Full Spectrum . . .

Education & Advocacy

The Neuroscience of Reading

Lauren N. Graniela

Dr. Maria Montessori studied natural sciences, pediatrics, psychiatry,

philosophy (today psychology), anthropology and educational philosophy.

Through this compilation of knowledge she forged critical, researched

pedagogical practice. This was in an age where a lot of the science we

understand today was still growing. Today’s educators can be even more

informed, practiced, and empowered because what we know to be true

through Dr. Montessori’s practice and extensive observations can be supported

through emerging neurosciences.

The neuroscientific approach to reading instruction is explained in the

books Integrative RTI With Cognitive Neuropsychology: A Scientific Approach to

Reading, by Steven G. Feifer, D.Ed. & Douglas A Della Toffalo, Ph.D and How the

Brain Learns to Read, 2nd Edition by David A. Sousa.

Educational neurosciences can help tap into the problems children have

with reading, and find ways to better aide them. Brain imaging and testing can

look at brain structure and brain function. Critical findings include the following:

novice readers and readers with reading difficulties use different neural

pathways than skilled readers; dyslexia is treatable even though it is a brain

disorder because through practice the child can rewire their cerebral areas;

through tests we know it is possible to better identify those children at risk for

reading difficulties.

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For an educator to use this information, one needs to delve into

understanding how the brain learns what it does (the absorbent mind), how the

brain remembers (exercises), and then how the educator must practice

(following the child). With this an educator can better penetrate how and why

Montessori education works.

THE ABSORBENT MIND EXPLAINED BY NEUROSCIENCES

What in a traditional education system would be called instruction, the

Montessori environment refers to as exercises. According to Montessori since the

child comes packed and coded with the ability to perceive the stimulus of the

world and absorb it, the educator's role is not to educate the child, but guide

the child for “sharpening of the senses” through exercises with developmentally

appropriate material for exploration through the senses (Montessori, 1967).

Montessori exercises are “Materialized Abstractions” meaning the children’s

practice in the environment uses tangible stimulus to channel abstract concepts

of the world into concrete form for the child (Montessori, 1967). It is in these ways

the child truly gains intelligence.

Part 1 - Speaking

In order to understand the how the child understands to read, we must

begin at the beginning, as Dr. Montessori did. Before a child can read, they first

begin to speak. Neuroscientific research shows that spoken language comes so

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easily to the young child because we are genetically predisposed to acquire

language so rapidly at a specific developmental level. This specific

developmental period in the child’s life is when the child experiences what Dr.

Montessori called the “absorbent mind”. She found this key period of

absorbency is from birth to six years of age (Montessori, 1967). In this period the

child absorbs all stimuli they potentially can from the environment around them,

without direct aid from adults.

Sousa writes “the ability to acquire spoken language is encoded in our

genes…[this] explains why normal young children respond to and acquire

spoken language quickly” (Sousa 2014). Though there is still speculation of when

the language acquisition window closes, collective research points out that

certain brain areas of language diminish for many people during adolescence,

so relearning proper or new language rules of the mother tongue, or new rules

of a language other than a person’s mother tongue, becomes a bit more

difficult.

Sousa writes how the brain does this is the brain detects language sound

from all the background noise of the world (stimulus). This is called acoustic

analysis, the decoding of phonemes (sound patterns), translating them into

code. At the age of about 6 months a baby's brain begins developing

phonemic awareness. Baby babbling consists of all the phonemes humans can

produce (again, genetic predisposition). Their neural pathways are honing on

the language the baby is surrounded by (stimulus), eventually making it more

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difficult to produce sounds other than their mother tongue. At 8 months their

mental lexicon develops to about 7 to 10 words a day. They can distinguish

phonemes of their native language, even if they don't necessarily know what

they mean (absorbent mind).

Dr. Montessori writes about the strength of the child's brain to absorb the

mother tongue in The Discovery of the Child. She explains how modeling

precision in speech from the beginning of language development benefits not

only the speech aspect of the child’s language, but also the writing and

reading aspects of the child’s language. This is because the child hears the rules

of grammar and syntax in their mother tongue; the rules already become

embedded without formal teaching. Montessori observed that although

children naturally learn to speak on their own from environmental stimulus,

children’s grammar is improved if adults (stimulus) model perfect speech from

the start. Sousa writes:

“By the age of 3 years, over 90 percent of sentences uttered are

grammatically correct because the child has constructed a syntactic
network that stores perceived rules of grammar...the more children are
exposed to spoken language in the early years, the more quickly they can
discriminate between phonemes, recognizing word boundaries, and
detect the emerging rules of grammar that result in meaning.” (Sousa,
2014).

