Reading – Awaking knowledge and nurturing children’s inner soul

Nowadays, for people to keep up with the world’s continuous developing pace and become a knowledgeable, helpful citizen, reading has become a bridge connecting our current knowledge to the outside world. Reading is a pathway for students to form their self-learning conscious and retrieve knowledge in the best way possible. From there, our young generations can develop lifelong learning skills and promote a great mentality.

However, with our Technology and Society’s extensive development on the rise, consistent reading habits from people are starting to decrease. Social media is a contributing factor competing against the norms with their catchy interfaces, it is like a breath of fresh air to the young generations. The youngsters experience the ease, spontaneity and latest news on these apps, all of which makes the reading-from-a-book habit seem boring and soon to be forgotten.

Understanding this current perspective, UTS’s Primary teachers’ team is holding a range of activities to elicit and bring out the joy of reading for the students. Each week, students get excited about the Reading session in the school’s library. This seems like “a new land” for students to seek adventures inside the books’ pages. With our project “Connecting knowledge”, students have gone through many interesting, beneficial activities to nurture their love for reading.

      1. Designing Bookmark activity:

With the theme of “Inspiring” through every book page, students designed their own creative bookmarks, along with positive, encouraging messages to themselves.

In addition, UTSer’s is also shown their creativity and ingenuity through each funny and cute product.

      2. Designing Book cover activity:

In this activity, students are able to select one of the choices: recreating the cover of their favorite comic or designing a new cover for a storybook they have read before.

All of the students were incredibly enthusiastic about the activities. Each of their works shows a unique view of the message they get from the book.

     3. Writing comics:

With the hopes of bringing their thoughts into a piece of work that people can see and enjoy, students connected the languages to the images, making a storyline that is close to our living; contains great humanism and meaningful messages for the readers. This goes further to show the students’ creative ability has been developing strongly.

   4. Book Review week:

This perhaps is the highlight of the whole project. The students not only get to show off their public speaking skills but also become their own ambassadors, giving out interesting details about their work, and leaving unforgettable impressions on the listeners. From there, students are also educated on the love for the positive things in life and the awareness of spreading goodness in our society.

From now on, in every reading session, every recess, it is easy to see in every corner of UTS, there is a student with a book on hand, talking and sharing with their friends about the amazing things they have discovered from their new favorite book. We strongly believe that, in this life-long learning journey, they will always carry the great lessons they have learned from books as their closest company.