Hello everyone! As a big fan of Xiao Duo's Youth, I am glad to have the opportunity to share my understanding of non-fiction books with you. I hope it has reference value for you to choose, buy and guide your children to read non-fiction books.

Let me introduce myself briefly first. From the perspective of cognitive science, when you are reading a book or listening to a lecture, you need to know as much as possible about the background of the person who wrote the book and gave the lecture. Because everyone uses his own experience and knowledge schema to understand and interpret the world. Therefore, although everyone feels that we should try to be objective and rational, we must have our own preferences and limitations. Let me introduce myself here first, and then I hope everyone can see my limitations here and the areas I am good at here.

My official occupation is to promote children's reading in public welfare organizations, but I am first of all a mother who has taken her children to do parent-child reading for more than ten years. At the same time, I stayed in Europe for several years and experienced primary education in Europe. At this time, I became a general education teacher for my son. So, first of all, I have a more emotional experience of the growth and education of children in China and the West.

In addition to doing things related to children's reading, I worked as an economic analyst and consultant in the fashion industry for ten years before that. My major is actually fashion design and management engineering, and I tend to be rational and logical, but my industry pays attention to creativity. These are my two obvious characteristics.

Then you can understand that I am not a teacher, I am not from an educational background, and I am not studying children's literature. In fact, I look at reading from the perspective of neutrality rather than literature, and also from the perspective of children's development, not from the perspective of school teaching.

In my opinion, this figure is far from enough. This incident also caused me to elaborate on my understanding of non-fiction books.

Most people in the group should have children, so do you remember how old your children began to consciously observe and explore the world? For example, start asking why, start questioning the world, start moving around, and start making trouble. ...

Ten years ago, when I was visiting the Sina forum, I saw a father say that one day his three-year-old child kept pushing and closing the door all afternoon, then pushed and closed it, repeating the process. Father is also very patient. He observed there for a long time, and then he wanted to know what the child was doing there. What is he doing? Is he asking about the shadow area?

In fact, the father finally found out that the child was really observing the relationship between the size of the shadow and how many degrees the door opened. He pushed and pushed, looked and looked.

Because I often hang out with some parents, I often see some interesting questions. I have collected some questions below, so you can have a look and think about who raised these questions.

The first question was mentioned by American scholar Xue Yong in an article, saying that his daughter might have told her something about God when she was three years old, and then her daughter asked this question.

As you should know, the second question was asked by Mr. Lu Xun when he was studying in San Tan Ying Yue. Of course, the result was reprimanded.

Third, when my son was six years old, we had just arrived in Switzerland from China for a week. One day when I was cooking, he asked me this question.

The fourth question is deep and profound. The questioner of this question should have some knowledge of physics. Can you guess who this is?

In fact, this was put forward by a six-year-old child in a kindergarten class in Jing 'an District, Shanghai one year. I was shocked by this question at that time. Her mother has heard some physics stories and read some books to her, so she can ask such a question. I was particularly impressed by this question.

These are all very good questions, and some of them are even great questions, but are these questions raised in the research room? Does the teacher think for the students in class?

None of them. All these problems arise in the process of children's natural understanding of the world. It is some concepts and knowledge that they had before, and they have doubts when they can't explain the phenomena observed now.

After understanding the process of children's growth and development, we know that children have been trying to know and understand the world. Through sensory perception, that is, some direct feelings such as sight, hearing, pain and taste. , plus some overall understanding of things on the basis of comprehensive feelings, which is generally called sensory perception.

Because although we divide it into feeling and perception, it is absolutely impossible to separate them. With feeling, there must be perception, and perception must contain feeling. These are the initial feelings about the world, some acceptances and reactions to external information.

Of course, other psychological processes of human beings include thinking, memory and imagination. Through these psychological processes, people perceive this knowledge and think about the world. All these processes are actually completed at the same time.

For example, we are listening to a lecture now. If I haven't spoken for a long time, everyone will definitely feel: visually, there is no voice message on the screen; Or the listener will feel that there is no sound.

