Teaching our kids to be deep readers: print first, digital later

US expert Mary­anne Wolf believes when it comes to reading, most people don’t realise it is ‘a game for the species’.

Meriden School teacher Amanda Caminiti in the school library with students. Picture: John Feder

Visiting international expert Mary­anne Wolf believes that when the importance of reading is discussed most people don’t understand “this is a high-stakes game for the species’’.

“We are the worst of fools if we do not teach every child to ­become truly expert, deep readers,’’ Professor Wolf from Tufts University­ in the US said.

The renowned global expert on the neurological underpinnings of reading, language and dyslexia is visiting Australia as a guest of Pearson Australia to talk to teacher­s about the impact of digit­al devices on learning and the importance­ of deep reading. She backs the use of phonics, which teaches letter-sound combinations, and said she was shocked to discover that dyslexia was “miserably undiagnosed in Australia’’.

Deep reading is more than just comprehension, and using background knowledge enables deductions and inferences to be made about new information.

“In reading, we are both scient­ists and poets,’’ Professor Wolf said.

Deep reading gives people the ability to be critical thinkers, analys­ing information with not just logic but empathy and compassion­, she said. It is a skill which will be critical to the future.

The final stage of deep reading was having time for contemplation, insight and discovery.

But one of the main obstacles to developing deep reading skills was the “digital milieu’’, she said, where digital devices were developing some students into skim­mers or surface readers with short attention spans.

“Sometimes we short-circuit those processes because we are fleeting in our attention and our working memory,’’ Professor Wolf said. “We are unleashing whole new cognitive skills in digit­al technology, but let us unleash and acquire the new and preserve what has made us who we are.’’

Professor Wolf said teachers needed help in the best uses of technol­ogy. “I feel technology may be a real aid to one of my biggest worries actually in Australia, which is that teachers are, I hate to say this, regressing to 1970s and 80s methods of thinking that the only way to have creative children is to have inductive, implicit, whole-language type methods.’’

But she said the reading brain teaches that we have to be explicit about phonics and deep reading skills. “I want children to learn to develop deep reading skills in the beginning in print.

“I believe the physicality of print is much better in the beginning for children, and then help them learn how to use their deep reading skills on digital medium.’’

The kindergarten students at the Meriden School in the western Sydney suburb of Strathfield know the value and enjoyment of reading with their teacher, Amanda Caminiti, and one of the school’s key focuses is on developing literacy and numeracy skills.

“The acquisition of reading skills through the explicit and systemat­ic teaching of phonics in a literature-rich environment forms a vital component of our teaching programs, as we seek to develop enthusiastic and successful readers,’’ said Mer­iden junior school head Michele Benn. “This learning is supported by the seamless integration of readily available and accessible technology.”

Dr Wolf, who is advising US pediatricians on digital guidelines, said screen time should be limited in children younger than two, and the focus should be on human inter­action with language.

Using digital devices as a “babysitter’’ subjected children to addictive, continuous stimulation. Screen time could be introduced gradually from ages two to five.