The infant's cognitive processing and language development is dependent on

multiple factors. A vocabulary and communication rich environment allows the

child's mind to absorb a richer vocabulary, which includes face-to-face cues.

The intonation and precise speech that many parents often adapt “parentese”,

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is beneficial for children to not only hear but see the mouth and tongue in

action (Sousa, 2014). With screen time and other audio devices, children don’t

really receive the simultaneous face-to-face, precise, slowed intonation. Screen

time is believed to have a negative effect on young minds.

The breakdown as observed by Montessori and researched by

neuroscientist is that toddlers acquire the bulk of their language from their initial

environment. Meaning if they are receiving rich and frequent face-to-face,

adult-to-toddler conversations these children experience a higher mental

lexicon. If they are experiencing vocabulary and conversation poor

environments the first 3 years of life, simply the lack of stimulus these children

experience creates a significant gap from their inherent full potential of the

language acquisition mechanisms in their brains.

Part 2 - Reading

The brain does not have a natural ability to read however. Though we

have evolved to have speech processes encoded into our neural pathways—

and with practice we build them—reading is fairly new in human history, so the

brain hasn’t developed specialized language acquisition mechanisms for

reading. The amazing thing is the plasticity of our neural networks. With practice

our brain makes adjustments to established brain areas to compensate for the

natural lack of reading areas in our brains. Sousa described this as cultural

learning, the brain adapting to the environment (the absorbent mind). This is

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what neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene calls “neuronal recycling” which is

“retraining brain areas that performed an ancient function in our evolutionary

past to carry out a new more useful function in our present culture” (Sousa 2014).

This recycling doesn't change the brain regions being used, but “works around

them” (Sousa, 2014).

The brain uses the Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area as well as parts in the

left hemisphere to process language. Learning spoken language precedes and

correlates to learning written language. How the brain learns to read, this

neuronal recycling, is done also in the left hemisphere, in what researchers

named the “visual word form area (VWFA)” (Sousa, 2014). Research has

identified 3 stages of learning to read:

1. pictorial stage - the brain takes mental pictures of words based on

the shape of their letters
2. phonological stage - the brain decodes graphemes (letters) into
phonemes (sounds).
3. orthographic stage - the brain recognizes words quickly and
accurately

Research also shows that “[a]ll of these phases activate several different brain

circuits, which over time and with practice, eventually converge in a specialized

area of the left hemisphere.” (Sousa, 2014).

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EXERCISES EXPLAINED BY NEUROSCIENCES

Sousa’s text informs that in order to learn something, one has to build

memory, and one builds memory through practice. The transformation of the

child’s brain from non-reader, to novice reader, to skilled reader is; the neural

pathways go from connections more linear and bilateral hemispherically, into

more convoluted, parallel pathways, congregating more to 1 hemisphere, the

left. The child’s memory builds.

Montessori’s understanding of memory is that “The intellect builds up its

store of practical ideas through contact with, and exploration of, its

environment” (Montessori, 1995). Through repetitive, differentiated exerciseone

can strengthen the memory,

Part 1 - Memory through Exercise

Researchers have concluded that we best memorize things in 3 different

stages. with each stage increasing in length of time and/or information:

1. Immediate memory temporarily stores consciously or subconsciously

sensory information for some seconds.
2. Working memory temporarily stores memory consciously for
processing, and only a few items at a time, but increases with
development/age, for minutes, hours or days.
3. Long-term memory permanently stores information for years.

Working memory in young people has a limited memory capacity and focus

time. The brain memorizes best by reworking the same information in different

way.

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During beginning reading the child’s brain takes snapshots of words,

processing pictures.

The age of 6-7 the beginning reader's brain responds more actively to printed

word than. The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) visually analyses the word form

and shape. With continued practice and exposure the brain attaches meaning

to the whole word form, which is added in the antecedent development of

phonemic awareness. This increases the reader’s “reading speed and

comprehension”, increasing their “lexical (direct) route.

So when the reader approaches a word, if it is in their stored memory the

word will more easily be recalled. With new words the brain will take the

“phonological (indirect) route”. This is a longer process used by beginning

readers (and we find also with exceptional children, who have for example

dyslexia), but as the neural pathways are developed, with practice and

exposure they will more easily rely on the more direct lexical routes. “The more

frequently these pathways are activated, the faster and more consolidated

they become... [meaning] reading improves with practice”(Sousa, 2014).

