Saturday, August 22, 2020

Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation! (Thomas Oppong)

Photo by Rubén García on Unsplash

It's our duty to read; a responsibility, really. Without reading = poverty of thought.

In our staffroom at school, we talk a lot about reading. What we're reading, where we read, how to teach our students reading, when we are reading, our favourite books, book club books and events...

But we don't often touch on why we read.

Thomas Oppong wrote an interesting piece that I have bookmarked to read in my leisure. His claim is that reading rewires parts of our brain. 

He cites Maryanne Wolf's explanation in her book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain:
Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species. . . . Our ancestors’ invention could come about only because of the human brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be reshaped by experience.
This is all important for educators as reading involves several brain functions, including visual and auditory processes, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and more.

It's why we teach our students to read and encourage them to keep up the habit for life.

As an adult, I crave that mental stimulation. I'm proud to say, I'm a reader!

Want another reason it's a good idea to read? Reading every day can slow down late-life cognitive decline and keeps the brain healthier (according to Oppong).

Okay, off to continue reading more of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

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