Media

The annual Reading Battle Award Presentation Ceremony was held today (June 28) by the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The theme for this year’s Award Ceremony is “Authors of Tomorrow”.

Two guest speakers shared their experience in conducting an annual writing workshop aimed at guiding high performing primary school students, as identified through the award-winning e-learning platform – Reading Battle, in authoring their own storybooks. Dr Samuel Chu, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU, and the founder of the Reading Battle, has dedicated his research efforts to understanding e-learning, with a focus on gamification, reading, and 21st century skills. Ms Helen Chan, Senior Teacher and Teacher Librarian at Lam Tin Methodist Primary School, is an experienced educator in promoting reading and writing in children.

Reading and writing abilities are closely related to one's future career and success. Many adults may find it difficult to further improve their reading and writing skills. As such, it is imperative that a nurturing environment is provided to children at an early age to develop these skills. The annual writing workshop entitled “Fostering Future Authors”, began in the 2017-18 academic year, aims to provide motivation for students to develop these skills and an interest in reading and writing.

At the workshops, a team from the Faculty of Education, HKU, guided primary school students in writing and creating their own audio e-books with pictures on an online platform. The students were further asked to formulate reading comprehension questions for their e-books to deepen their understanding of story writing.

Over 20 “Little Authors” had joined the inaugural “Fostering Future Authors” workshop, and 14 of them completed the journey to create 14 children’s e-books. In only seven months, these stories have been read online for more than 45,000 times. Highly rated books include "Mr Brain and Ms Hand", written by "Little Author" Chung Pui-chi, and "Big Teddy and Little Dragon’s Adventure in the Toy Store" by another “Little Author” Hayden Lau, each winning over 1,700 “likes” from fellow primary school students. The “Little Authors”-created reading comprehension questions have been answered for more than 400,000 times. The best-received “Little Authors” shared their writing journey at the ceremony.

For media enquiries, please contact Dr Charmaine Fung (Tel: 9237 1278 / email: fungc@hku.hk); or Mr Sunny Chan (Tel: 6655 2557 / email: schancy@hku.hk), , Faculty of Education, HKU.