Written by: Dr Jane Williams, Dr Tessa Grigg and Bindy Cummings

Phonological awareness is an important part of the GymbaROO-KindyROO class. However, what we do does not look like we are teaching children to read. But in fact, we are. This article explains how our sensory-motor program helps reading.

Movement activities have been shown to improve neurological development.¹ Every GymbaROO-KindyROO class is full of language associated with movement activities and language development is linked to the development of reading, which includes phonological awareness. ²

What is phonological awareness?

• The understanding that speech is composed of units of sound (phonemes) that can be represented by visual symbols (letters) in text
• It is a prerequisite for successful reading

Neurophysiological research has shown that the brain’s cortex plays an important role in early reading acquisition.³ Neural mechanisms of language in preschool-aged children are different from older children and adults.⁴ The right hemisphere plays a key role in the language and pre-reading skills of very young children. When children are initially learning to read, they associate words and letters with images. ² The right temporal cortex uses images or ‘pictures’ to help a child recognise that a word ‘means something’. For example, the word ‘stop’ is often accompanied by a red hexagonal sign, or the letter ‘M’ is large, yellow and on the top of a very tall pole!

Mature reading is performed by a left hemisphere network of frontal, temporoparietal and occipitotemporal cortical regions responsible for mapping visual information onto auditory and conceptual representations. To be able to read easily, children need to use the sound structure of language to process oral or written information (phonological awareness). fMRI imaging reveals that activity in the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus and ventral-occipital-temporal cortex (left frontal lobe, to the side and back) increases as reading ability improves, as does phonological awareness and phonological naming ability ^3-5. As reading skill improves, there is less and less input from the right hemisphere.

Phonological processing ability gradually increases with age but is most rapid from the ages of 5-7 years when children are lateralised and the left hemisphere is dominant.

McCandliss  ^{2, 5} carried out research that connects cognitive neuroscience to education. He studied brain patterns using fMRI imaging and is widely published and cited. Some of his findings are as follows:

• The expert reader requires just 200 milliseconds to see and understand a word. They use the fusiform gyrus (L fusiform gyrus in particular – this is the area responsible for word recognition – so it is essential for reading).

• In first grade, when children are about six years of age, the right brain is still predominantly used for reading, so children are slower to learn than adults who have very specialised left brain automaticity.
• Children who engaged in a sensory-motor technique for reading (wrote the letters they were learning), had remarkable changes in the left side of the brain, the left fusiform gyrus in particular (this is the area responsible for word recognition, so it is essential for reading), whereas those who only said them out loud did not.
• There is a strong relationship between being able to attend to sounds of language and being able to learn to read language. Sensory-motor experiences lead to changes in visual processing in the developing brain.

Relevance to GymbaROO-KindyROO

• Every movement activity and the associated language is getting children ready to be able to read.
• Learning to read in the first years of life is about associating an image, picture or shape with a word – a right brain function.  At GymbaROO-KindyROO, this is why we have flashcards and pictures. As cortical function matures in the left hemisphere, the areas in the temporal lobe that enable phonological awareness to develop take over from the right brain input, and children are then able to ‘make sense’ of words through letter recognition. The school readiness reading program makes the change from ‘picture images’ to recognising words and sounds of whole words.
• Many children in the school readiness program (4 years of age) are not yet neurologically mature enough for decoding (breaking a word up into sounds), so the ‘whole word’ learning technique, associated with games and movement, is applied. The aim of the school readiness reading program is to prepare children for school so they confidently understand that words have meaning. Once they are fully lateralised (through the many activities we present) and the left hemisphere is dominant, they are ready for the more expert skill of decoding and phonics.
• Research seemingly confirms that children with learning challenges are unable to learn in the same way as children who do not have difficulty. Many children with reading challenges are still operating on a ‘right brain level’.  Maturing the foundational neural pathways in visual, auditory and sensory-motor systems provides an important basis for the maturation of both the right and the left hemispheres.

 

Authors:

Dr Jane Williams (PhD, BMgt, RN(Paeds)) is one of Australia’s leading experts on baby and child development. 

Dr Tessa Grigg (PhD, Dip Tch Primary and ECE) is an experienced teacher and the Research and Education Manager at GymbaROO-KindyROO.

Bindy Cummings  (B.Ed hons) is a teacher, a GymbaROO early childhood neuro-developmental consultant and the co-creator of GymbaROO’s Active Babies Smart Kids series. She has written articles for GymbaROO’s First Steps magazine, digital platforms and media for over ten years.

References:

1. Pecuch A, Gieysztor E, Wolańska E, Telenga M, Paprocka-Borowicz M. Primitive reflex activity in relation to motor skills in healthy preschool children. Brain Sciences (2076-3425). 2021;11(8):967.
2. McCandliss BD. Brain mechanisms of early reading skills. Building Connection Between Neuroscience and Education; John Hopkins University2016.
3. Ozernov-Palchik O, Sury D, Turesky TK, Yu X, Gaab N. Longitudinal changes in brain activation underlying reading fluency. Human Brain Mapping. 2022;44(1):18 – 34.
4. Zhou Y, Li G, Song Z, Zhang Z, Huang H, Li H, et al. Associations between brain microstructure and phonological processing ability in preschool children. Children. 2022;9(6):782.
5. Schlaggar BL, McCandliss BD. Development of Neural Systems for Reading. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 2007;30(1):475-503.