Hathaway Education is a new ELT content licensor, with a mission to create true innovation in language education. It has skillfully-crafted a series of new and original graded readers along with supplemental materials with a specific focus on actual learner needs and identities. Hathaway’s Graded Readers will launch in late 2020.
Hathaway Education Graded Readers – our rationale
Existing ELT graded readers cover a very broad range of subjects for just about every language learning level. However, there is a distinct lack of diversity in theme and content, which is striking given that graded reader users represent a multitude of cultures, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds.
Hathaway Education Graded Readers address this lack of diversity by breaking cultural barriers and emphasizing that people don’t see themselves the way others see them. They do this by:
- Identifying and embracing differences among cultures
- Including diverse and multi-ethnic main characters told from their own perspectives
- Presenting various social practices, values, and belief systems
- Making personal connections with the stories
- Noting the external differences and similarities that define people’s lives
- Retelling classical or global tales from a fresh and 21stcentury approach
- Creating bold and original fictionalized stories
Their themes include:
- Overcoming obstacles, conflict resolution, adversity, courage, determination, dreams and aspirations, identity/self-esteem, persistence, gender expectations, socio-economic bias, gender equality,
- Science and nature, geography, world history, sports
- Physical (dis)abilities, learning (dis)abilities, learning English, bilingualism
Support package and ancillaries:
Accompanying each reader is a full suite of workbooks, teacher’s books, and audio versions, to help students and parents enjoy them at home, and teachers to facilitate language learning in class or online.
Hathaway Graded Readers are aligned with CEFR levels and lexile standards, and the Global Scale of English (GSE), which makes it easy for teachers to select the right material for their classes. They fall on and within the CEFR A1 – A2 range.
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Controlled Reading: Stories told with level-appropriate lists of words and sentences to build reading confidence.
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Guided Reading: Engaging stories for teacher-assisted and small group reading.
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Supported Reading: Stories that provide opportunities for readers to practice the reading skills they are learning often with a partner.
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Independent Reading: Stories that provide opportunities for readers to apply their reading skills independently at their own pace.
Hathaway Education is named after William Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway. Her house is less than a mile away from Westchester Publishing Services UK’s office in Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, UK.
Click here to learn about licensing Hathaway Education Graded Readers and ancillaries.
Hathaway Education is a trading name of Westchester Publishing Services UK Ltd, a sister company of Westchester Education Services.
Both WPSUK Ltd and WES and divisions of employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services LLC, founded in 1969.