Independent vs. Dependent LearnersThe Role of Fluency or Automaticity

in learning to Read & Write

Amy Falk Weinberger, Neuro-Educator Reading Specialist

www.thinkingcenter.com

For the most part, teaching the basic skills of reading to students who enroll in our reading clinic has been more than sufficient for overall reading ability, but more often we are seeing students who are just not fluent, and these are the students we call dependent learners…they need so much more support. They are the ones with average to above average IQ’s too.

How is it that children who seem very similar in daily living can be very different in academic achievement?

!

Some kids get it and some don’t. !

But why?

http://www.neuronetlearning.com/eng/

Once we understand how children integrate movement with their bodies and brains, we start unraveling the disconnects which help us understand the why to the lack of fluency, and the difficulty with decoding, learning math facts, and writing efficiently.

Automaticity: !

Training !

Speed and Accuracy !

Creates a Fluent Learning

Network !

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Kids who have scores from the Woodcock-Johnson assessment have scores that tell us about academic fluency. They are typically ignored, however, because we as educators have had few to no tools to remediate fluency directly. We can teach decoding, encoding, auditory processing and code knowledge better, but fluency has been missing.

“Research tells us that automaticity is the ability to perform skilled tasks without specific cognitive attention to

these tasks.” (1)

Russell, Sabb, et. al., 2005

Schools are not set up to teach cognition, only academics. If the foundation of our sensory and cognition systems are weak, students have weak learning systems. We have combined Phono-Graphix and Neuro-Net at our clinic, and students brains and bodies are working together better. How can you know which students are fluent or not in their bodies? Have your class do jumping jacks. You will quickly see who is automatic with their brains and bodies. It is fascinating.

“If academic skills are not !

automated, children will be self- !

distracted during learning.” !

Another clue about a non-fluent student is how distracted they become when they do a difficult task such as decoding, remembering math facts or integrating handwriting smoothly. For example, handwriting is very difficult to coordinate processes simultaneously. One must remember how the letter looks, which direction it goes, it’s sound, and the sequence of the sounds in the words, and the hand has to have enough muscle tone to hold the pencil or pen.

needs extra time to see number sets will have trouble automating math-fact retrieval. (2)

A Child Who….

needs extra time to hear differences between letter sounds will have a hard time automating reading decoding. (3)

has difficulty with balance and movement will have difficulty automating handwriting. (4)

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Children will remain dependent learners without movement and learning coordinated in a training program. Look at the kids in your classroom who are struggling…if they could read, memorize math facts and handwrite easier, they would. Do they have disabilities…well, yes…but we have tools now to really help them. We can make a difference better now!

Resources1. Poldrack, Russell A., Fred W. Sabb, Karin Foerde, Sabrina M. Tom, Robert F. Asarnow,

Susan Y. Bookheimer, and Barbara J. Knowlton. 2005. “The Neural Correlates of Motor Skill Automatcity.” The Journal of Neuroscience 25 (22): 5356-5364.

2. Rivera, S.M., A.L. Reiss, M.A. Eckert, and V. Menon. 2005. “Developmental Changes in Mental Arithmetic: Evidence for Increased Functional Specialization in the Left Inferior Parietal Cortex.” Cerebral Cortex 15 (11): 1779-90.

3. Klauda, Susan Lutz, and John T. Guthrie. 2008. “Relationships of Three Components of Reading Fluency to Reading Comprehension.” Journal of Educational Psychology 100 (2): 310-321.

4. Bara, Florence, and Edouard Gentaz. 2011. “Haptics in Teaching Handwriting: The Role of Perceptual and Visuo-motor Skills. Human Movement Science 30(4): 745-759.

5. http://www.neuronetlearning.com/eng/