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 3
In Starlight 3, we follow the adventures of the characters Jeb, June, Rory and Rose, who are students at The Starlight School.
In the Starter Unit story, our characters’ teacher, Miss Snow, tells the class that they must prepare a special summer show. She gives out four magic tools to help the children. June has a magic microphone to sing  songs, Rory has a magic pen to write stories, Jeb has a magic laptop to find out things on the Internet, and Rose has a magic book. At the beginning of each unit, Rose opens her magic book to reveal a fictional  location which sets the scene for the unit. The first vocabulary set is presented in the context of this location with a song. The unit theme continues in the illustrated story of the unit and subsequent lessons. We join  either Jeb, June, Rory or Rose as they present a lesson which is appropriate to their magic tool. Rory presents the unit story in Rory’s Story. June presents a song in June’s Tune. Rose presents cross- curricular infomation in Rose Knows about... in the CLIL lesson, and Jeb brings a value to life from his laptop in Jeb’s Value. The preparations for the summer show are told in the Revision Stories where we see the  four characters preparing the costumes, the scenery and resolving problems along the way. 
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 3 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, hants,  stories, and texts also helps the children internalize the language and expose them to native speaker pronunciation.
Speaking
In Starlight 3 speaking practice builds carefully and effectively from simple sentence-level production to longer spoken discourse. 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
Students learning English need to be able to make progress quickly with reading and writing. Starlight 3 takes a very systematic approach to reading and writing to allow this to happen. 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 and paragraph level to writing at sentence  and paragraph 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 and paragraph 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 3, 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 3, all the core vocabulary and grammar of the unit is revised in the Review lesson. The Review Lesson also includes a chance for  students to reflect on their own learning in a ‘What About You?’ section where they answer a number of questions around the unit topic in a personalized way.