The Language and Math Pathways

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Chapter 6 of the Janet Nay Zadina book, Multiple Pathways to the Student Brain", focuses on how language and math is processed by the brain. The thalamus and corpus callosum are the two parts of the brain that heavily focuses on language. The thalamus recognizes incoming data and send its to the auditory cortex, which determines what type of sound it is. If the sound is recognized as language, it is sent elsewhere in the brain to be further processed. Math is processed differently than language because it is different processes strung together to complete the math task. For math, you need to be able to retrieve the memory/information of the basic math skills before targeting higher quality math like algebra and geometry. Knowing how the brain processes language and math is important because educators have to know the possible misconceptions they face with teaching both reading/language and math. If the educator can spot these misconceptions or have prepared responses for certain misconceptions, it'll make the classroom run more smoothly with them trying to deliver instruction. Besides planning for misconceptions, the teacher can also use this as a lesson on self-care. The teacher can teach the students about how different their minds work during reading and math, and if the students feel like they are not grasping the content, they can alert the teacher so she can intervene
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