My Little Island is a three-level programme 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 programme 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 programme takes children on an exciting fantasy-island adventure with characters their own age. The programme 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 programme. 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 programme’s mascot (a puppet), who appears throughout the programme and supports children as they learn (when he isn’t getting into mischief!). The programme 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 programme with increasing emphasis in later levels.