Fascinating findings: face first, or feet up?
Face first, or feet up?
A) From the top down — hair, forehead, eyes, nose...
B) From the feet up — shoes, walk, posture, then face? (Very Sherlock Holmes)
C) You just know — the face is familiar straight away?
Which one are you?
Here’s why I’m asking...
When we teach kids to read, we often do the exact opposite of how we naturally recognise people.
We ask them to break a word into parts:
“Look at the first sound... now the middle... what’s at the end?”
There are literally thousands of programmes designed to pull words apart in hopes of building meaning.
Which is... kind of backwards when you think about it.
It’s like teaching someone to recognise their grandma by making them memorise her left eyebrow first.
When you see someone you know, you don’t build them feature by feature like a human jigsaw.
You see the whole person. You just know them. Boom. Done.
So why don’t we let kids read the same way?
It’s kind of wild, isn’t it?
We’re asking brains to learn in a way that doesn’t match how they’re wired to process information.
It’s like trying to teach someone to drive by getting them to study one wheel at a time.
This is something I talk more about in my upcoming Masterclass:
Surprisingly Simple Strategies to Support Someone with Dyslexia.
If you’re supporting a struggling reader or you’re just curious about how learning actually works, I’d love you to come along.
Because honestly? The way we’ve been doing things might just be making it harder than it needs to be.
Masterclass: Surprisingly Simple Strategies to Support Someone with Dyslexia
Wednesday 18 June, 7:00 PM NZT, Online and free
