Let one hundred flowers bloom by Emma Tsai

Acknowledgments:

1. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds

2. You crown our heart with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.

3. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

4. Saving private ryan: I’ve tried. Tried to live my life the best I could. I hope that’s enough. I didn’t invent anything. I didn’t cure any diseases. I worked a farm. I raised a family. I lived a life. I only hope, in your eyes at least, I earned what you did for me.” I wish I could rekindle the joy of reading in the wind of life.

Preface:

 Sybil Marshall (1963) has depicted, children are ‘not solely adults in the making, but creatures in their own right, as tadpoles differ from mature frogs, or caterpillars from butterflies’.  In 1928 ,Wanda Gag created the first storybook “ Millions of the cats” and lifted the curtain of The Golden Storybook Area into the Children’s Wonderland. It proves the children are the tramsformation of the philosopher’s stone.

Contents:

1.   Piaget’s stages in relation to reading:

a.   Sensori-motor stage(before 2) The child at this earliest stage has difficulty in distinguishing between himself and his environment. When an object is out of sight, it no longer exists.

b.    Pre-operational(2-7)

c.     Concrete phase(7-11)

d.    Formal and operational (after 11) passing out of the concrete stage, children operate at a formal level, using their skill in a flexible and mature manner.

Gwen Chesters: “A little baby feels and then he behaves: he feels hungry and he cries. An older child feels and then thinks before he behaves.”

2.   Piaget’s stages in relation to reading

a.   Piaget thinks of the child’s intelligence as a growing expression of adaptation, first of all, expressed in sensorimotor activity, but later going beyond perception and habit, gradually operating at greater distances.

b.   At the beginning stages children should have plenty of opportunity of exploring through touch the letter forms, of matching visual images and their word forms, and listening to and experimenting with different sounds including the sound components of words.

c.     We scaffold our new experiences in terms of old constructs and incoporate them in various concepts.

d.    Every new stage is very new or perhaps very difficult, then the individual will find himself having to move through some of these preliminary stages.

e.    The child gradually learns to ignore irrelevant variations. Trial and error, re-reading and rephrasing may have to be done orally in order for the child to obtain sufficient auditory “feed back”

f.       All the learning must go from external to internal, from lower level of cognition, to higher lever of generalization .

g.   Hillerrich(1967) has suggested that knowledge of the letter-names at the beginning of schooling is a better predictor of later reading achievement

h.    Brown and Bellugi (1964) reported that young children selected the nouns and verbs more often than the adjectives from sentences heard.

3.   Popular English Teaching Method in Taiwan

a.Grammar-Translation Method(1840-1940)

Good at reading and writing, bad at speaking

b.The Direct Method

No Chinese Teaching Method

Good at speaking, but you have to find permanat English teacher and use more teaching aids.

c.The Audio-Lingual Method

Good at listening comprehension, bad at interactional  communication.

d.   Community Language Learning

Good at interactional communication

e.   TPR (Total Physical Response)

Oral-action coordination

Good at daily life conversation

f.      The Communicative Approach

Learning daily life conversation by means of role play

4. Tickle the funny bone to reading

-         The importance of storybooks

a.  Allow kids to be himself and to find that this self is wonderful

b.  Tests damage the children’s self-image and self-esteem

c.  Play is the motivation to learn

d.  The more we know about others. The more we can understand them.

e.  Supply the intellectual, emotional and physical needs.

f.  The child learns new concept

g  The child learns of experiences and knowledge from other children

h  The child learns to generalize

i.  The child learns the future

j.  The child learns to concentrate on a story

k.  The child learns to accept each others and wait for his turn to speak out

l.  The child learns to have free association.

m.  The child learns to respond spontaneously.

n.  The child learns to find and create clues from the story

o.  The child learns to observe the logical causality from the story.

p.  The development of cooperation

q.  A better adaptation of bilingual/bicultural education program

r.  Offer the kids more skills to problem-solving

s.  Build up kids’ thinking ,literary, visional and auding powers.

t.  The intimacy cultivates an unforgettable atmosphere for the kids forever and never

u.  From critical reading, kids open a broader and deeper view to the complicated world.

v.  Cherish the most golden period of the most sensitive to environmental stimulation (1969 Caldwell)

*  Comenius (1592-1671):The pedagogues, what do they teach? Words! Words! Words!

Contemporary Reading Evaluation

1.   Read to learn not learn to read

2.   Look not hook

3.   Taught not caught

4.   Textbook not storybook

5.   Bilingual not bicultural

6.   Reading not critical reading

7.   Words not world

8.   Reading not hearing

9.   Test not team

10. Pressure not pleasure

11. Win not lose

12. Memorize not realize

13. Minority not majority

14. Class & after class

15. Talk not Think

16. External not Internal

17. Stagnation not stimulation

18. Who you are & what you have