Welcome to 2019

Strategies for Struggling Learners


Maryanne Wolf
Professor, Director, Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, UCLA

Description of Keynote ---

Growing Superheroes

Dyslexia, Deep Reading, and the Digital World

Research in cognitive neuroscience on how the brain learned to read provides a blueprint for understanding not only what is most important in early language development and cognition for later reading to develop., but also how best to teach reading to both typical and struggling readers.  Information on what enhances phonological awareness, vocabulary development, and morphological-syntactic knowledge is critical for building the components of what will later become the reading brain circuit. The presentation will describe cutting edge research on the prediction of dyslexia subtypes and how targeted, multi-componential instruction best reflects what we know about how the reading brain circuit is formed. Discussions of best instruction will include new work by the author on “Deep Reading” and how essential it is to combine explicit, evidence-based approaches with work on fluency, comprehension, and deep reading processes like background knowledge, empathy, and critical analyses. In addition, the impact of digital culture will be discussed, with guidelines for both print and digital media use by young children and the development of what the author refers to as a “biliiterate reading brain”.

Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe the development of what is most important in the development of the reading brain.
  2. Understand the implications of a reading brain circuit in early literacy instruction.
  3. Become familiar with best prediction instruments.
  4. Be familiar with multi-componential intervention, the principles underlying it, and the evidence supporting it.

 

Maryanne’s Bio:

Maryanne Wolf, the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, directed the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University till August 2018 in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. She is now Visiting Professor at UCLA, where she will help create the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice.  She will be the Chapman University Presidential Fellow from 2018-2020. She was past Fellow (2014-2015) and Research Affiliate (2016-2017)  at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her awards include the two highest honors from the International Dyslexia Association (the Geschwind and Orton awards); the Distinguished Researcher of the Year for Learning Disabilities in Australia;  the Distinguished Teacher of the Year from   the state and national American Psychological Association;  Fulbright Fellowship in Germany;  and the Columbus Award for Intellectual Innovation for her work as co-founder of Curious Learning: A Global Literacy Initiative, with deployments in Africa, India, Australia, and rural United States.  She is currently an external advisor on these topics to the International Monetary Fund and a frequent speaker about global literacy for disenfranchised children at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. She is the author of over 160 scientific articles; the RAVE-O  reading curriculum for children with dyslexia; the RAN/RAS tests of reading prediction with Martha Denckla; and four books, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (13 translations; HarperCollins, 2007);  Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain (Edited, York Press, 2001), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century with Stephanie Gottwald(Oxford University Press, 2016); and the forthcoming Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital Culture (HarperCollins, 2018).