Day 1: Pattern-Seeking as Human Superpower

Tyler's staring at the word "nation" in his book, then writing something in his notebook. Then staring at "vacation." More writing. Then "celebration."

"Tyler, you're supposed to be reading."

"I am!" he insists. "I'm reading the patterns!"

He shows me his notebook. He's written:

• nation

• vacation

• celebration

• station

• creation

  
  

And then, in big letters: "TION = SHUN???"

"Is that right?" he asks. "Does 'tion' always say 'shun'?"

Tyler just did naturally what we spend weeks trying to teach. He found a pattern. His brain couldn't help it.

Because that's what human brains do. They find patterns everywhere. Even where patterns don't exist. Especially where patterns don't exist.

Your Brain Is a Pattern Junkie

Here's something wild: Your brain uses about 20% of your body's total energy. That's insane. Your brain is 2% of your body weight but uses 20% of the energy.

And what's it doing with all that energy? Looking for patterns.

Every second, your brain is processing millions of bits of information, desperately searching for patterns. Is this like something I've seen before? Does this connect to that? What comes next?

It's obsessive. Compulsive. Your brain literally cannot stop looking for patterns. Show it random dots, it sees constellations. Play it random sounds, it hears rhythm. Give it unconnected events, it creates a story.

This is why you see faces in clouds, hear your name in crowd noise, and are absolutely convinced that red lights are personally targeting you when you're late.

Your brain is basically a conspiracy theorist, constantly connecting dots that might not even be connected.

Why This Makes Reading Possible

Written language is completely insane when you think about it. We took sounds – invisible air vibrations – and assigned them random squiggles. Then we arranged those squiggles in lines and decided they mean ideas.

This should be impossible to learn. But we learn it because our pattern-seeking brain goes absolutely wild with it.

Look at these patterns a beginning reader's brain is tracking simultaneously:

• 'B' always looks like that

• 'B' usually sounds like /b/

• Words that start with 'b' often have something to do with... wait, no, that's random

• But 'br' at the beginning means something about breaking or breathing or...

• Sentences start with capital letters

• Sentences end with dots

• Questions sound different and end with a different squiggle

• Stories have beginnings, middles, ends

• Characters who are mean usually get in trouble

• If someone's described as smiling, something good probably happened

  
  

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Your brain is tracking thousands of patterns, most of which you're not even conscious of.

The Patterns We Don't Teach

We teach letter patterns, phonics patterns, story structure patterns. But kids' brains are finding WAY more patterns than we're teaching.

Like Maria, who noticed that words with double letters in the middle (little, middle, puddle) "feel smaller" than words with single letters. Is that a real pattern? Not really. But her brain found it, and now it helps her remember those words.

Or James, who realized that "angry words have hard sounds" (kick, hit, crash, bang). Again, not always true. But his pattern-seeking brain created a rule that helps him read with better expression.

Or Sophia, who discovered that "words that end in 'ly' tell you HOW something happens." She found an adverb pattern without knowing the word "adverb."

These kids aren't being taught these patterns. Their brains are generating them automatically, compulsively, because that's what human brains do.

When Pattern-Seeking Goes Wrong

But here's the dark side: Sometimes the patterns our brains find are wrong.

Like Dylan, who decided that long words are "smart people words" and short words are "kid words." So he skips long words because "those aren't for me." His brain found a pattern that's actively hurting his reading.

Or Isabella, who noticed that she struggles with words that have 'ough' in them. Now her brain has created a pattern: "ough words = danger." She panics every time she sees those letters, even in words she actually knows.

Or Marcus, whose brain decided that "books with pictures are easy, books without pictures are hard." Now he won't even try chapter books.

These false patterns are incredibly hard to break because the brain LOVES patterns. Once it finds one, it looks for evidence to confirm it and ignores evidence against it.

The Superpower Part

But here's why pattern-seeking is still a superpower: Humans can find patterns that shouldn't be findable.

Show a kid three stories where the character learns a lesson, and they'll predict the lesson in the fourth story.

Read them two books by the same author, and they'll recognize that author's voice in a third book without being told who wrote it.

This is absurd. The amount of pattern-extraction humans do from limited data would be impossible for any machine. We're not just pattern-finders; we're pattern-generators, pattern-predictors, pattern-creators.

Why Struggling Readers Aren't Pattern-Blind

Here's what kills me: We often think struggling readers can't see patterns. But usually, they're seeing TOO MANY patterns, or the wrong patterns, or patterns that conflict with each other.