From your memory just now, you will know that the information was played continuously just now. Why not now? At this time, you may think, "What's the problem?" "Is it a network failure?" Maybe you will also imagine, "Oh, are people backstage (at work) in a hurry to solve problems?" So many psychological processes occur synthetically.

We perceive the world around us all the time, accept some external information, then process it, and have some thinking processes.

So when did humans begin to explore the world? That is to say, I just asked you, for example, when did our own child start to feel that he didn't seem to be confused at all, and began to explore the world, move this, move that, pull the drawer and taste this. Does that ring a bell?

I put two pictures on it, one is the newborn's vision examination, and the other is the newborn's hearing examination. Everyone has experience. During the eye examination, the child's eyes will move with the lights or colored balls. As soon as the bell rings, the child will turn his head to the noisy side. In fact, at this time, they have already begun to have obvious behaviors that want to know the world.

Because at that time, they must be thinking, "What is this bright thing? Where did it go? " "What's that noise? Where did it go? "

As children observe the world more and more, they get more and more concepts and facts.

Occasionally, they will find the similarities and differences between some things and some related relationships, so he will use these developed simple and simple reasoning abilities to verify his findings, and then draw conclusions and further ask some unknown questions.

For example, a child may find that when he gets up in the morning, his mother puts on clothes and carries a bag, and then he begins to cry, because he knows that his mother is going to work and leaving him. That is, you already have some logical and reasoning skills.

Around us, there is another view that children are in a daze and confused. His development process was from romance to accuracy, that is, he was never so clear and confused, and then gradually became accurate, so he didn't have to give them such accurate things at first, just read more fairy tales and children's songs, and then read popular science and knowledge when he grew up.

There is also a view that children, with the concept of animism, think that everything is alive, and reading more fairy tales helps to enhance their imagination. These views are debatable.

In fact, our human cognition of the world has gone through a process from imaginary myth to relative objectivity, but will the development of individual intelligence repeat the development of human history?

This repetition theory is actually just one of the hypotheses, which has not been scientifically confirmed. As for animism, anthropologist Margaret? According to MacDow's research, there are no cases of anthropomorphic animals, material phenomena or inanimate objects in the 32,000 paintings painted by naive children. Therefore, he believes that animism may only be caused by cultural factors, rather than the real characteristics of children's early cognitive development.

Because it is very difficult to study the cognitive ability of infants, there are not many related studies. Some research may still be controversial, but with the gradual deepening of related research, many concepts may have to be reconsidered.

For example, because children can't speak and can't take relevant language communication tests, researchers have designed some visual tests to test the length of time they stay in impossible events. The premise of the study is that if babies are familiar with things, they will definitely stop watching common things soon, but for some strange, new, unreasonable and novel things, they will stay longer. Under the premise of such research, some researchers have found that as early as 3 or 4 months, babies can begin to understand that objects need support to avoid collapse. This is a picture in the book. I'll send it to you.

Many studies have proved that infants have some relatively certain understanding of the world at a very young age, rather than being in a state of confusion and confusion. Then, as they grow up, they actually observe and think more and more about the world. I found some such pictures, you can have a look.

These are the scenes where children actively observe the world. I think parents should know very well that their children are always like this. If you pay attention, you will often find this. Of course, more is the act of destroying, disassembling, breaking and scattering.

Since children begin to explore the world very early, why don't we provide them with all kinds of encyclopedias containing everything in the world? In fact, looking at our previous textbooks, I remember that when my son went to school, it should be about the third grade, and the popular science books were only published. I think it's very, very late.

Why is this happening? I think there are several reasons. First of all, we say that our understanding of children, our understanding of children, our understanding of children's cognitive ability, development ability and thinking development process is insufficient. We think that maybe he will not know the world until he is eight or nine years old. Only in this way can we provide him with relevant materials. This is the main reason.

Another reason is that we used to have too few reading materials. What I can remember when I was a child is probably science fiction works such as "100,000 Why" and "PHS Roaming in the Future". Of course, the main reason is that we think it is enough to study textbooks and don't need other extracurricular reading materials, so there are few extracurricular reading materials, and there are even fewer popular science, non-fiction and objective facts.

