Pao School has always attached great importance in building strong relationships with parents. One method of doing so is through the Primary School's Education Corner, which keeps parents up to date on the latest trends in education. For teachers, selecting topics and approaches for guiding students- based on children's growth needs and parental concerns- offers an excellent opportunity for reflection and learning. In this issue, Primary Principal Rosalie Pietsch shares her insights on reading.
I love books. Books open minds, help us travel the world without leaving the room, and inspire children to see things from different perspectives.
Each school year, when meeting with all staff, I share a picture story—one that we can return to consistently throughout the year. Whenever I can, I also start a lesson with a picture book or story. Sometimes it introduces a new concept, sometimes it sparks discussion, and sometimes it simply helps students make connections they had not considered before.
Books also create countless opportunities for reflection on character development. Our Story Telling parent team continues to partner with us, using story time as a valuable way to build the character strengths our children need to flourish. Conversations led by our Story Telling parents help children understand these strengths and recognise themselves in the stories they hear. The annual Story Telling production is a much-loved event on our calendar, with both the memories and learning held tightly by our children.
Reading and thinking bilingually
At Wuding, reading has particular importance because our students are developing as bilingual learners. Our curriculum supports dual-language acquisition in Chinese and English, with an aspiration for students to communicate and learn with confidence in both languages. Reading widely in both Chinese and English is therefore about much more than developing two sets of language skills. It helps children build knowledge, encounter ideas through different cultural and linguistic lenses, make connections across languages and, over time, develop the capacity to think in a bilingual manner.
Within English lessons, students in Upper Primary consistently engage in learning that strengthens their metacognition and deepens their thinking. Through a series of carefully designed learning routines facilitated by our teachers, students are encouraged to articulate their thinking, listen to and consider the perspectives of their peers, reflect on their own ideas, and then make their reasoning visible. This helps students develop a deeper understanding of how they learn—an understanding that is increasingly evident in other subjects. Research highlights metacognitive approaches as among the most powerful ways to improve learning outcomes, enabling students not only to comprehend texts more deeply but also to become increasingly independent, reflective and resilient learners. In Chinese lessons, our older students engage in guided reading, read-alouds and poetry recitation. Lessons centred on literature offer much joy: students discuss an author's choices, notice patterns, test interpretations and hear how others understand the same text.
Together, these experiences in English and Chinese cultivate critical thinking, curiosity and confidence, equipping students with habits of mind that support lifelong learning well beyond the classroom.
Over the past two years, we have been strengthening the reliability and quality of classroom libraries in each lower primary classroom. The right books, available at the right time, invite children to wonder, investigate and make meaningful connections across subjects. Our Pao School Reading Tree further supports access to rich Chinese and English literature, encouraging children to read broadly and grow as increasingly independent readers.
Our approach reflects a wider commitment to providing content-rich, authentic texts and purposeful language learning. Children need opportunities to read literature and real-world texts that stretch their vocabulary, deepen subject knowledge, invite curiosity and expose them to perspectives beyond their own. Reading in both languages helps students not merely to translate from one language to another, but increasingly to draw naturally upon the knowledge, concepts and ways of expressing ideas that they have developed through both languages.
Welcome to our Newly Refurbished Library
With the refurbishment and recent reopening of the Wuding Library, all members of our community are welcome to immerse themselves in our collection—to have their thinking challenged, fall in love with a new author, follow a new curiosity, and seek out stories that help illuminate life's lessons.
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The Wuding library is much more than a place to borrow books. It is a welcoming and dynamic learning hub that supports inquiry, information and digital literacy, strengthens academic integrity, and builds students' confidence as independent learners. Our library team works closely with teachers to select books connected with current learning and to introduce materials that encourage students to ask questions and explore different perspectives. Students have both formal and informal opportunities to use the library, including timetabled class visits and access at other points in the school day.
Families too, are warmly welcome to visit Wuding Library-doing so supports a strong commitment from both home and school to reading.
How families can nurture a love of reading
The most powerful reading culture is one shared between school and home. Parents do not need to turn reading into another lesson. One of the most valuable things you can do is simply model a love of reading yourself. Let your child see you reading a novel, magazine, biography, recipe book or other text because it interests you. Talk about what you are reading, what surprised you and what it made you think. Children notice what the adults around them value.
Select reading materials with your child rather than always for them. Encourage a diverse reading diet: Chinese and English; fiction and non-fiction; contemporary and classic literature; poetry, picture books, biographies, graphic texts, information books and writing from different cultures and perspectives. Choice matters.
Digital texts and online resources have an important place in learning, but they should not become children's only experience of reading. Please continue to support the reading of real, physical books. Holding a book, browsing a shelf, returning to a favourite page, noticing an illustration and seeing a growing pile of books read can make reading a tangible and memorable part of childhood.
Finally, establish a reliable reading routine and a welcoming space for reading at home. It does not need to be elaborate: a comfortable chair, good light, a small basket or shelf of appealing books, and regular time protected from other distractions can be enough. Ten or twenty peaceful minutes, repeated day after day, sends a powerful message: in our family, reading matters.
Together we strengthen a love for reading
If, together, we help children experience books not as an obligation but as a source of pleasure, knowledge, curiosity and connection, we give them something enduring. And for our bilingual learners, every wonderful book in Chinese or English is another invitation not only to read in two languages, but to think, wonder and understand the world through both.