Kevin is tracking so many patterns that he's paralyzed:

• The visual pattern of the word

• The sound pattern he thinks it should have

• The meaning pattern from context

• The emotional pattern of "I usually get this wrong"

• The social pattern of "everyone's watching me"

  
  

His pattern-seeking brain is working overtime, finding patterns in everything except the actual word he's trying to read.

The Beautiful Chaos of English

English is particularly insane for pattern-seekers because it's full of patterns that aren't quite patterns.

"I before E except after C" – except for like 50 million exceptions.

Silent E makes the vowel long – except when it doesn't.

"ough" can be pronounced at least seven different ways.

A computer would crash trying to find consistent patterns in English. But kids' brains? They thrive on this chaos. They create meta-patterns, exception patterns, patterns about when patterns don't apply.

Watch a kid learn to read "rough," "though," "through," and "cough." Their brain doesn't just memorize four different pronunciations. It creates a complex pattern about uncertainty, about English being tricky, about needing to use context to figure out pronunciation.

Pattern Transfer: The Real Magic

Here's the really wild part: The patterns kids find in reading transfer to everything else.

Learning that symbols can represent sounds? That's the foundation for understanding that numbers represent quantities, that musical notes represent pitches, that maps represent places.

Learning that stories have patterns? That's the foundation for understanding that history has patterns, that science has patterns, that human behavior has patterns.

Reading isn't just about literacy. It's pattern-recognition training for life.

The Pattern Kids Need Most

You know what pattern kids really need to recognize? The pattern of their own learning.

When Emma finally noticed that she always figures out hard words better in the morning, that's a pattern that changed everything.

When Carlos realized he understands stories better when he pictures them in his head, that's a pattern that made him a reader.

When Ashley discovered that she needs to read dialogue out loud to understand it, that's a pattern that unlocked comprehension.

These metacognitive patterns – patterns about patterns – are the most powerful ones. But kids can only find them if we give them space to notice, time to reflect, permission to track their own weird patterns.

What AI Can't Do With Patterns

AI is great at finding statistical patterns. It can tell you that 'th' appears in 3.56% of English words or whatever.

But it can't do what Tyler did – spontaneously notice a pattern while supposedly doing something else, get excited about it, and create a personal rule that may not be perfect but works for him.

It can't do what human brains do: Find meaningful patterns in tiny amounts of data, create emotional patterns alongside linguistic ones, transfer patterns across completely different domains, and somehow use even wrong patterns productively.

Most importantly, AI can't experience the joy of pattern discovery. That moment when Tyler realized 'tion' says 'shun' – his face lit up like he'd discovered buried treasure. That joy, that sense of personal discovery, that's what makes the pattern stick.

Tomorrow's Pattern Hunt

Try this: Pattern journals.

Every kid gets a notebook just for patterns they notice. Any patterns. Weird patterns. Wrong patterns. Silly patterns. Personal patterns.

"Words that make me feel happy" "Letters that look angry""Sounds that repeat in books I like" "Times when reading feels easy" "Words that show up everywhere"

We're going to celebrate pattern-finding as the superpower it is. Not just the "correct" patterns in our phonics curriculum, but all the wild, creative, personal patterns their conspiracy-theorist brains generate.

Because that's what makes us human readers. Not our ability to memorize rules, but our compulsive need to find patterns everywhere. Our brains that can't stop connecting dots, even imaginary ones.

The Pattern I'm Seeing

You know what pattern I've noticed after years of teaching reading?

The kids who become real readers aren't the ones who learn all the correct patterns. They're the ones who fall in love with pattern-seeking itself. Who get excited when they notice something. Who develop their own personal pattern languages for understanding text.

So tomorrow, when Tyler shows his teacher that 'tion' = 'shun', she's not going to just say "good job" and move on to the lesson plan. She's going to celebrate his pattern-seeking brain. She will ask him to find more 'tion' words.

Because that's what reading really is – not following prescribed patterns, but discovering your own. Not learning the rules, but becoming a pattern detective. Not memorizing what teachers tell you, but trusting your pattern-seeking superpower to make sense of the beautiful chaos of language.

Your brain is a pattern junkie. That's not a bug. That's the feature that makes reading possible.

And that conspiracy theorist in your head, constantly connecting dots? That's not paranoia. That's the same drive that lets us find meaning in arbitrary symbols, stories in random events, connection in mere words.