Redwood Literacy gave me the amazing opportunity of attending a Language & Literacy conference hosted by the Haskins Lab, a research lab that is a joint collaboration between Yale and UCONN. There was a lot of happy dancing going on for this nerdy girl, because this kind of conference is totally my jam. Haskins does all kinds of amazing neuroscience research that gives us incredible insight into the brain and what happens in the brain when we read. There are all kinds of super important implications for instruction that we need to pay attention to from this research. Over the past twenty years or so, our understanding of how the brain acquires the ability to read has grown exponentially. The scientists at Haskins light the brain up in the most beautiful way; the images I saw have me totally awestruck. Because of this incredible research, we have a much deeper understanding of how the brain adapts regions of the brain that were never intended for reading (because remember, the human brain never evolved for reading!) and repurposes them by recycling neurons and creating new neural connections between areas of the brain that were never meant to be connected! This is so incredible I feel compelled to write it again. When the human brain learns to read it is creating new neural synapses (connections) that were never intended to exist in the brain. This is where that idea of “brain plasticity” you might have heard about comes into play. The brain has to connect multiple areas of the brain responsible for processing print, speech sounds, language, and meaning. The connections between these different areas of the brain have to be strong, secure, and efficient. This is where the superpowers of the reading teacher come into play. One of the key themes of the language and literacy conferences was: integration. In order for the reading circuit to work well, the different regions of the brain responsible for processing print, speech sounds, language, and meaning must be fully integrated. The connections between the areas of the brain must be strong and quick. The brain regions become fully integrated through evidence-informed instruction that fully integrates: phonology (sounds), orthography (spelling), and semantics (meaning). The integration of these instructional components cannot be overemphasized. Because it is THROUGH the integration of instructional components that the synapses (brain connections) are built. If we don’t integrate our instruction, our students won’t develop a functioning reading circuit. We will see the result of weak connections between any areas of the brain needed for reading; it can show up as weak decoding, encoding, writing ability, fluency, or reading comprehension. Next week I’ll outline a simple activity you can easily implement that integrates multiple areas of the brain and helps build a strong reading circuit.