HEROES Teacher's Guide - Book - Page 8
Topics
Unit 1: Family
Stories
Unit 2: In the House
Silly Billy
Where is My Hat?
Unit 3: Going Places
Jamal’s Birthday
The Wheels on the Bus
Unit 4: Friends
Help Your Friends
Mike is Late for School
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numbers
colors
family members
action words
rooms of the house
things in the house
prepositions
modes of transportation
emotions
birthdays
being a friend
in the classroom
Grib and His Frog Family
My Family
5. The Value of Stories
Heroes is a story-based program for young learners of English. The use of “children’s
literature can be an effective and enjoyable way to teach language” (Brown 2004: 4). The
stories provide an authentic contextualized framework through which vocabulary, language
patterns and chunks, as well as emergent reading concepts are illustrated and activated. The
storybooks provide “a springboard for a wide variety of related language learning activities”
(Ellis 2014: 6) that are designed to develop pupils’ language skills. As such, the language that
pupils are taught and exposed to in each unit is reinforced and practiced through the stories.
Stories provide an entertaining and enjoyable language learning tool (González 2010). The
sense of excitement, curiosity, and motivation they invoke enables the young pupil to
acquire language without the stress that might accompany it, making the acquisition process
smoother and less frightening. “Stories are motivating, challenging and enjoyable and can
help develop positive attitudes towards the foreign language, culture and language
learning.” (Ellis 2014: 6). Children want to find meaning in the story; they listen with a
purpose and are motivated to develop comprehension skills such as searching for meaning,
predicting, and hypothesizing.
Pupils with different interests and learning styles can all engage in meaningful learning
through stories. Storytelling is an experience that enables the pupils in the class to share
emotions and encourages social and emotional development alongside language learning.
Stories exercise the imagination, present universal themes, and can be a natural opportunity
to include multidisciplinary material in the English classroom (Ellis 2014).
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