For a long time, our Chinese, language and literature courses have emphasized the appreciation of literary reading, rhetoric, emotional expression, experience and artistic conception aesthetics, and have not regarded reading as a process integrating emotional experience, information acquisition, thinking development and reflection and evaluation. Therefore, the preparation of Chinese reading materials is less, and of course, the teaching activities carried out in reading activities are relatively simple.

In fact, there are encyclopedias and so on now, everything you want, what you think and what you didn't expect. Including popular science books published now, there is a VR system, and holographic projection will be used as multimedia through scanning.

Of course, I also think that through my introduction today, more people will read such books. You will buy and watch, because you understand. This is like the spread of innovation. A new thing needs to be spread and distributed by relevant people, and then someone adopts it, and innovation can spread.

I made a simple classification of the books in the ppt above:

The first category is books on some basic concepts, such as colors, shapes, basic names of things, etc.

The second category is the book of introduction to principles;

The third category is books that stimulate creative thinking. Because this book is early, it raises some seemingly impossible questions. For example, one of the questions is what happens when the earth suddenly stops turning. It raises many questions, makes you think, and demonstrates how to ask questions. The fourth picture also belongs to this category.

The following category is a hands-on experiment book, which can let you prove something; Or predict first and then confirm; Or solve this problem.

The next kind of book is a history book in a certain field. I didn't really like history books before, because I can never remember what happened at this time and place.

Later, I found that history books in some fields were really helpful. Because it can tell you what happened in this field during this period, why it happened, what it took to get to this point, and what duplication, mistakes and corrections there are, which I think are very valuable.

Just like in the process of learning to read, I learned about the history of writing, printing, reading and library, which is very helpful to understand the present situation. Especially the publishing history, let me find some problems of children's reading status.

Many parents are very interested in the history of this field. I hope I can recommend some to my children. What I know, such as "The Course of Science" and "Wilson on Great Scientists", and a series of "Building a Bed in 700,000 Years" are also very good.

The last one is a project in a few years, and I like this interdisciplinary knowledge very much. I'll bring this up later. This was good when I was young. It will provide some relevant information from different aspects around a theme, and add interest with interesting illustrations, which is very good.

Since about 2000, the domestic book publishing market has developed vigorously, and various books have been continuously introduced. I remember Chairman Hai Fei said that the best publications in the world are now published in China. This is really a very happy thing.

There is a third-grade child who likes history very much. It was quite accidental that he liked history at first. There is a book about history in Plants vs Zombies, which he likes very much. In the third grade, he went to the bookstore and bought various versions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, including comic edition, pupil edition and classical Chinese edition of Ancient Books Publishing House. He bought seven or eight versions back and forth, and repeatedly compared and studied them himself.

Xu, a fourth-grade student, is a small army fan. His works include Centennial Model Aircraft, Sniper Gun and Sniper, Encyclopedia of Weapons, Mystery of 100,000 Weapons, Encyclopedia of World Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Famous Warmen, Field of Life and Death, Nanjing Massacre, Future Development of China Navy of US Navy, Battleship, etc.

There is also a fifth-grade classmate, Qian, who loves ancient buildings very much. He likes China Grottoes and Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes best. In addition to reading books about ancient buildings, he also visited ancient buildings and temples and copied murals and sculptures during the holidays.

Ten-year-old classmate Wang is a small "economic man". He read books such as Economics of Milk Coke, Poor Dad and Rich Dad, and Economics at the Dinner Table. He began to sell evening newspapers from the first grade of primary school, and also explored his own marketing strategy, that is, sweeping the store; In the second grade, we began to wholesale roller rings and invited students to play for free as a display and promotion strategy.

Another fifth-grade student, Zhao, especially likes prehistoric myths and ancient books. He has finished reading Shan Hai Jing, Qian Jin Fang, Compendium of Materia Medica, Three-body, General Relativity and so on. After reading Fang Fang's Compendium of Materia Medica, he gave his father medicinal liquor.

Of course, many children read novels, write cartoons, fairy tales, novels, poems and so on. There are many such examples, so I will focus on reading examples and non-fiction works for your reference.