Part 2 - Materialized Abstraction

Montessori materials were designed to help strengthen the child’s memory

through developing speech and vocabulary through stimulus practice. How a

child develops in their speaking and the vocabulary they acquire before

reading impacts their success in reading comprehension. Research shows:

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“phonological awareness, phonological memory, visual-spatial skills (all

part of decoding) are stronger predictors of success with reading
comprehension than intelligence during the stages of early
reading...reading comprehension is very closely related to spoken
language comprehension…[reflecting a] degree of coordination
between the brain's language processing and visual recognition systems”.
(Sousa, 2014)

The manipulative Montessori materials build phonological awareness,

phonological memory, and visual-spatial skills while simultaneously integrating

rich vocabulary. Children experiencing reading comprehension difficulties may

be experiencing discrepancies of the spoken language in their environment

and the written language they are meant to read. This is where the role of the

guide, as observed by Montessori, provides opportunities to stimulate the senses,

to help build the child’s language acquisition skills of spoken and written

language.

Part 3 - Phonetic & Orthographic Exercises

During the absorbent period the child's brain is developing neural

pathways for language. It is the brain's visual recognition system that connects

to sound to establish neural pathways for the “abstract visual symbols” that we

call writing (Sousa, 2014).

“Early instruction in reading, especially in letter-sound association,

strengthens phonological awareness and helps in the development of the
more sophisticated phonemic awareness...Beginning readers must learn
alphabetic code before they can decode written words...The brain does
not yet know the system or logic of writing, but it begins to recognize
patterns based on visual characteristics, such as curvature, orientation,
and shape...Learning the names of the letters...is an important, though not
essential step in learning to read” (Sousa, 2014)

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The Montessori language exercise materials correlate to the suggestions of

Sousa’s researched text.

Sousa even explicitly suggests using a moveable alphabet, saying that

instruction of phonemic awareness first helps the child map letters for letter-to-

sound relationship (phonemes), and spelling and is “most effective when

children are taught to manipulate phonemes while handling cutouts of the

letters of the alphabet that represent those phonemes” (Sousa, 2014). He

explains how the visual letter/word recognition can be established before

formal reading instruction, as is the practice in Montessori education. Sousa

states that in order to read effectively a child must hear and see—stimulus of

“Visual and Auditory Distinctions” (Montessori, 1967)—language at their pictorial,

phonological, and orthographic stages, practice, build and strengthen neural

pathways of their schema* for decoding.

This follows the sequence of Montessori language exercises in what she

observed as effective instruction through multi-sensory, manipulative, repeated

practice with the language materials: Sandpaper Letters, the Sand Tray, the

Initial Sound Board, the Movable Alphabet, the Alphabet Cabinet, Picture Letter

Cards, and the Ladder.

*
By schema, I refer to the pedagogical theory of a child’s background knowledge, defined as: “an abstract concept
proposed by J. Piaget to refer to our, well, abstract concepts. Schemas (or schemata) are units of understanding that
can be hierarchically categorized as well as webbed into complex relationships with one another.” (East Tennessee
State University https://www.etsu.edu/fsi/learning/schematheory.aspx)

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Part 4 - Vocabulary Exercises

Montessori observed “the mechanisms of oral expression must antecede

the higher mental activities which make use of them” (Montessori, 1967).

According to research in Sousa’s text, a child's vocabulary or mental lexicon

that they acquire before learning to read correlates to their success in reading.

The best way to do this is to move from the more concrete (basic words they

already know) to the more abstract (learning nomenclature). Sousa outlines

how to prepare the environment to help stimulate just this:

“How quickly a child understands words may be closely related to

whether the word can generate a clear mental image…the brain may
hold two separate stores for semantics (meaning), one for a verbal-based
information and the other for image-based information...Teachers should
use concrete images when presenting an abstract concept...Imagery is a
powerful memory device...What we are doing here is strengthening the
connections between the brain’s visual recognition and language
processing systems” (Sousa, 2014).

The Montessori language materials such as Matching Objects, and 3 Part Cards

help to build this powerful imagery. These words range from basic objects to

more specialized words, adding richness to the child’s vocabulary.

Using Classified Vocabulary and Classified Nomenclature further stimulate

memory in the Montessori environment. Sousa’s text supports this grouping of

words to effective vocabulary acquisition exercises: “mental lexicon is organized

according to meaningful relationships between words...because of the brain’s

apparent affinity for storing related words in the same cerebral region, teachers

may want to purposefully group related words into lessons aimed at acquiring

new vocabulary” (Sousa, 2014).

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These images are essential to language and reading comprehension.

