginable connections that link the stimulus and response terms in memory.

Davidson & Adams, 1970; Ehri & Rohwer, 1969; Lippman & Shanahan, 1973;

Rohwer & Levin, 1968; Rohwer, Lynch, Levin & Suzuki, 1967

Research also states, “The task of learning letter-sound associations is not an easy one for beginners. Difficulties arise from several sources. The number of associations to be mastered is considerable: more than 40 sounds for 52 visual figures, plus sounds for combinations of letters (i.e., digraphs). Many of the lowercase letters are visually similar and hard to discriminate. The phoneme sounds as well as the visual letter symbols are meaningless. Although the phonemes occur in normal speech, they are difficult to recognize when pronounced alone because their form in isolation is quite different from their form when blended with other sounds. Furthermore, the associations between letters and sounds are totally arbitrary, as there is nothing inherent in the visual symbol that suggests its name or sound…first graders had much trouble learning pairs of arbitrarily associated, meaningless terms.

Pictorial Mnemonics for Phonics, Linnea C. Ehri, Nancy D. Deffner, and Lee S. Wilce,  Journal of Educational Psychology, 1984, Vol. 76, No. 5, 880-893.

“The superiority of the integrated picture group over the disassociated picture group indicates that only one type of picture works, namely, one that links the shape of the letter with the way it sounds.”  

Ehri, Deffner & Wilce, Pictorial Mnemonics for Phonics,

Journal of Education Psychology (1984).

Instructional-Focus on

“EVERY LETTER, EVERY DAY,”

rather than ‘Individual’ Letter-Instruction

Taught in ‘Isolation’

(Specifically with Regard to Adherence

To Developmental-Appropriateness at ‘Pre-Primary’ Grade Levels)

 “The brain is fully ready for thinking through tactile learning as early as nine months. …And some researchers suggest that it is very sophisticated in its learning capacity.” (Greenfield 1995) Teaching with the Brain in Mind

“Children need a flood of information, a banquet, a feast,” says neuroscientist Martha Pierson of the Baylor College of Medicine (in Kotulak 1996).

Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington (Begley 1996) says that “…infants develop in their first year a perceptual map of responsive neurons in the auditory cortex. As a result, the brain dedicates special neurons to be receptive to those particular sounds [in their language]…the greater the early vocabulary children are exposed to, the better.”

Importance of Providing ALL learners wih

Meaning and Relevance and Memory-

Allowing Learner-Need to ‘Drive’

Phonemic-Pattern/ Skill-Instruction

‘IN-CONTEXT’ of Existing Daily Instruction and Activities

(As opposed to a traditional ‘pre-determined’ sequence or ‘pre-planned’ pace.)

“While the brain is quite adept at learning, the amount of information criss-crossing our lives today may be a hundred- or thousand-fold compared to what it was just 50 years ago. This virtual avalanche of data can cause us to simply ‘shut off’ as a coping mechanism. In schools, more classes, more content, and more information to learn can have a negative effect on students’ stress from information overload. One solution is to ensure the quality of information, not the quantity. We can do this by purposely orchestrating meaning. A delightful fringe benefit is that the exploration for meaning can be very intrinsically motivating.”                                    Charlene A. Wrighton, 1984.

“When something is meaningful during reading, there’s usually more activity (as measured by glucose consumption) in the left frontal, temporal, or parietal lobe,”

says University of Oregon’s Michael Posner.

Evidence suggests these factors are likely: relevance, emotions, and context and pattern making. Why and how do emotions engage meaning?  Neurobiologist James McGaugh at the University of California at Irvine says that intense emotions trigger the release of the chemicals, adrenaline, nor epinephrine, and vasopressin. He adds, “[T]hey signal the brain, ‘this is important – keep this’”  (Hooper and Teresi 1986.)

“Semantic [linguistic] learning is inaccessible because the original learning was…too complex, lacked relevance, or sufficient sensory stimulation, or was too “contaminated” with other learning. Our semantic memory lives in the world of words; it’s activated by association, similarities, or contrasts. The capacity limitations are more strongly influenced by the strength of associations made than the sheer quantity of items. We remember best in chunks. Our ‘working’ memory is limited by chunks and is usually - good for less than 20 seconds unless rehearsed, reviewed or reactivated. Unfortunately, this type of memory requires strong intrinsic motivation. This [type of learning] is often called ‘book learning.’ Student frustration and failure increases accordingly each year…at worst, they create discouraged learners who feel unnecessarily incompetent.”  Eric Jensen, Teaching with the Brain in Mind.

Use of ‘Cooperative-Learning’

(Story‘re-tells’ with corresponding letter-pattern ‘character dramatizations’ for the purpose of establishing meaningful, personal-connections for learners, to what would otherwise be ‘isolated, abstract and inherently meaningless skills’) Howard Gardner states in his Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983), “Interpersonal relationships are activated by personal encounters in which such things as communication, working together with others for a common goal, and noticing distinctions among persons are necessary and important.” Gardner also states, “When people work together in situations of positive independence, achievement levels are higher, self-esteem and esteem of others is raised, motivation and enjoyment of the task is increased and creative/higher order thinking processes naturally occur.” “Humans are not born instinctively knowing how to cooperate with others. Therefore, interpersonal and group skills must be explicitly taught and opportunities must be given to practice cooperation.”

