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Blog Post 6/16

The Digital Revolution and Adolescent Brain Evolution This article discusses how the advancement in technological devices and their novelty to adolescents affect brain function and its ability to adapt to the demands of the digital age.  Studies have shown adolescents spend upwards of 11.5 hours daily being exposed to media, with a portion of that being spent on more than one device.  With the amount of screen time continuing to increase, and as technology becomes more widely available, the impact this will have on the adolescent brain continues to be explored. The three behaviors associated with adolescents are increased sensation seeking, a move towards greater peer affiliation, and an increase in risk taking.  During this point in a human’s life, the brain is said to have changeability and can adapt to meet the demands of the environment.  Once puberty is reached the brain then grows through specialization.  This includes greater connectivity and ...
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My Reading Life

I learned to read in kindergarten, and I actually remember it rather well. I recall being dimly aware that we were in homogeneous reading groups and that mine was comprised of the best readers in the class; still, I was jealous of this kid Matt, who got to go to first grade during reading time. Always a striver, I wanted to know what I had to do to go to first grade for reading. . . turns out Matt had stayed back to work on his behavior, but he was a good reader. Eventually he skipped back up a grade. Meanwhile, I was in my reading circle in kindergarten using a basal reader featuring characters with names that seemed highly unusual to me, including "Rosa" and "Laddie" (the latter may have been the golden retriever who frolicked on the pages of that textbook). These  early memories of reading are definitely rooted in phonics instruction. I remember very little about how I was taught to comprehend --everything was decoding words and little else. We did seemingly ...
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My Reading Life-Blog Post 1

The fact that literacy is a fundamental cornerstone to a student’s academic success is extremely powerful.  I look at this from two different angles, my own reading experience and then my experience with my children.  As a young child I remember my teachers making reading fun. If we read multiple books, we would be rewarded with free pizza from Pizza Hut.     Now I see my children who are in kindergarten and first grade receive enthusiastic reader awards, which is accompanied by an award ceremony.  Chances are given to receive tickets to a baseball game for reading multiple books and completing a short book evaluation.  They have multiple opportunities to purchase books, which yields free books for their classroom.  Their teachers also make reading fun.  I have also noticed that at their current levels, they do utilize both whole language as well as phonics approaches to literacy.    The debate between the two differing ty...
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