The Elegant Code - Softcover

Gates, Dr. Louis; Frank, Dr. Alicia Roberts

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0578727110 ISBN 13: 9780578727110

Publisher: 978-0-578-72711-0, 2020

Synopsis

THE ELEGANT CODE

What I find superb about this book is that it is data-driven instead of "market-driven." Drs. Gates and Frank provide a clear path for educators desperate to help students who are learning to read. This may be the most important tool created for reading teachers in the past 50 years. EVERY school should have multiple copies available and provide trainings to its teachers in how to apply the principles that the authors provide in this seminal work.
--Danny Brassell, PhD, America’s Reading Ambassador

The Elegant Code opens with a description of the stunning failure of the lead author to help a bright but illiterate eighth grader learn to decode. The authors turned this heartrending experience into the first step of their odyssey that led to an unveiled simple letter-sound decoding singularity, something that they, in chorus with other reading researchers, thought impossible. This singularity ushered English into the club of the world’s most transparent languages, such as Dutch, Turkish, or Vietnamese. Alone, this significantly eases the teaching of the first steps of reading—developmental decoding.

Laser-like, the authors direct the singularity toward coaching up beginning and fledgling readers in the applied science of oral decoding. For this, they embed the power of the singularity within just seven spiraling exemplar tables, which stretch from decoding simple monosyllabic word patterns and lead to multisyllabic pattern words. These, coupled with running text automaticity, pave the critical neuroplasticity pathway for each beginning reader.

With English transparency unmasked, the authors turn to the growing knowledge about the science of neuroplasticity pairing. As if following a bloodhound through the labyrinths of the brain, they harness neuro-reading science to track how the decoding pathway leads to unlocking the printed code while the maze of comprehension pathways leads to unlocking meaning. Like the powerful wings of an eagle, the authors describe how to leverage these twin neuroplasticity wings of decoding automaticity and comprehension to lift and liberate readers.

The authors ultimately compress mountainous volumes and tangled websites into the core triad of reading—decoding, automaticity, and comprehension. This distillation launches the straightforward reading algorithm R = D→A→C and, for easy recall, the mnemonic, The Story of DAC. Like a vibrant spotlight, this algorithm, coupled with the prototypical DAC model that it represents, flows developmentally from decoding and decoding automaticity to comprehension.

French cognitive neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, wrote, “In the midst of many cultural treasures, reading is by far the finest gem—it embodies a . . . system that we are duty-bound to transmit to coming generations.” With this in mind, Drs. Gates and Frank conclude with how to target the dual wings of literacy to empower the acquisition of this exquisite cultural gem and to deliver the lifelong treasure of engagement with the elegant code’s triad of reading, writing, and reflecting.

TheElegantCode@gmail.com

Edition details

• Publisher: 978-0-578-72711-0
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0578727110
• ISBN 13: 9780578727110
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 202