Use of ‘Auditory-Manipulations’/‘Musical Brain-Teasers’

To Both Increase and Accelerate Learner-Skill ‘Automaticity’

‘Right and Left’ Hemispheric-Learning-

“The left side of the brain processes rapid auditory information faster than the right. The skill is critical in separating the sounds of speech into distinct units for comprehension. The left hemisphere, usually responsible for language development, develops slower in the male brain. Thus, males usually develop more language problems than females.” Teaching with the Brain in Mind, by Eric Jensen.

(The SECRET STORIES provide male students with  a ‘logical, concrete, right hemispheric-approach’ to reading, writing, and spelling, so as to allow young, male students to acquire critical literacy-skills at a rate that is equal to that of their female counterparts.)

‘Tapping Into ‘Body-Intelligence’

for Accessibility and Acceleration of Learner-Skill Acquisition

(Excerpts from ‘Learning in Their Own Way’ by Thomas Armstrong, PhD)

Intelligence Begins in the Body

Child development pioneer Arnold Gesell frequently emphasized that  “mind manifests itself in everything the body does.” Jean Piaget reinforced this when he pointed out that the highest forms of logical intelligence can be traced back to their origins in the body. From the first days of life an infant’s body is actively exploring the world and building a pre-conceptual framework that serves as the root of all later thought. For example, an infant’s ability to grasp an object that has been moved away from his demonstrates the capacity to act consistently toward an object despite its changed appearance—in this case, its different location in space. This early capability prepares the way for a later development in middle childhood when children can internally represent objects from a variety of perspectives. They’re able to mentally place themselves in the shoes of another person and imagine how an object looks from that point of view. This ability is fundamental to many higher mathematical processes. In some individuals, thinking retains certain visceral characteristics even at the highest abstract levels. Albert Einstein, for example, spoke of his own thinking process as involving elements “of visual and some of muscular type.” William James, considered by many the dean of American psychology, commented on a particular tactile quality to his thought: “I am myself a very poor visualizer, and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.” James’s “mental fingers” may go back to experiences he had as a young child tracing puzzle pieces or alphabet blocks. In any case, he seemed to have retained this early trait and used it to help him in his creative work (he wrote some of the world’s greatest books on modern psychology). Before humans communicated their ideas through abstract symbols, they used physical movements and gestures. For thousands of years, humanity passed on knowledge from one generation to another through a mixture of chanting, singing, dancing, and drama. Even with the development of written language, this unity of mind and body remained intact for hundreds of years. Dom Jean Leclercq, a Catholic scholar, suggested that monks in the Middle Ages saw reading as a physical activity. He observed that the Latin words legere and lectio (which, in part, translate as “to read”) have a kinesthetic meaning: “When legere and lectio are used without further explanation, they mean an activity that, like chant and writing, requires the participation of the whole body and the whole mind. Doctors of ancient times used to recommend reading to their patients as a physical exercise on an equal level with walking, running or ball playing.” How different this is from our idea of reading today as a mental task based on the “distance senses” of seeing and hearing.

Putting the Body Back into Learning

We seem to have lost this connection between learning and the body in our society. We expect children to sit still in their seats and read, write, or compute silently. Parents and teachers often tell students who fidget while they work to settle down. Sometimes educators refer these kids for testing

and they’re labeled hyperactive or learning disabled. Sub-vocalizers—or students whose throat muscles quietly work to pronounce the words they read—go to reading specialists who try to help them eliminate this “annoying habit.” It’s seldom understood that these children could be practicing on some deeper level an oral tradition going back thousands of years. Children who move, speak, and fidget while they work may need to study in this physical way in order to make any meaningful contact with the lifeless symbols in front of them.

Using the Body to Teach Basic Skills

The general picture we get of children in the act of school learning is of them sitting at desks looking up at the blackboard or looking down at their worksheets or textbooks. In this scenario, muscular movement is pretty much restricted to the neck, eye, and hand muscles. For learning to really sink in, however, it also needs to involve complex movements in the large muscles of the arms, legs, and torso.

The Body as an Adjunct to Learning

There are many other ways of bringing the body into learning. At school, simulation, role play, field trips, improvisation, and hands-on activities provide the basis for teaching virtually any subject. One biology teacher had his students learn the rudiments of molecular bonding by assigning to them the roles of atoms. The hydrogen atom could only bond to other student-atoms with one hand, the oxygen atom with two hands. In this way, they learned how different compounds and molecules form. Another teacher taught American history by having students spontaneously act out the roles of newly arrived immigrants from England to colonial America. At home, you don’t have to look far to find areas where kinesthetic learning takes place. Simple chores such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and helping to fix things around the house develop body-knowing. So do hobbies including carpentry, weaving, knitting, nature study, art activities, and sports of all kinds. In the same way dance, massage, wrestling, skateboarding, karate, juggling, and model-building develop a number of important physical abilities including eye/hand coordination, left-right orientation, balance, reflexes, body awareness, manual dexterity, and all those other psycho-physical skills so important to academic learning. The point is that these activities are worthwhile in and of themselves, and not simply as exercises to “remediate learning dysfunction” or “develop your child’s intelligence.” Take care not to use them in this way. Children often resent having adults foist these special “learning activities” on them, and tend to learn best when engaged in activities for their own sake. It may seem ridiculous to say this, but children take their bodies with them wherever they go, whereas they’re more likely to leave their workbooks and folders behind. As more parents and teachers begin to recognize the importance of the body in learning, we’re likely to see a sharp decline in the number of so-called disabled learners and a corresponding increase in real learning capacity and enjoyment among millions of children nationwide. This is also true for the role of the imagination in learning. The next chapter explores the importance of fantasy and “visual thinking” in the lives of children.