Myelination is a fatty sheath that wraps around the cells axons. The myelin helps the neuron conduct its charge. Some myelination happens during the prenatal months other myelination happens after the child is born. Fully myelinated humans usually happens until the age of five or later. A behavioral neurologist Norman Geschwind suggested that for most children myelination of the angular grus region was not fully developed until school age which is between five to seven years old. To put it simply, when a child is ready to read, they will read.
What happens when children do not repond to language? There could be plenty of reasons, but three were discussed in the book.
1. Poverty - Children that come from environments with litle or no literacy experiences at all are playing catch up from the point they set foot in their kindergarten classroom. it is a string of issues that happen. When words are unheard and unlearned, concepts are not learned, when syntactic are not encountered, less is kown about the relationship of events in a story. When story forms are not learned they cannot infer and predict. When cultural traditions and feelings of others are not experienced there is less understanding extended to others feelings.
2. Ear Infections - These can cause children to receive inconsistent acoustic information, which slows the process of gaining new words. How many infections and when the infections occurred will predict whether they will develop a full, high-quality scale of the phoneme representations that every language has. Infections left without care will affect a childs vocabulary development and phonologicl awareness which are necessary for reading.
3. Binlingual - Learning English the minute you start school is hard. Acquiring two languages is a difficult, difficult cognitive journey for children. They will have trouble with transfers and substitutions going back and forth from each language. However, a younger childs brain is excellent in a lot of ways to learn two languages!
Theresa,
ReplyDeleteThere was so much information in this chapter. I enjoy the way you summarized it. Who would have ever thought that ear infections was such a huge factor in reading difficulties?
Theresa, I am learning from your summaries. I agree about children reading when they are ready. It is merely a developmental process. I like what you said about Bilingual students. It is difficult for these students. It takes about 5 years for these students learn social and academic English. Bilingual students need to continue to learn and advance in their Home Language also. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteI find the development of the brain very interesting. I wonder at what point it no longer is improving and begins to decrease in ability.
ReplyDeleteI also find the brain fascinating, and was wondering if here in America we push literacy at too young of an age? I hear in Japan they do not teach reading and writing until they are seven, and the Japanese have a very low attrition rate. Does this correlate with myelination and brain development?
ReplyDeleteThat was a very insightful blog. I could really relate to the ear infection. When my son had his ear drum rupture I was nervous it would effect his hearing and development, but I think it happened late enough so no damage happened.
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