From children's all-round exploration of the world, I personally think that in addition to providing children with opportunities to explore, know, experience and observe from life, they can also help children further develop and expand their understanding of the world through rich intellectual reading materials, and urge them to further observe and think. The picture below shows that when I was doing research in Beijing teenagers' reading world, I happened to meet the second-grade students of Miyun Primary School, where they did free reading.

I found that about 80% children are reading interesting popular science books. From the perspective of satisfying children's desire to explore the world, I think we should not ignore their interests, but provide them with more sources of information. In the example mentioned earlier, Mr. Lu Xun asked his husband when he was a child: "How strange! What's wrong with this bug? "She was severely reprimanded by her husband. If you understand the development process of children, I think this kind of thing should not happen again.

In fact, we usually say "360 lines is the best", and there should be 360 lines in the current profession, but how many of these 360 lines are industries that need superb writing skills? Of course, we say that writing and writing skills are basically needed at work. However, there are not so many industries that need a particularly superb ability to emphasize literariness and special ideas.

If our daily reading and school reading emphasize the appreciation and appreciation of this kind of literary reading too much, I think it is too limited! Since children have a variety of interests and may work in different fields in the future, why can't we provide them with multidisciplinary non-fiction books that meet their interests and needs at this time?

In addition, I think it is necessary for children to gradually establish correct concepts and theoretical systems in a specialized knowledge system in the process of developing into the future work field. Bruner, an American psychologist and educator, believes that all the knowledge we have learned is some hypothetical knowledge models created by predecessors to understand the world.

This is a passage from Where is Dad Going? When they were in Taiwan Province province, some people said that there were betel nuts in Taiwan Province province. Then the children asked, "direwolf" is "very direwolf"? At that time, because of the pronunciation, one was the plant proper noun-betel nut and the pronunciation of ice, lang, lang, ice and wolf in daily contact.

From here, we can see the difference between specialized concept system and daily concept system. Of course this is a very simple example. For those who want to go deep into the forefront of the discipline in the future, for example, the concepts and theoretical systems to be mastered are not so simple and take a long time to master.

If children are interested in many different fields, then I think they should be given opportunities to learn more and more knowledge in this field as soon as possible. Generally speaking, the more you know, the more you will know about this field, and you will find more problems, so there may be more discoveries and innovations in the future.

We can give another example. Many people will say that I know every word in Reading magazine, but I don't know what it says, because the articles published in Reading may involve special fields such as literary criticism and philosophy, so the average person doesn't know these special concepts very well in this special system. This is the difference between general concepts and specialized concepts in the field.

For example, the word "white horse is not a horse" may be recognized by children in Grade One and Grade Two, but it may not be so easy to really understand China's philosophy and China's logical reasoning theory behind these four words.

In non-fiction reading materials, its concept and theoretical system require truth and objectivity; This is quite different from the personal imagination and emphasis on personal feelings and experiences in novels.

In fact, after consulting Wikipedia and Baidu Encyclopedia, we found that this non-fiction work is defined as a work based on real facts and information. I think they exist objectively.

The scope of these works includes some papers, news reports, memoirs, diaries, documents, scientific research reports, pictures, autobiographies, travel guides, blueprints, technical documents, manuals, charts and so on. It covers many professional fields such as natural science, geographical and economic research, historical research, social observation research, war, social system, political system, religion, philosophy, art and so on.

Of course, this is the definition of an adult. For children, definition should be reading materials prepared with concepts they can understand. One of the characteristics of these materials is that they are as true and objective as possible, and your argument is inferential and verifiable.

I think this may be more important to us in China. You have proof that your assertion is very important. It is also very important to cultivate this kind of relevant thinking in our daily information.

The biggest advantage of non-fiction books is that after children finish reading, this knowledge in school may not be a problem at all.

"Lunar Module", an official WeChat account, once sent an article introducing a junior high school student who was interested in chemistry. Not only junior high school chemistry textbooks have been read, but also senior high school and university chemistry textbooks have been read. Then he tracked it to the forefront of this field through Wikipedia and Google. He thinks structural chemistry is very important and there are still many unsolved problems, so he decided to do structural chemistry research in grade three!

