Introduction Miranda Knowles

Introduction

Mirnada Knowles

Reading is not natural. While language has evolved gradually in the hominid brain, reading written language is a relatively recent, socially-constructed development. Reading will never just come to someone, it must be taught - a brain must be exposed to reading intentionally for reading to develop over a person’s lifetime. The process of reading is multi-stage (it builds) and multi-process (involving many senses and skills), necessitating many regions of the brain. Reading is individual in its acquisition and its experience - my memories of learning to read are inherently different from yours. For these reasons and many others, I have chosen the topic of reading and the brain for the culminating topic in Paideia High School’s Neuropsychology course for the fourth year in a row. For my students to understand specifics of how the brain reads, they must incorporate many of the fundamental topics that we have addressed this school year - attention, memory, the lobes of the brain, the senses, hominid evolution, neurodevelopmental disorders and language. Within this breadth of knowledge, students explored their own personal interests and how reading relates to their own lives. They submitted proposals and with reviews from peers and experts, made culminating projects (research papers, original children’s books, lesson plans and journal entries) and distilled an abstract from that work. What is contained in this journal is just the tip of the iceberg - if any of these abstracts are particularly interesting to you, please contact me (knowles.miranda@paideiaschool.org) and I will happily share their full project with you.

There are many thanks to give in the execution of this effort, but I would like to publicly thank a few here. Jill Hanson and Lauren Jonker welcomed us to the elementary library to witness their reading lessons and to pick their brains. At least 39 experts guided individual students over the course of their research, bringing their expertise to each student thoughtfully and specifically. Lacey Anderson, Amy Valk and Copy Central made it possible (along with your highly evolved brain!) for you to be reading this journal right now.

Thanks for reading!