Show Notes:
What actually happens in the brain when a child learns to read?
In this episode, host Jesica Glover explores the neuroscience behind reading — uncovering why the Science of Reading works from a biological standpoint and how understanding the brain’s reading circuitry can transform how we teach.
You’ll hear from experts, educators, and Kansas leaders who explain what decades of research have revealed about decoding, comprehension, and how structured literacy can literally rewire the brain for reading success.
In This Episode, You’ll Hear:
- How the brain learns to read — why reading isn’t “natural,” and how the brain repurposes regions built for vision and language to process print.
- Why phonics and phonemic awareness matter — connecting letters to sounds activates the left-hemisphere reading network essential for fluent reading.
- Hope through brain change — neuroscientist Dr. Reid Lyon describes brain scans showing struggling readers’ neural patterns transform after structured literacy instruction.
- What effective instruction looks like — insights from Dr. Louisa Moats on how explicit, systematic teaching unlocks the alphabetic principle.
- The Kansas connection — Dr. David Hurford and Cindy Lane share how state leaders are using brain science to reshape teacher training and literacy policy.
- Why “three-cueing” fails — guessing words bypasses the brain’s reading circuit, reinforcing habits that make decoding harder over time.
- The takeaway: Reading can — and must — be taught in a way that aligns with how the brain learns best.
Reading isn’t firmware in our brains. It has to be explicitly taught — step by step — so that written language becomes a code we can unlock. — Dr. David Hurford, Center for Reading, Pittsburg State University
Resources & References
- Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (2009)
- Dehaene, S. (2009). Interview with Scientific American: “The Brain That Reads.”
- Fletcher, Jack M. et al. (2018). “Classification and Identification of Learning Disabilities: A Hybrid Model.”
- Gabrieli et al., MIT, 2014
- Hanford, Emily. “At a Loss for Words.” APM Reports (2019).
- Moats, L. (2020), NCTQ Reports
- Shaywitz, Sally. Overcoming Dyslexia (2nd Ed., 2020)
- Seidenberg, Mark. Language at the Speed of Sight
- National Council on Teacher Quality (2023). Teacher Prep Review
- National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read
- The Reading League Compass, 2023
- Saygin, Z.M. et al. (2014). “Tracking the roots of reading ability.” Nature Neuroscience
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