Tips for summer reading
Summer holds many of my strongest and most powerful reading memories.I remember sitting under a tree in the backyard as a child, reading AnneofGreenGables as the shadows crossed the grass.I remember sitting in the back seat of the car on a long family road trip, sharing joke books with my brother and sister and laughing until we cried. I want all kids to enjoy the fun of summer reading, because summer reading has secret power. Here are some ways to motivate kids for summer reading.
Make children the curators(管理人)of their reading lives.
Have students set summer reading goals for themselves. Students can act as “chief curators” of the blog in turn so that over the course of the summer each of them takes on the responsibility of replying to posts and highlighting a popular title.
Taking “curiosity walks” is a fantastic way to bring informational text into a child's reading list.These walks also provide opportunities for authentic writing.Have children take an inspiration notebook on a class walk outside and write down anything they see that they would like to learn more about.
Make reading more like summer camp.
Let's combine reading with handson activities and make reading more like summer camp.We can take field trips to the library and search the shelves for books on a topic chosen out of a hat. Then they can bring that creation to share on the first days of school.
A．It will set the stage for academic success.
B．Bring the outdoors back into summer reading.
C．Select some books and share them with your students.
D．Set up a summer blog so you can all share recommendations.
E．These memories became important stepping stones in my life.
F．It is important to build and shape a strong reading life during school months.
G．We can ask our students to create something in response to one of the books they've read.
Today it is common to see people who walk about with colored wires hanging from their ears wherever they go. They move about in their personal bubbles, sometimes unaware of what's happening around them. Outside life is shut out. So are you one of "them"?
For me, walking around in my own personal bubble is perfect. What's even better, wearing earphones seems to give a signal to people which says, "I'm not available for chatting at the moment!"
Suppose you're at work and about to make an incredible breakthrough, but a colleague suddenly turns up. At this precise moment, the slightest disturbance would break your concentration. Once again, those wires hanging from your ears would be sure to give that "Go away!" signal.
It's probably part of the growing up stage when they just want to overlook their whole family. While their mothers give them lectures about why they should do their homework, they can just turn up the volume on their MP3 player, smile, and say "Yes, Mum. "
Pretty soon, not only will we have pretty colored wires hanging from our ears—but also our brains will be directly plugged into some new high-tech instruments. We'll be in a virtual (虚拟的) world, communicating with everyone else, or choosing not to, as we like. In this world, we will all be permanently plugged in. And they are changing our social habits along the way.
In the end, there is a thin line between using technology as a tool for making life better and being a slave to it! It's so strange—suddenly, I don't feel like wearing my earphones anymore.
A. Our instruments are changing quickly.
B. I also have wires hanging from my ears.
C. In the home situation, teenagers love these wires.
D. I don't have to deal with the noise from the environment.
E. After all, I am listening to my favorite music and would rather not be disturbed.
F. Listening to music through earphones is the perfect way to ignore such interruptions.
G. They walk around in their own space, with their personal "digital noise reduction systems".
"Can you say mama? Or dada?" If you've spent any time around a baby, chances are you've heard or said things like these. For instance, baby talk, "parentese" (父母语), or, according to development specialists, child-directed speech. Although this kind of small talk might seem meaningless, the conversations are important.
Baby talk is an important piece of speech and language development. Studies show that when babies are exposed to such talk every day throughout their first year of life, they develop stronger vocabularies than other kids. And the little ones are eager for it. So when parents apply it, they help their babies learn more words and promote social interaction.
Child-directed speech wasn't always valued. Before the middle of the 20th century, researchers largely ignored it as a subject of study. Until the early 1990s, many developmental psychologists (心理学家) and linguists believed that without any help, we would learn how to speak and form complete sentences by ourselves.
But over the past few decades, numerous studies have found that throughout their first year of life, when babies are regularly exposed to such talk in addition to normal speech, they process, learn, and remember words presented to them in singsong tones (语调) better. One reason may have to do with how babies interact with the world. However, but their ears perk up (竖起来) when a caregiver makes that singsong tone.
In a 2020 study, researchers found that bat (蝙蝠)parents also used a different tone to communicate with their babies. Baby talk has also been observed in a few other species like squirrel monkeys.
A. Baby talk tends to be spoken at a slower rate.
B. Humans aren't the only ones that use baby talk.
C. They tend to ignore (忽视) adult conversations and other background noises.
D. Luckily, parents can be taught methods to improve their parentese skills.
E. Some doctors even advised parents to avoid using baby talk, thinking it too silly.
F. The distinct tone of parentese catches their attention, allowing them to benefit from it.
G. The singsong tone we switch to when interacting with young children can have many names.
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A. Let's hope that one day, positive representations of disability are included with no trace across children's industries so that they cease to be noteworthy at all. B. If Lego is mirroring something, it's reflecting a better world. C. Then, how could disabled children gain positive self-esteem when the culture around them appears to place no value on their existence? D. Lego is staging children with disabilities, appealing the public to care about the disability groups. E. The message behind Lego's wheelchair boy is so much larger than his tiny stature. F. When was the last time you noticed a disabled child became somebody in school? |
A Marked Shift in Toy Boxes
Sometimes, the smallest of things can have the biggest of impacts. Last month, Lego showed its first ever wheelchair-using mini-figure at a toy fair in Germany. For an inch-tall plastic boy, he's been making big waves, inspiring global press coverage and online celebrations from Lego fans, parents and disability groups.
His birth in the toy box marks a significant shift within children's industries.
There are 150 million children with disabilities worldwide, yet until now they have scarcely seen themselves positively reflected in the media and toys they buy: The delighted response the wheelchair boy has received only highlights the size of the gap it comes to fill.
In her new book Disability and Popular Culture, Australian writer Katie Ellis writes, "Toys mirror the values of the society that produce them... Intentionally or not, it has sent out a powerful message of inclusion.
The toys, books, TV, films, games and apps that entertain and educate our children barely feature children with any kind of difference. When did you last see disability represented positively in a children's film or cartoon? Have you ever seen a set of emojis that reflect the disabled experience? Their hopes, dreams, imaginations and experiences are ignored. There's a danger that these children will feel like permanent outsiders in the world.
Everyone knows there's something wrong with how we represent disabled people, but it seems no one knows how to fix it. We dance delicately around disability, scared to offend or get it wrong, so we don't do it. This exclusion is causing damage to millions of children, yet the answer is quite simple.
