| You are here: COREY AIST |
|
 |
Reading help and Brain Nutrition
Children develop abilities at their own developmental rate -
that we know. When it comes to reading, there are things we should do that will
help all students whether they are emergent readers or fluent reader.
1) Continue to model reading at
home. Newspapers, magazines, books – when students see the importance
their parents put on reading, they start to see it being something important as
well.
2) Continue to develop site word
vocabulary. The more students read, the more site words they develop. For
example, my 1st grade daughter knows how to read the word
“everybody” not because she sounds it out every time she sees it, but because
she memorized it as a graphic, a shape, a symbol. She sees the “ev” two “y’s”
and the tails of the “b” and “d” going up. She has memorized the entire shape
“everybody”. We can help our children build site words by showing them how
repeating look the same and therefore, read the same.
Come ask me for additional reading tips.
Brain talk for October
“The brain, which accounts for
2 percent of our body weight, sucks down roughly 20 percent of our daily
calories.”
That leads us to the question,
what sort of calories are we encouraging our students to put in there bodies?
Are we getting our calories from fruits, vegetables, and grains, or sodas,
chips, and cookies?
Check out more at:
http://www.livescience.com/health/090107-brain-food.html
If you are looking for
additional information on the brain, Eric Jensen is an author who has developed
books for teachers on “Brain Based learning”. He is not a neurologist by trade
but may as well be one by now. Jensen reads and reads and reads research
reports and books by neurologists and then breaks down the research into ideas
and concepts teachers can use in our classrooms. I have had the privilege of
taking several classes with Jensen over the years. They have been inspiring and
very thought provoking.
Two quotes from Eric Jensen’s
book “Brain Based Learning”
“Good
Nutrition promotes healthy functioning of neurons – the essential
building blocks of mental performance.”
And he makes similar arguments
to anthropologists:
“Semantic memory (facts and figures) may be a relatively
new requirement in the history of humankind. When did we start needing to know
addresses, presidents, city capitals, and math formulas?”
Brain talk
As a teacher,
I have been very interested with brain research and how the brain develops. It
is the organ in which I work directly - teaching, learning, memory, cognition,
processing, abstract thought, it’s all about the brain. My classroom is a world
of stimulating activities oriented towards brain development. The following
quote is by Lawernce M. Mestyanek Ph.D. and is shared in the spirit of
furthering our children’s intelligence both at school and at home.
Dr.
Mestyanek writes:
“Scientists estimate that the brain is made up of 100
billion cells. In the human, almost all brain cells are formed before
birth.
Dendrites are extensions from the cell. It is
through these extensions that information is delivered to and from the
cell. The point at which dendrites from one cell contact the dendrites
from another cell is where the miracle of information transfer (communication)
occurs.
Brain cells can grow as many as 1 billion dendrite
connections - a universe of touch points. The greater the number of
dendrites, the more information that can be processed.
Dendrites grow as a result of stimulation from and
interaction with the environment. With limited stimulation there is
limited growth. With no stimulation dendrites actually retreat and
disappear.
Research verifies that this ebb and flow of dendrite growth
occurs throughout life no matter what the age. Research also reveals that
the vast number of dendrite connections, forming what we call intelligence,
occur within the first years of life. During this "window of
opportunity", if we enrich a child's environment with a vast variety of
appropriate, yet challenging stimulation we offer a child the gift of
intelligence.”
