Young minds need P-H-O-N-I-C-S.

A Phonics-based approach to instructing reading not only improves student performance, but changes the brain's physiology to make better readers, according to a recent study by Yale University researchers.

Their findings were published in the May edition of the journal Biological Psychiatry. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to study the effects of a year-long phonics-based reading intervention on brain organization and reading fluency in 77 children, 49 of whom were reading disabled, between age 6 and 9.

The children were divided into three groups: one that received intensive phonemic instruction, one that received regular remedial help, and one that had ordinary classroom instruction.

With "strong, comprehensive, direct and systematic" teaching, poorly performing students improved drastically and were found to be less likely to have future reading difficulties, says G. Reid Lyon, chief of child development and behavior at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The children's brain scans showed increased activity in the men that controls language recognition, the study says. Results for other children show little change.

"Our results indicate that the neural systems for reading are malleable and highly responsive to effective reading instruction," says Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine and a principal investigator in the study. "These results have promising implications for those with reading difficulties."

Lyon says the findings could change the way reading is taught. About 20 years ago, U.S. educators dropped a poorly implemented phonics initiative for the "whole language" approach to reading. "in order to learn to read kids have to decode words into sounds," says Lyon, a co-author of the study.

A phonetic approach would marry sound and sense to give children several different reading strategies. Phonics would be coupled with a rigorous study of vocabulary. The thought process now, Lyon says, is that if you mad to children enough times they will "get it." "Typically teachers have been trained to ignore sounds and letter components because phonics got a bad name," he says.

"Providing effective reading instruction not only improves reading, but also changes the brain so that neural systems for reading are comparable to those of good readers," Shaywitz adds. "Teaching matters and can change the brain."

Spicing up school brings colorful learning

Teachers should spice up their lessons and constantly change their teaching materials to keep young minds active, according to recent research.

Using brain scans taken with magnetic resonance imaging, Lawrence Lowery, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, makes an argument for inquiry-based instruction, rather than simply reading about a particular subject. "The brain tends to turn on when it is curious about something," he says.

A brain scan of someone engaged in a familiar activity, like reading, displayed the colors green, yellow and blue. The brain scan of someone touching an unfamiliar object shows an explosion of red, pink, blue, green and yellow, meaning the senses have become engaged.

"When something is novel or different new neurons develop new dendrites to connect to other neurons." Lowery says.

When a brain is completely engaged, generally through inquiry-based instruction, Lowery says he believes more fine details are stored which stimulate more dendrite growth in the brain. And this creates more points of access for learned material. If the brain is not sufficiently stimulated, Lowery says the dendrites connecting neurons simply fall off. One neuron makes 600.000 connections in the brain which contains 100 billion neurons.

What this means for teachers is that children would be better served by a change in materials, from exclusively textbooks to a combination of hands-on and reading materials. He also suggests teachers constantly vary the classroom environment and modes of instruction.

--Steven Scarpa