One of the best parts about working at Englist is being able to write our own textbooks and develop our own curricula. We base our materials on philosophies and techniques that we’ve read about and what we know students need in our own classrooms.
This year we issued our second volume of textbooks for our Fundamentals 2 and 3 classes, which serve students mostly from grades 3-4 and 5-6. It’s been rewarding watching the development of our stories and articles into textbooks for the Book Bear classes.
How we build our books
All of our stories are written by paid authors. No AI. Each of the stories comes with photos or illustrations. The writing is obviously fantastic, but the illustrations really help the books pop.
We either write our stories ourselves – meaning our teachers write them – or we use pieces by qualified writers we have vetted.
Then a few teachers and Ms. Liz proofread and edit all of the stories. She composes comprehension and discussion materials, and Mr. Chen, our resident materials expert, reviews them for use in the classroom.
Our stories rule and kids enjoy them
We find these books lack character and relevance, especially for the students that we teach. This is why we write our own books and continue to refine every edition.
A sample of textbook stories and articles
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Mr. Lyon has written a few stories now about Evie and Luna – his cats – and their travels around Taipei, and the trouble that they get into, which is prolific.
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There’s also “The Gutter Gang” by Ms. Liz, which is about cockroaches at the night market near Englist and the trouble that they get into, which is also prolific.
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Another fun article is a piece on the evolution of video games, which gives a unique look at history kids can connect with.
One unique angle is using Englist students as inspiration for some of these texts.
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“Snow Day in Taipei” is based on some of Mr. Lyon’s students and what they would do if there were a sudden blizzard in Taipei that shut down schools for the day.
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Mr. Howell wrote a story about a student getting lost walking from her elementary school to Englist and having to navigate her way through our neighborhood.
Another important strategy we employ is culturally relevant pedagogy. We often talk about trying to use textbooks with the “George Washington chopping down the cherry tree” story from a big American publisher and having to contextualize that for Taiwanese students. They were super bored with it because it’s not their culture and it’s not relevant to their experience. This inspired us to write stories in English that were relevant to Taiwanese students:
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Ms. Liz wrote an awesome expository piece about President Tsai Ing-wen, the first female president of Taiwan.
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I wrote a piece about the different ethnic groups of Taiwan, which was fun to research and work on with a few of the teachers at Englist.
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Ms. Liz also wrote a piece about the first MRT line in Taipei. Students use the MRT every day and it is such a normal part of their lives that they take for granted that it hasn’t always been here.
Students need to see that they can learn to be strong writers as well. To ensure they do, we have pulled a number of articles from Taipei Teen Tribune; the program and the website that I run for our most advanced students who have worked their way through Englist. Some of these texts include:
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“Integrity,” a narrative essay by Bella Wu who just graduated this last year from high school.
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A great article about tiger parenting and how ineffective it generally is, by Kylie Tang, who is now a college student in the U.S.
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“Systemic racism against migrant workers in Taiwan,” written by Chloe Chu, who graduated a few years ago and attends a great university in the U.S.
All of these articles are either about Taiwan, being a Taiwanese student, or about growing up. We think it’s useful for younger readers to see that reading in English can not only be relevant and engaging, but eventually they will be able to write their own texts at a high level.
We don’t want to only focus on Taiwan though. We also want to expose Taiwanese students to different cultures and ideas:
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“When the Jumbie Birds Come Calling,” is a folk tale from the Caribbean.
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I wrote a story called “What Liz Found at Loch Ness” about a Taiwanese girl who travels to Scotland to meet her friend.
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Another piece that I worked on with Yannick John, who has taught at Englist, is “How They See Me,” about a boy in Taiwan who is half Taiwanese and half Black. His experience being mixed is an interesting topic for Taiwanese students and can help them develop empathy for different perspectives and experiences.
While we tend to prefer fiction, we also see the importance of nonfiction and expository texts. A couple that I haven’t already mentioned include:
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An article that I wrote about the Taiwan black bear – a national symbol of Taiwan.
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Ms. Liz wrote an article about the Ministry of Digital Affairs, a government office in Taiwan that handles Taiwan’s digital environment and how Taiwan navigates the explosion of technology and all its consequences.
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Mr. Chen wrote a piece called “How to Capture Billions of Views,” which is about how a Taiwanese-American boy went to school, grew up, and eventually launched YouTube.
And of course we have entire units filled with folktales. We love folktales from Taiwan and around the world.
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Ms. Liz wrote an article titled, “The Night of the First Full Moon,” a history of the Lantern Festival.
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Another one of our writers wrote “The Monkey and the Turtle,” a retelling of a Filipino folktale.
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My favorite is a fictional story about Sasquatch by Ms. Bemiss. I think it’s hilarious and love it very much, and I think kids will too.
All the stories that I have mentioned here are only from Volume 2. We also have our Volume 1 textbooks that are equally awesome and have tons of texts along the same lines.
Next steps
However, we’re not done. We will now be developing a Grade 1 and 2 level phonics reader.
Also, we are going to release some of these stories individually in storybook format. We want them in our office for students to pull off the bookshelf and for us to show parents. These stories are not only for students and parents at Englist, though; they will also be available for purchase at our office and on our website.
If you want to get your hands on any of these texts, get in touch with me. I’d be happy to help you buy a copy as soon as we are ready to send them out individually. And if you’d like to just buy the entire textbook, I can help set that up too.
Finally we’re going to continue to develop and add to our materials at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. If you have story ideas or content ideas that you think would be useful for our program, get in touch – we love to pay good writers for their work.
Thanks for reading. Check out our textbooks!