Get kids excited about reading and writing.

Enter our writing and drawing contest for a chance to win great prizes. Brought to you by Reader’s digest and Weekly Reader and noted children’s author Mary Pope Osborne(The Magic Tree House series).

Prizes:

A $500 U.S. Savings Bond

A library of books (valued at $ 125)

Great LeapFrog prizes including the Tag Reading System

A certificate signed by contest judge Mary Pope Osborne

Your submissions posted on ReadersDigest. com

How to enter

Children aged 5-12 should respond in words and/or pictures to the questions, “Your favourite has jumped out of the book to spend the day with you. Tell us: What happens next?”

One winner will be chosen for each age group：

Ages 5-6：Please submit a drawing no larger than 8.5cm x11cm and an essay written in child’s own words—may be dictated to an adult – of up to 50 words. Essay must be typed or written in blue or black ink.

Ages 7-9: Please submit an essay of up to 150 words. Essay must be typed or written in blue or black ink. Drawings welcome(but optional). Must be no larger than 8.5 cm x 11cm.

Ages 10-12: Please submit an essay of up to 350 words. Essay must be typed or written in blue or black ink. Drawings welcome(but optional). Must be no larger than 8.5 cm x11cm.

Entry should be mailed along with their name, age, mailing address and e-mail address to:

Read, Write, Win! Contest

Reader’s Digest Magazine

260 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10016

All entries must be postmarked by October 31, 2016.

Despite gains in recent years，women still fall behind men in some areas of math achievement，and the question of why has caused heated argument. Now，a study of first and second graders suggests what may be part of the answer：Female primary school teachers who are concerned about their own skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.

Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex，explained Beilock，an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago. Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers. Beilock and her colleagues studied 52 boys and 65 girls in classes taught by 17 different teachers. Ninety percent of the US primary school teachers are women，as was all of those in this study.

Students’ math ability was not related to teachers’ math anxiety at the start of the school year，but at the end of the year，the more anxious teachers were about their own skills，the more likely their female students—but not the boys—were to agree to that “boys are good at math and girls are good at reading”．In addition，the girls who answered that way scored lower on math tests than either the classes’ boys or the girls who had not developed such a belief，the researchers found.

After seeing the results，the researchers recommended that the math requirements for obtaining a primary education teaching degree should be rethought. “If the next generation of teachers，especially primary school teachers，is going to teach their students more effectively，more care needs to be taken to develop both strong math skills and positive math attitudes in these educators,” the researchers wrote.

“Girls who grow up believing females lack math skills wind up avoiding harder math classes. It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers，particularly in science technology,” Beilock said.

The word "OK" is the most frequently spoken all-purpose expression on the planet—and it's turning 176 years old on March 23,2015.The term was born during a 19th-century abbreviation（缩写）craze and went on to international fame with its own hand gesture.

Last year,Henry Nass,a 64-year-old retired English teacher,a New Yorker had spent the last few weeks handing out cards championing "Global OK Day" in advance of the coming anniversary.

"No matter where people are from they use the word 'OK,'but they don't know where it comes from,"says Nass. "The problem is because it's just,you know,OK."

The word is OK,perhaps,but its history is definitely better than average.Late etymologist Allen Walker Read traced the two-letter word to 1839,when editors at the Boston Morning Post signed off on articles as “all correct” with a simple word "OK".

The word made it into print on March 23 of that year,during an article against a rival editor in Providence who had stated wrongly that a band of Bostonians heading to New York would pass through the Rhode Island capital.

"We said not a word about our team passing 'through the city' of Providence,"the Morning Post reported."O.K.—all correct."

The humor of the Providence-Boston joke has been lost to history—but the word OK took off from there,soon connoting（隐含）agreement,acceptance,averageness,quality or likability.

By 1840,it served as a slogan for President Martin Van Buren's unsuccessful reelection campaign."Old Kinderhook is OK,"posters stated,a reference to the eighth president's birthplace and his supporters’ belief in his satisfactory performance.

Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertisers, hoping to sell their products .

'The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people's lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.