Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching

by J. Richard Gentry, Gene P. Ouellette

Overview

The past two decades have brought giant leaps in our understanding of how the brain works. But these discoveries—and all their exciting implications—have yet to make their way into most classrooms.
 
In Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching, authors J. Richard Gentry and Gene Ouellette, bring their original, research-based framework of “brain words”—dictionaries in the brain where students store and automatically access sounds, spellings, and meaning. This book aims to fill the gap between the science of reading and classroom instruction by providing up-to-date knowledge about reading and neurological circuitry, including evidence that spelling is at the core of the reading brain.
 
Brain Words will show how children’s brains develop as they become readers and discover ways you can take concrete steps to promote this critical developmental passage, including:

• Incorporating tools to recognize what works, what doesn’t, and why
• Practical classroom activities for daily teaching and student assessment
• Insights about what brain research tells us about whole language and phonics-first movements
• Deepened understanding of dyslexia through the enhanced lens of brain science

With the insights and strategies of Brain Words, you can meet your students where they are and ensure they gain confidence as readers, spellers, and writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625312730
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/08/2019
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Author of many books and a renowned educational consultant, Richard Gentry has been an elementary classroom teacher, professor, and director of a university reading center. An internationally recognized researcher in reading, spelling, and the links between oral and written language, Gene Ouellette is professor and head of the Psychology Department at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada.

Table of Contents

Foreword Mark Weakland ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Chapter 1 Rethinking Reading Instruction as Building a Dictionary in the Brain 1

Chapter 2 How the Scientific Study of Reading Can Inform Teaching 13

Chapter 3 The Reading brow 33

Chapter 4 What Works, and What Doesn't a Critical Look at Current Teaching Practices 45

Chapter 5 Phase Observation for Early Spelling to Read 63

Chapter 6 Spell-to-Read Building Brain Words in Kindergarten and First Grade 87

Chapter 7 Building Brain Words in Second Through Sixth Grade 107

Chapter 8 Understanding and Supporting Children with Dyslexia in Light of Reading Science 123

References 141

Index 153

Editorial Reviews

In this second edition, the authors have written a practical and fascinating resource that helps connect the theory and research of the neurological reading circuitry to classroom practice. This book will find its way to the reading lists for many education preparation programs, and bookshelves of teachers of all backgrounds – Ouellette and Gentry unpack the complexities of the reading brain, the science of reading, and orthographic mapping in an engaging and readily applicable book. I'll certainly be passing it along to my network of literacy leaders.

—Molly Ness, teacher educator, author, consultant

From the Publisher