How the brain learns to read

Our brain is an organ of the body, just like the heart and lungs. The brain works at its own speed, as do your heart and lungs. Our brains store information in long-term memory. The storage capacity of the long-term memory is unlimited. 

Well-learned items can be called to the surface of our mind in fractions of 1 /1000 bits of one second. The brain loves retrieving information at lightning speed.

For example, your birth date can be instantaneously brought to the surface of your mind. The surface asks for information, like your birth date > long-term memory searches, retrieves it, hooks it into the surface in a looping process that looks like this: search > retrieve > hook > search > retrieve > hook > endlessly repeating.

The surface of your mind is called your short-term working memory.  The surface is very limited, easily distracted. In addition, it must constantly monitor what is going on around you, do you need to go to the bathroom, are you under stress, are you running out of time,  are you hungry, etc. The surface begins to vanish in about 1 and ½ seconds.  See why you must repeat a new phone number until you use it, or get a pencil to write it?  

1 ½ seconds is a large amount of brain time since the brain likes to operate at speeds of 1 / 1000 bits of one second.

And, amazingly, while reading, unbeknownst to us, our eyes are constantly scanning the upcoming letters so that the brain can get a jump on search > retrieve > hook. Your brain constantly tries to anticipate the letters, sounds, words, and meanings which are going to be needed for smooth brain operation.

You want your child to have a short term working memory with a happy endless loop of search > retrieve > hook.  My blog gives you 160 lessons but if you want one of my books, I use eBay as my website, people trust it. Search Instant Reading Help all my books will pop up for you.

The reason for my teaching methods: when the short-term working memory is waiting too long because a letter, or sight word, or complex vowel ending like cious is not well stored in long term memory – a bad cascade starts for your child.  When your child is slow or struggling with reading, it is not going to get better until someone shows your child these exact lessons.

The National Institute of Health reports that only 6 out of 50 children will catch up from a slow start. Most children who fall behind are truly smart. They simply missed learning these crucial lessons.  This is a spectacular tragedy because it is so easily avoidable.

Have a great day, Mary Maisner