2017 / 5-6月 教學 Up！
Instilling a Love of Reading in the 21st Century Kids
Let’s give the new generation something worth learning
The greatest gift one can give a child is a love of learning and reading.
Although 21st century children are no exception in this regard, they live in a world quite different from the one that welcomed previous generations. Thanks to technology, a virtually unlimited supply of audio-visual stimulation, knowledge, music, arts, and literature are all at their fingertips. With so much wide-ranging content readily available, books and especially textbooks are finding it harder and harder to compete with the internet and seductive electronic devices, and to retain modern readers’ arguably more demanding attention spans.
The Reading for 21st Century Kids series has been especially designed with this in mind. These are books for the modern classroom, for modern teachers and for modern learners.
First and foremost, they boast concisely presented, yet colorful and engaging content that caters for sophisticated, modern kids. Jam-packed with thought-provoking associations (astronauts and mooncake in Unit 1, for example), and informative real-life comparisons (as Unit 10’s Fun Fact makes in revealing that giraffes sleep less than two hours a day!), the diverse and original readings in this series include a broad range of interesting and dynamic topics.
Challenging yet fun games and activities aimed at enhancing visual literacy and covering all the necessary vocabulary, grammar and content retention skills required for readers at each level, have been added to make the information presented even more memorable and enriching.
Crucially, the exercises included in each unit invite readers to express their own ideas and opinions, and to work with fellow learners to refine these. In the process, communication and collaborative skills, both of which are essential to succeed in this day and age, are honed and enhanced. The content-related individual projects at the end of each unit, while further engaging students’ creative abilities, give kids the opportunity to showcase these skills along with their own, specific take on each topic.
Educators can therefore make use of these readings and activities not only to gauge learners’ individual progress in the language, but also to elicit greater participation, creativity and engagement from their classes. The materials thus allow teachers to create a relaxed but powerful environment of self-learning and inter-peer learning, an educational climate in which modern children tend to thrive.
Finally, Reading for 21st Century Kids ensures that learner empowerment does not end in the classroom. Instead of going head to head with technology, the series rather embraces the value thereof in adding to the modern child’s learning experience. Every book in the series therefore, in addition to a selection of high quality audio files, comes complete with its own beautifully designed, interactive app for handheld devices. Making use of multiple learning platforms in this manner further sets the series apart, and guarantees that kids have fun exploring and mastering educational content via a variety of instructive channels.
Considering all of the above, we are proud to present Reading for 21st Century Kids as a unique range of educational materials tailor-made for the needs of present-day learners. We are confident that students and teachers alike, will find it equally formative, useful, relevant, engaging and above all, enjoyable. We are confident that it will help to create a new generation of kids who love learning.
Author Introduction
Andre Jacques Louw
An English literature major with an MBA, lover of learning Andre Louw has lived and worked in Taiwan for over 10 years as a teacher, tutor, editor, writer and translator (Mandarin to English).
In that time, he has taught English students of all ages and produced various forms of ESL teaching aids for five different Taiwanese publishers.
Textbooks for very young learners, and youth novels, remain his favorite projects.
