Hi, and welcome to the Smarter Literacy podcast from Ascend's smarter intervention.
Where our mission is to simplify effective literacy instruction to make teaching literacy easier and more accessible for everyone.
We are your host, Lindsey, and Corey.
And in today's quick tip episode, we're gonna be sharing one of our favorite strategies that will help your students understand the cognitive neuroscience behind reading and writing that will increase buy in and engagement throughout the instructional process.
Now, in our last episode, we introduced the 4 phases of literacy instruction.
We talked about familiarize, systematize, optimize, and generalize.
And so today, what we're going to do is we're gonna share a quick tip that will help support that familiarize phase of the journey, which if you've listened previously, you know is that first step of literacy instruction and it's sometimes the most overwhelming.
Our hope is that by the end of this episode, you're gonna feel confident implementing this quick strategy, and we're also gonna give you access to a small freebie that you can download that will help you at any point in your literacy journey.
Alright.
So let's get right into it.
You mentioned helping students understand the cognitive neuroscience behind reading and writing.
Can you break that down a bit? Yes.
So that can definitely feel overwhelming.
Right? The idea of cognitive neuroscience and especially talking with students about it, But it's really helpful because we know that there have been a number of F MRI studies that have looked at different areas of the brain that are responsible to help support reading and writing.
Mhmm.
So what we've got broke off area and Bernicke's area and Angular, gyrus, and all these things.
Right? We're not science teachers here, but we know that there are a number of different areas of the brain.
And we know that there are going to be more than just one area that's responsible to help support reading and writing.
Right.
So we've got a connection.
Right? And so we need students to understand that there is a connection here And the way that we can think about that from an educational perspective or from a literacy intervention or instructional perspective is we can break that down to what we call the literacy processing triangle.
So, the literacy processing triangle is essentially looking at phenology, so understanding the sound structure of the brain, orthography, understanding that visual or that print structure.
So recognizing that they're just visual symbols that we see that look like lines and circles and all kinds of things, but those are gonna represent letters.
And then we have the semantics piece, which is gonna be responsible for supporting comprehension, vocabulary, all of the important pieces to get us to the end goal of reading.
Now effective reading and writing requires that connection between phonology, orthography, and semantics, And it requires that it happens in less than half of a second, which is crazy.
So crazy.
Right? Like, we know that we can have all of those different areas, and we know that they're all working together.
But if it's not happening in less than half of a second, we're having a little bit of a breakdown.
So sometimes I'll tell students it can kind of be like when you're learning to tie your shoe where if you maybe know all of the pieces of like, I'm gonna make the loop and I'm gonna tie it around and I'm gonna do all of that, but it feels not automatic or it feels like, oh my gosh.
I can't get the pieces to quite come together.
Yeah.
You're almost like thinking step by step versus it just happening.
Exactly.
And so sometimes what that does is it leads it to be maybe not tight as tight as you want it to, or it feels like it's maybe gonna come apart a little bit.
And so that's what happens with students when they don't have that connection coming together in less than half of a second, it just feels non automatic.
And so oftentimes what they'll do is they'll just decide to leave their shoe untied Yeah.
Because it's just easier.
Right? Right.
Um, and so that's where we can get breakdowns.
For students.
And so our goal is to help students make those connections as quickly as possible and to help them recognize that if there is a little bit of a breakdown, it might just be because there's a breakdown in 1 or maybe more of these areas.
Mhmm.
And also that you know, in a classroom of students, you might have different students who have different strengths in different areas.
So the reason that we're gonna go through each of these different activities or pieces is because we wanna make sure that we're supporting all of our students.
Awesome.
So how does understanding that neural connection help the students? Yeah.
That's a great point.
So for our students, what we've recognized is once we can start to show them this connection and just literally put a triangle on a whiteboard, put a triangle in front of them as they're working through this and help them to see that connection.
They understand the why behind what they're doing.
And when they can understand the why behind what they're doing, all of a sudden, they're more bought in and engaged with the process as a whole.
We can say, you know, this particular activity is working on this part of the triangle, and this particular activity is working on this, and they can start to see, oh, this is how my brain works, and the brain's just cool.
Right? So, like It really is.
I don't know.
I think that can definitely help students quite a bit.
Absolutely.
