My Little Island 1, Pupil's Book with CD

Eight thematic units focus on presentation and practice of the new vocabulary and language structures. Vocabulary builds throughout the program, children listen to stories with target language; sing songs and say chants; play games, collaborate, and communicate with partners, in small groups, and with the whole class.

My Little Island is a three-level program for teaching English to 3 to 5-year-old children whose first language is not English. It is based on four over-arching beliefs:

1. Realities of the child's world must be at the core of the program and the basis for materials chosen.
2. A learner who is engaged will learn better.
3. Each child is unique in personality, interests, and learning styles and will benefit from materials that reflect this.
4. Successful learning only occurs when skills presented build on each other and are reviewed meaningfully.

This unique and engaging program takes children on an exciting fantasy-island adventure with characters their own age. The program introduces two new characters at each level with whom children can identify. Each level has nine units. After an introductory welcome unit, there are eight thematic units which are recycled and build on each other at each level of the program.

In the Level 1 welcome unit, children meet Kimmy and Timmy, and learn some greetings and actions to use. They also meet Sammy the Squirrel, the program's mascot (a puppet), who appears throughout the program and supports children as they learn (when he isn't getting into mischief!).

The program is designed to help children learn to communicate in English through a four-skills-based approach that builds increasing language proficiency through prereading/reading, prewriting/writing, listening, and speaking lessons and activities.

For example, children start out listening to and looking at picture stories and advance in the upper two levels to reading along with stories that have simple text. Children progress from tracing letters in words to writing words. Listening and speaking skills, which are critical for language learning, are developed throughout the program with increasing emphasis in later levels.