VOA慢速英语2011-- Teaching Children How to Think Internat

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

这里是美国之音慢速英语教育报道。

The International Primary Curriculum 1 is an idea that began in Britain eight years ago. Today this curriculum is taught in more than one thousand primary schools in fifty-eight countries, including the United States.

国际小学课程是8年前发源于英国的一种构思。今天，该课程在包括美国在内的58个国家的1千多所小学中授课。

Educator Martin Skelton co-wrote the International Primary Curriculum, or IPC. He says for children to learn and succeed, they need a program that permits them to learn individually.

教育家马丁·斯凯尔顿（Martin Skelton）参与编写了国际小学课程，该课程简称IPC。他表示，需要一个允许孩子们自主学习的课程，让孩子们学习并取得成功。

MARTIN SKELTON: "Our view is the teachers should be thinking about their kids in their class and why they are not learning 2 and trying to work out what they are going to be doing tomorrow to help individual kids learn much better."

斯凯尔顿：“我们的观点是，教师应该想想他们班上的孩子，想想他们为什么不学习。然后拟定他们以后的工作计划，来帮助每个孩子更好地学习。

He says the idea with the curriculum is to help today's children become good citizens of the world and twenty-first century leaders.

他表示，国际小学课程的目的是帮助今天的孩子成为世界优秀公民和21世纪的领导者。

MARTIN SKELTON: "Most world problems are going to be solved internationally now. I mean no single country is going to solve the environment or terrorism. It's a multi-cooperational activity."

斯凯尔顿：“现在世界上大部分的争端都将在国际层面上解决。我的意思是，没有任何国家能够单独解决环境或恐怖注意问题，这需要多方合作。”

Mr. Skelton says the curriculum has activities built around the development of "international mindedness" starting from the age of five.

斯凯尔顿先生表示，该课程包含一些围绕“国际化思维”构建的从五岁开始的活动。

MARTIN SKELTON: "We encourage the kids to mingling 3 with schools in other countries, and then of course things like Skype now make that fantastically easy to do."

斯凯尔顿说：“我们鼓励孩子们融合到其他国家的学校中。当然，Skype一类的软件使这变得非常容易实现。”

The British American School of Los Angeles is one of a few American private schools that teach the International Primary Curriculum. Second grade teacher Alison Kerr says the main goal is to engage children in the learning process. This term, for example, her class is learning about people important in history.

洛杉矶英式美国学校是少数几个教授国际小学课程的美国私立学校之一。二年级教师艾莉森·克尔（Alison Kerr）表示，该课程的主要目标是使孩子们参与到学习过程中。例如本学期，她班上的学生正在学习历史重要人物。

ALLISON KERR: "I got the children to come in secret and dress up with several clues of a famous person. They had to research and bring us ten written clues and the rest of the class had to guess who these significant 4 people were. So the children do not simply just do the same worksheet type of format 5 every single time."

克尔：“我让孩子们暗中准备，穿戴中隐含数条历史名人的线索。这些孩子必须先进行研究，找出10条文字线索。而其他的孩子来猜这些历史名人是谁。这样孩子们不只是简单地每次都做相同的格式化的作业。

The British School in Boston held a fair for students and parents called Around the World in a Day. Emma Northey, head of primary learning at the school, says fifty-one nationalities were represented. She described one activity designed to teach about similarities between different cultures.

波士顿英式学校为家长和学生们举办了一次“一日环游世界”的活动。该学校小学教育负责人艾玛·诺塞（Emma Northey）表示，活动上展示了51个国家。她描述了一个旨在教导不同文化之间相似点的活动。

EMMA NORTHEY: "The children were each given a passport. They basically 6 knew that they were going around the world in a day and we said to them 'You have to come back with two similarities that you had seen between the different cultures.' Even the three-year-olds came back to me saying 'Gosh, you know everybody writes. Some people write going down. Some people write from left to right, some from right to left.'"

诺塞：“我们发给每个孩子一本护照。学生们基本上都知道他们将在一日之内环游世界。我们告诉学生们，‘你环游世界回来的时候，必须说出你所看到的不同文化之间的两个相似点。’即使是三岁的孩子回来时都对我说，‘天啊！每个人都会写字，但有些人是从上往下写，有些人是从左往右，还有些人从右往左写。’”

Another educator, Kate Foy of the British School in Washington, says the teacher's role is to enable 7 students to discover for themselves.

华盛顿英式学校的另一位教育家凯特·福伊（Kate Foy）说，教师的角色是帮助学生自己发现问题。

KATE FOY: "And you kind of have to sit back a little bit. You have to make sure you're asking the right questions. You maneuver 8 yourself around the classroom and enable the children to learn as opposed to telling them."

福伊：“你必须稍微放松一点，确保自己问了合适的问题。你在课堂上要控制住自己，要让孩子自己学习，而不是向他们灌输知识。”