Product Summery
Introduction
About Starlight
Starlight is a six-level course for children learning English.The course combines a rich grammar and vocabulary syllabus with fresh, modern visual appeal and all the rich,imaginative context of a true story-based course.The context for the Starlight course is The Starlight School and the Starlight characters are all school students. In each cycle we experience the daily life and learning of a different age group of student characters. And just as they are given a chance to shine, students learning English with Starlight are also inspired to flourish.
Starlight 2
In Starlight 2, we follow the adventures of the characters Monty and Lola, who are both students at The Starlight School.In Starlight 1, Monty and Lola discover that the library in their classroom is magic. They have only to enter Our Library and open a book to find themselves transported into a fascinating, fictional world. Each unit that follows begins with either Monty or Lola in a different fictional location.The location is determined by the book they open, and they are always dressed accordingly. For example, Monty becomes a park ranger in Unit 1 and Lola a drummer in Unit 2. This concept can be brought to life in the classroom with the use of the flashcard pocket. The flashcard of Monty or Lola in their everyday clothes is placed into the flashcard pocket on the library side, and a flashcard of Monty or Lola in costume, is pulled out of the magic library side.The story book Monty and Lola open in the library is then presented as the illustrated story of the unit and sets the theme for the subsequent lessons, before one of them re-enters the library and a whole new unit of adventures begins. The unit stories represent the different story books Monty and Lola find and open in Our Library. The stories have a rich and varied range of contexts, characters and genres to appeal to the interests of every child in the class.
Engage—Practice—Communicate
The underlying approach to Starlight is about motivating students with interesting topics and relevant language,systematically developing their language abilities and skills,and providing lots of opportunities to communicate. Every lesson follows the Engage—Practice—Communicate approach with clear stages, highlighted in the teaching notes.
Engage
It is important to motivate students, to activate their existing knowledge and to create an environment in which they want to learn. This is done in Starlight through the visual vocabulary presentation, imaginative stories with story cards and activities that encourage creativity and critical thinking.
Practice
Students need plenty of opportunities to practice new language using a variety of contexts and activities. Familiar grammar structures are used to help students explore new vocabulary and familiar words to provide support for students practicing new structures.
Communicate
The main aim of learning a language is being able to communicate, and Starlight provides lots of opportunities (both guided and open) for students to communicate in a collaborative fashion, through role-plays, information gap activities and personalised speaking in groups and pairs.
Stories
As a story-based course, Starlight has storytelling at the very core of its methodology. The value of stories is widely recognized in Primary English Language Teaching. Children come to the primary classroom already equipped with an understanding of stories and the way they work. This familiarity with narrative conventions, as well as an expectation of the pleasure and enjoyment that stories bring, empowers them with confidence and motivation from the outset — an ideal starting point for students learning English at this level.In addition, stories are the perfect vehicle for the presentation of new language structures, due to the meaningful, visually supportive and very immediate context they naturally provide. The emphasis on stories is also invaluable in the development of children’s literacy skills, as it furthers familiarity and understanding of the functions of text, as well as promoting a positive attitude to books and reading, which is key to academic success.Stories are a way of immersing children in the target culture,which is a significant part of learning a foreign language and of considerable benefit to children preparing to sit external exams. They are also a useful framework for developing 21st Century Skills, particularly raising awareness with regard to the target culture, as well as inter-curricular themes and citizenship.
Vocabulary and grammar
Starlight incorporates a greater amount of vocabulary and a wider range of grammatical structures than would be expected in a mainstream English language course. The language syllabus for Starlight 1 to Starlight 6 has been designed in line with the syllabus of the Cambridge English: Young Learners and the Cambridge English: Key (KET for schools) examinations. At the same time, equal emphasis has been placed on the importance of teaching a practical, well-balanced, high frequency language syllabus, which is appropriate for all children learning English at this level.
Skills
Starlight has an integrated approach to language and skills development. Through a variety of enjoyable tasks with a very systematic approach, the children progress from listening practice to speaking practice, from speaking practice to reading practice and from reading practice to writing practice.Over the Starlight series as a whole, care has also been taken to ensure that children preparing for Cambridge English examinations develop the required level of skills competency, as well as familiarity with examination task types.
Listening
Starlight 2 recognises the particular importance of listening in the early years of language learning. All new language is presented with clear models on the Audio CD for aural recognition. Listening to songs, chants, stories, and texts also helps the children internalize the language and expose them to native speaker pronunciation.
Speaking
In Starlight 2 speaking practice builds carefully and effectively from simple word-level production to sentence-level production and above. Attention is also paid to the development of both accuracy and fluency. Spoken accuracy is developed through activities which encourage repetition following a model provided on the Audio CDs, as well as through songs and chants, the retelling of stories and controlled practice games. The controlled practice games afford children plenty of opportunity for repetition of core language within a clearly defined framework.
Reading and writing
In Starlight 2 new language is always practiced aurally and orally before the children are asked to read and write. Students begin by reading at word level.Only once they have practiced reading new words, do they progress to writing them. They then read these new words within sentences, and gradually progress from reading at sentence level to writing at sentence level. This process occurs throughout each unit, with new vocabulary and grammar presented and practiced. As the unit progresses, the amount of guidance and scaffolding for writing steadily decreases, for example from gap fill completion exercises to whole sentence writing. In this way the children grow in confidence and independence with regard to their writing.
External examinations for young learners
At this level of English language learning, many young learners in Primary 1 to Primary 6 are entered for external examinations: The Starlight series aims to prepare students to sit Starters by the end of Starlight 2, Movers by the end of Starlight 4 and Key for schools examination (KET) by the end of Starlight 6.
Culture
The Culture lessons throughout the Starlight series raise the children’s awareness of being part of a global community by helping them to develop an awareness of the people around them, as well as a stronger understanding of their own culture.
Phonics
Starlight has developed a system which employs aspects of phonics teaching which are of benefit to primary children learning English, making sure that they are fully adapted to the children’s needs. Like the UK and USA phonics system for native speakers, the Phonics lessons in Starlight teach children skills to help them to read better in English.
Songs and chants
Songs are an invaluable way of practicing new language, as they naturally include plenty of repetition and greatly aid memory through their use of rhythm. These cover a wide variety of musical genres, specifically designed to encompass the diverse range of musical styles children enjoy in the real world.
Cross-curricular focus
The Starlight course embraces the opportunity to transfer useful, practical English language to a range of different areas of the curriculum including art, music, science, geography, history and math. The areas chosen reflect and build on the kind of subject matter that the students are working with in other classes.
Values and citizenship
Learning about values is a key feature of the Starlight series as a whole. In Starlight 2, the values integrate socio-cultural aspects of learning and helps to promote self-esteem, as well as positive attitudes, tolerance and respect towards others. Students experience the benefit of the unit value through the development of the project.
Review
Systematic recycling of all core language takes place in every unit. In Starlight 2, all the core vocabulary and grammar of the unit is revised in the Review lesson. Monty and Lola present the review material in an entertaining way with a maze activity and fun activities, designed to elicit all the unit language from the children.