Knowledge Ahead - 8

Orient Longman’s Ahead series of School textbooks command tremendous respect among teachers and students because of their emphasis on: • concept formation rather than on merely providing information. • up-to-date knowledge and stimulation of the thinking process. • relevance and practical applications. • teacher-and-student-friendly text through attractive page layout, very simple language and simplified illustrations. In this world of exploding knowledge imparting ‘encapsulated information’ to the children to be memorized has lost its meaning. In fact, by the time children of today become adults memory skills may well become outdated! Accordingly ‘general knowledge’as taught in schools must also change focus. It must aim at empowering the children to find out for themselves, by inculcating research skills, and developing creativity and problem solving skills to help children solve the complex life problems they will face when they step out into the world as adults. This is the change in foucs that Knowledge Ahead aims at • Links topics to everyday life of the children to create interest and increase understanding • Uses what the children have learnt in other subjects as a springboard, and builds on it, rather than repeat what they have already studied. • Imparts a sense of completeness to the information provided by giving background and related material, so that the information is no longer a collection of isolated facts to be memorized. • Includes information of the kind that the children will not easily get from written sources. • Encourages children to use the most powerful information tool of today – the Internet – to find out for themselves. • Devotes a special section to creativity and problem solving in Books 1-5