The Little leaner Library – Kindergarten

The process of teaching any language revolves around two acts: the process of absorbing information and the process of activating and using that information. Four skills are involved in these acts. Reading and listening are the act of absorbing this information. Speaking and writing are the act of using this information.

This textbook is part of a series of English Language textbooks developed expressly to deliver appropriate and relevant instruction to Pakistani students. Its content is richly complex and intended to engage students, and to make reading, the primary act of absorbing information, enjoyable. Accordingly, the texts provided are mostly original, culturally relevant, and age-appropriate texts, or folk tales from Asia, rewritten for this audience.

The Components

These textbooks are based on three components:

1. Reading matter
2. Exercises and activities
3. Teacher’s Notes

Each unit covers four language verticals: reading, writing, speaking, and technical or formal lexical aspects of the language (grammar, punctuation, syntax). The mainstay of each chapter is the reading material, which has been used, as much as possible, to inform the activities in each subsequent vertical of the unit. The greatest emphasis is on reading and writing. While we have developed activities and provided explanations for the different grammatical concepts required by the Single National Curriculum, these are less important than encouraging students to read. Comprehension passages and activities developed around these are the most effective tool to learn a language.

All the passages are densely packed with pre-, post-, and while-reading activities accompanied by notes that help teachers make the most of the material provided. The varied question banks target higher-order thinking skills in a measured, systematic process. The varieties of exercises and the teacher’s notes are designed to build upon students’ prior knowledge and previous chapters. It would be best practice, therefore, to follow the textbooks in the sequence they have been ordered.

The exercises in each vertical (including the comprehension passages) take into account multiple types of learners, incorporating visual and kinaesthetic learning styles alongside linguistic learners. We have also provided teacher’s notes embedded into the textbooks so that teachers may extract as much value out of the textbooks as the students may.

These textbooks closely follow the Single National Curriculum. The SNC’s SLOs and themes have been incorporated into the series, taking into account the age-levels of each textbook.