Kaitlyn B Current Event Post

Kids grasp words as symbols before learning to read

Bruce Bower

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/kids-grasp-words-symbols-learning-read

January 6, 2016

Have you ever wondered what you understood as a baby? Or maybe what a baby in your life understands when you are reading to them? It turns out that when you are around three to five years old you can sometimes subconsciously make up your own meanings for the words you see in a book. For example if there was a book with the word wind next to a picture of a landscape the child will then see and hear that the word goes along with the picture and make their own connection as to what the word might mean. Children can also see that a picture could mean many different things but a word has a more specific meaning. What surprised me the most about this study was that children from ages three to five have such a broad yet unspecific understanding of the language they are brought up with. I also found it interesting that some children do not make the connection that the words in a book are the same words that we speak.“Treiman’s investigation is the first to show that kids as young as 3 have the insight that print stands for something beyond what’s scripted on the page”.

I found this article interesting because my younger brother is six months old and this article is about how young children make connections to the words they see and hear. I know that kids do not start to read until they are older but I still found a lot of the things in the article still had things in common with infants as well. I am always wondering if my brother can understand what I am reading to him based on the pictures he sees on the page and the words I am speaking.

I first opened this article because I am interested in learning about the brain and how it works. I have taken some classes in the past and have found them all greatly intriguing. In one of the classes I took we were learning about how children develop when they are younger but we never went over anything that was about reading and understanding other people. One of the most interesting things I read about in the article was that kids can not tell that cursive writing is not just scribbles on a page but are actually letters. I found out that most kids that are read to more frequently then others find it easier to learn how to read when they are older. This article connects to our unit on cells because it is about the brain and how it works. Our brains are made out of cells and they all do their own little jobs to make it work the way it does.

Works Cited

Bower, Bruce. “Kids grasp words as symbols before learning to read.” Science News. N.p., 6 Jan. 2016. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <https://www.sciencenews.org/article/kids-grasp-words-symbols-learning-read>.

“parent reading to their child.” Jiji.net Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://blog.jiji.ng/2015/08/how-to-raise-a-smart-child/>.