Reading Comprehension | All Kinds of Minds

The team at Gallant Lab at UC Berkley has been looking at how the brain processes and maps words/subject/objects. (Their recently published paper in Neuron) The result is a fascinating look into the workings of the brain and yet more evidence that we have only barely begun to uncover the mysteries of the mind at work.

Check out the video below explaining the research and then head over to their site where you can play with the data yourself (they recommend using Chrome as your browser).

While we can’t make assumptions or jump to conclusions about what this means for working with students, the research does offer a springboard for a whole host of other questions. For example:

What role does background knowledge play in the shaping and writing the semantic map?
Do the semantic maps look different when focused on a single topic — such as vehicles, buildings, or plants?
How might this research inform methods of vocabulary instruction?
If the information were provided in different contexts or delivery methods (text or verbal rendering vs. movie clip rendering), are the areas of the brain that are oxygenated different? What implications might this have for classroom learning?

Such research illustrates, once again, how little we know, and how much more there is yet to learn. What we do know is this: students’ minds are complex and pliable. The experiences and environments we design and deliver help shape how they process, understand, and interact with the world. It is up to us to make those experiences worthwhile.

Want to know more? Read Ben Thomas’s piece, “Meaning and the Brain: How Your Brain Organizes Reality” at Scientific America.

Image: via Daily Mail via Gallant Labs

Reading comprehension is one of the most complex academic skills. Skilled readers construct meaning by synchronizing a bottom-up approach to reading (decoding words fluently and accurately) with a top-down approach (using prior knowledge and experience during reading).

Neurodevelopmental factors:

Reading comprehension involves a variety of neurodevelopmental functions, including attention, memory, language, and higher order cognition. In this post, we’re going to focus on the role of memory.

Memory:

While reading, we must hold important information and concepts in our minds. We must process words, sentences and paragraphs together in order to gain full meaning of what we’re reading. In addition, we must call up relevant information we already know. Memory is essential in helping us comprehend as we read, make associations between prior knowledge and new information, and remember that same information at a later time, such as during a test.

Here are some possible signs that a student is succeeding with the memory demands of reading:

The student …

Is able to pick out main ideas
Paraphrases/summarizes well
Holds onto the beginning of a story while reading the end
Keeps in mind the plot of a story while working on a single part of a paragraph
Easily learns new vocabulary words and definitions

Here are some possible signs that a student is struggling with the memory demands of reading:

The student …

Feels overwhelmed by the number of ideas presented
Retains only fragments of what was read
Can restate the gist of ideas, concepts, or directions, but not the details
Loses the meaning of a passage when looking up the definition of an unknown word

Strategies to help students struggling in this area:

Have students read in pairs, alternating between passages and then switching parts to re-read the text.
Have students take quick notes that describe the main idea of what they are reading. For example, have students stop to summarize what they’ve read after each paragraph. This approach will help ensure that students are recording important information in their minds.
Stress self-monitoring of comprehension while reading, by encouraging students to ask themselves: “Is this passage about what I thought it was going to be about?” “Have I linked what I just read to the parts I read earlier?,” etc.
Teach students how to create useful notes that reinforce understanding and help to trigger information recall at a later time. For example, teach students how to create concept maps based on their reading, as one technique for consolidating and organizing what they’ve read. Have students save their maps, and use them as study tools for upcoming tests.

We’d love to hear what strategies you’ve used to help students struggling with the memory demands of reading. Leave a comment below with your ideas!

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