Teacher Yang Mingyong also provided some American data. She said that the United States has only recently begun to strengthen the reading of non-fiction books, but as far as I know, it should be earlier than the domestic recommendation.

We made a survey and asked the New York City Government about the proportion of fictional and non-fictional reading materials in the school library management system. Their demand is 3: 7. Many librarians feel that this ratio is unreasonable and will adjust the ratio of fictional books to non-fictional books to 5: 5; However, the ratio of 3:7 between novels and non-fiction books is very shocking.

There are also some data showing that the proportion of reading categories suggested by American middle school students is: literature 2: knowledge 2: persuasion 2; Japan International Children's Library has a service. It has prepared a 50-volume book package to provide lending services to libraries all over the country. The proportion of content categories in the book package is: knowledge category 6: legend 1: picture book novel creation 1: foreign literature 2. As you can see, the proportion of these non-fiction books is very high.

Many parents have asked me, do children need to take notes or mind maps like adults when reading non-fiction books? It depends on the age of the child. Too young children don't have to do it every time. They can choose some books, such as reading five books and making two, that is, they can choose a small part to do intensive reading, master this method and train this thinking, while others can do free reading.

So, how to read this small part of the book intensively?

There is a table in Europe and America, which is divided into three columns. The first column is: what do I want to know before reading this book, and what is my question; The middle column is: after reading it, what did I know and what knowledge did I gain; The third column is: What else do I want to know or what my question is? You can fill in this column. If you want to try it, you can use this method, that is, before reading, during reading and after reading, you can sort out the books.

Generally speaking, I think that most of reading should be intensive, in-depth or intensive, and the other three fifths should be free for children to read, so as to expand the scope, depth and field of knowledge, because free reading is not evaluated, and whether you read or not, you can enjoy it in the reading process. This kind of fun itself will make the child have a better acceptance of what he has read, and of course some of it will be used to urge him to exercise his mind and body.

I think it is best to combine the two into a proportional balance.

Of course, this ratio of three fifths is not absolute. It also needs to be analyzed in combination with specific age groups. For example, children are reading more than twenty or thirty pages of picture books. At this stage, there are few situations that require parents to analyze, think and ask questions. At this time, children can read more freely; But when you go to college, you need to spend a lot of time developing in your professional field, so you need more intensive reading and in-depth reading.

In fact, when doing intensive reading training for some books, these thinking methods may be automatically used when doing other reading. Of course, this only means that you can do this when your child is growing up. If you are determined to master knowledge in an unfamiliar field, you must master all the knowledge points. It is recommended to take detailed notes and mind maps. If it is reading during the child's growth, it is not recommended that the child make too many notes or mental maps.

When making a bibliography, we will consider including all categories, such as biology, plants, chemistry, architecture and transportation, and put them all in the bibliography as much as possible, but I think this about my children: people are all around the clock, and you can't do everything.

So, if a child is willing to spend more time on one category, I think he can spend more time on it. Maybe he will be a very in-depth researcher in this field, and the rest need not be balanced. Some children did well in World War II, while others did well in physics. This is a very good thing.

Of course, what I'm saying here is that they will spend more time reading books in these fields that they are interested in, but that doesn't mean they are not interested in any other subjects and don't need to read anything. Let them have more contact, and if they are interested, they can devote more energy without deliberately following the proportional structure. Besides, some parents say that their children have no special interests. Is this not good?

In fact, there is no need to worry, because I see that this parent's child is nine years old, and his age is at the stage of widely knowing the world. Not every child can have his own special interests at an early age. It is normal for children to read everything if they don't have their own special interests.

Judging from children's own understanding of the world and the types of reading materials we can provide, I think we all have sufficient reasons to provide children with these diverse reading materials that contain everything in the world (knowledge, popular science or non-fiction).

Finally, I want to quote a sentence as the end of my sharing today: exploring the origin of things-the school motto of London School of Economics and Political Science.