Sousa writes that “Memory networks are greatly influenced by an individual's

culture...Memory networks are not just stored memories, but also images. Our

visual lexicon contains thousands of images from our past encounters...Recalling

an image or a memory strengthens the neural pathways containing the

elements of that image, thereby making it easier to recall and more intense”

(Sousa, 2014).

Through use of concrete materials we build image memories. Through speech,

vocabulary, reading and writing, we build comprehension. With comprehension

we can more intelligently engage in life.

FOLLOWING THE CHILD EXPLAINED BY NEUROSCIENCES

So what happens, if after the guide establishes and practices richness in

environment, the child is not engaging in life the way we expect? What if the

child is not making developmental milestones? Following the child means to

practice based the child’s needs. Through observation and assessment, we

create an environment that allows for every child to flourish based on their

individual abilities and needs. But sometimes the child needs more. When the

child is showing you they need something, will you follow their lead on the path

of finding out the why or the what? Will you reassess your practices as their

guide; to ensure you are doing all you know to be effective? Will you cast the

child out of your environment because they aren’t normalized? Or will you

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remember that it is their environment, and we the guide are there to help

support the child, whatever the need?

Feifer and Toffalo support Response to Intervention (RTI) practice. This is

not a new practice in the traditional education system. What is new is the

federal mandate of the practice. The 2004 Individuals with Disabilities

Education (IDEA) Act is mandate attempting to hold the education system

accountable:

“RTI provides a framework for instruction and progress monitoring that

prioritizes sound instructional practices for all students, not just those with
disabilities. RTI incorporates the well-established benefits of pre-referall
intervention strategies meant to ensure that, when poor student progress
is observed, it is addressed as early as possible and through the least
intrusive means possible” (Feifer & Toffalo, 2007).

What more least intrusive a practice is there than to have ALL children from birth

develop in a children’s house?

We cannot uphold the “wait-to-fail” policy where educators don’t notice,

and agencies won’t fund until it’s too late (Feifer & Toffalo, 2007). If they do get

funding in which the average age is about 9 years old. Programs like the

constant pull-out program are highly disruptive to the child. How they can they

become normalized to their environment or develop the rest of their

intelligences if all the time is being carted back and forth from one specialist to

the next? No, we must have these services and specialist embedded in the

child’s environment, in every school, so when they need service it’s already

there.

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The nature of the Montessori material offers tangibility from abstraction in

repeated, differentiated ways, the child has time and variety always available.

Through Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Édouard Séguin Montessori materials

were made for the exceptional child already. Best practices aren’t held back

until an issue for the child arises, best practices are always available, because

each child is given the same opportunity for exploration. A key best practice is

the Montessori guides continual observations. It is through observations that the

guide addresses issues early, before a window of development opportunity

closes.

Much of which are advised as interventions or modifications are already

practiced with all children in the Montessori environment. Sousa informs that

strategic instruction following the individual reader, providing practice, and

modeling, are effective strategies for effective reading skills (phonemic

awareness, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). The materials

aid in the neural plasticity. Exercise with the materials engages stimulus to

strengthen and build neural pathways for memories of skills. So even a child

cannot change with what they are born with, they can work around this, find

alternate routes.

Research shows that with intervention a child with dyslexia can use skills

that help rewire the dyslexic brain. Systemic explicit training help build normal

neural pathways or reading or reactivate equate used by dyslexic brains to

compensate. Advice to be given to struggling readers and students with

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dyslexia and their parents are the following patients, everyone is different, time,

dedication, system explicit instruction

We know through this neuroscientific research that the early years are key

in brain formation. What I personally from the information the authors have

presented is that we must push for educational reform, mandating true

Montessori education to all childcare and school curriculum. The sooner any

child, but especially the exceptional child, is put into a rich environment, the

sooner they can overcome any disadvantages they were born with. It gets

harder to correct reading or other learning difficulties the older a child gets.

So when you find a child who is exceptional, you can act. Some children

emerge naturally genetically predisposed or are hampered by cognitive or

physical deficiencies. We of course don’t assume or rely on the crutch that

learning disability labels them. We simply follow the child.

They have the ability; we just have to provide the environment.

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RESOURCES

Feifer, Steven G. & Della Toffalo, Douglas A. 2007. Integrating RTI (Response to
Intervention)
with Cognitive Neuropsychology: A Scientific Approach to Reading.
Middletown, MD: School Neuropsych Press

Montessori, Maria 1995. The Absorbent Mind. Oxford, England: Clio Press.

Montessori, Maria 1967. The Discovery of the Child. Oxford, England: Clio Press,

Sousa, David A. 2014. How the Brain Learns to Read. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Press

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