I mean, I I really do think this becomes that light bulb moment for the kids, right, where it's like, oh, this makes sense now.
You know? And even not just even for the kids, but for educators, for people in general, right, So what can we do to incorporate this literacy processing triangle into our teaching? Absolutely.
So one of the things that we do, as I mentioned, is actually just show them the triangle.
We can actually put a triangle on the whiteboard on their desk and help them to see and we can even start to ask them, hey, this particular activity, which part of the triangle do you think that this is supporting? So we typically start off by explaining the brain.
Right? So what we would do is we would take a pick picture of the brain and show them, hey, these are the different areas that are responsible.
Here's how it connects on to that literacy processing triangle.
And here's each of the different things, um, that we are working on that would support each of the different areas of the triangle.
So, for example, if we were doing a phonological awareness task where we're asking students how many syllables or how many sounds, we could then show them, hey, this is that phonology piece or that sound structure of that literacy processing triangle.
Do you feel how that's building? We can even talk about, again, just the neural underpinnings and what that looks like, and they will get so excited to be like, okay, this task is really boring.
I actually really hate the phonological awareness and counting syllables and sounds or rhyming, but it's cool to know that I'm building this skill in the brain.
Or if we were doing, for example, a phonics task, we could show them, hey.
Right now, we're making a connection between the phonology, the sounds, and the visuals that we see.
And we can even show them, hey.
Like, I'm actually connecting these two pieces at the bottom of triangle.
And so that can be really cool for students.
And that's a really great way for them to just understand and see what that looks like.
So again, it just comes back to having that triangle out at all times and just asking them, hey, what do you think we're working on right now? Which is super fun.
And the more that you kinda tie it to, like, this is brain science.
They're like, oh, this is really important.
This is really, like you said, cool.
So I even remember, actually, when I was first introduced to the literacy processing triangle, and it kind of just It was a huge moment, but just to see it kind of, like, in an infographic and to be able to bring it into my class and with my kids and being like, guys, this is what your brain is doing.
This is what we are all doing when we're reading.
And they're like, what? You know? And it was just it was just such a cool moment for me and my students together to be like, this is why we're doing.
So like you said, even kind of those boring parts, if they're in the phonology piece and, like, I really hate this.
But they can see how it builds into that next piece.
And it's all connected together.
They start getting that and they start, you know, they stop kind of being like, why do we have to do this? Because they get it.
Right? Absolutely.
And I think the other thing there too is also helping students, especially if you're working in a smaller group or in a one on one setting, helping students to see that, hey, maybe you're not.
If you are having a a struggle in a certain area, you might start to recognize, like, Oh, man.
That visual print piece is hard for me.
Yeah.
But I'm really good at the semantics piece or that vocabulary, that comprehension piece.
And so just seeing that, I'm like, oh, what I noticed about your brain is that you do really well here and here, but maybe this other area is call for you, or you do really good with the visual print, but just hearing the sounds is tough for you.
And then they can see, oh, okay.
So it's really just this one little area, this one part that I'm trying to build, and that can be really helpful too.
And I think that's so important for our students because a lot of times they do just see themselves as just struggling all over, but when you can show them here's the strength and here's a little bit where the breakdown is happening, they also get, like, that almost like that confidence boost too.
Right? Like Absolutely.
Like, oh, I do have strengths.
Yep.
Absolutely.
So are there any tools we can use to incorporate this strategy? Yeah.
Absolutely.
So what we'll do is we'll link a copy of our literacy processing triangle and the brain image that we like to use in our show notes.
So you'll have access to that so you can utilize that Again, it doesn't need to be complicated.
So if you have the pictures, that's awesome, but it can honestly be as simple as just writing a triangle up on your board and saying, here's the sound, here's the print visual, and here's the semantics meaning, and just pointing that out.
So you can make it super simple, but we'll go ahead and link that in the show notes just in case that's helpful for you as you get started.
Awesome.
Well, we hope that this quick tip strategy helps and let us know how it goes for you guys.
In our upcoming episodes, we will be sharing more about the different parts of the literacy processing triangle and how we can be supporting our students with activities designed to develop each of those different neural processors in fun and engaging ways.
So stay tuned.
Oh, I can't wait.
I'm looking forward to it.
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