The Beacon Spring 2017

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The Windward School

The

Beacon The Windward School Newsletter for Educators and Parents Spring 2017

In This Issue Understanding the Brain-bases of Reading Difficulties and the Role of Brain Imaging in the Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia By Guinevere Eden, Ph.D. Page 1 Head Lines - Teacher Quality: A Call to Action By Dr. John J. Russell Page 6 Windward’s Answer to Quality Teachers: Reflections on The Windward School’s Teacher Training Program Page 8 Exchange of Knowledge Between Science and Classroom By Danielle Scorrano Page 11 How Science Is Rewiring The Dyslexic Brain By Gabrielle Emanuel Page 12 Alumni Profile: Tina Hinman ‘11 By Heather Pray Page 14

Understanding the Brain-bases of Reading Difficulties and the Role of Brain Imaging in the Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia Guinevere Eden, Ph.D. presents Decoding the Reading Brain: Lessons from Brain Imaging on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. at The Windward School’s Westchester Middle School Campus located at 40 West Red Oak Lane, White Plains, NY. There is no fee to attend this lecture. Reservations are required. Visit thewindwardschool.org/lecture to make your reservation.

Learning to read is a complex task that is uniquely human. This article, written as an Introduction to the 2015/2016 Winter Edition of the International Dyslexia Association’s Perspectives on Language and Literacy “Early Identification and Treatment of Dyslexia: a Brain-based Perspective,” highlights the research that has utilized brainbased measures for the purpose of (1) determining the etiology of dyslexia and related learning disabilities, (2) facilitating its early identification prior to the onset of reading instruction and (3) understanding the neural correlates of successful reading intervention. While brain-based studies have the advantage of building on a large corpus of published behavioral work (in which children of different reading levels have been studied for performance on a range of linguistic and cognitive tasks), brain researchers face new challenges. Not only are there technical hurdles when it comes to scanning children, but the complexities of brain development come into play. The acquisition of reading by the brain is studied amidst the brain’s development of sensory and cognitive skills, and the brain’s anatomical and functional capabilities that support them. All of these are guided by both our genes and our environmental experiences. As such, when biologically-driven development becomes intertwined with intensive school-based learning experiences such as reading, it is difficult to distinguish factors that drive or impede successful reading acquisition from those that are a byproduct of having obtained literacy skills. As such neuroscientists are embarking on study designs (e.g., longitudinal studies) which allow them to disambiguate these contributing factors. Further, this work is couched in the vibrant field of cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed the brain basis for experiencedependent plasticity (i.e., the effects of training on the brain), and examined learning to read from the perspective of “neuronal recycling” (using existing brain areas specialized for a given task, such as object recognition, and diverting them to reading).

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