The second part of the introduction to Millie.

Multi-sensory approach

All children are different and learn in different ways. This is why it’s important to engage all the senses and use a variety of techniques. We encourage teachers to use sounds, music, pictures and other visual aids (including real objects that the children can touch and smell). It’s also important to make use of the children’s natural need to move around and incorporate physical movements and mime into any language work. The more opportunities a teacher has to combine the different senses, the better.

Making this important link between listening, speaking and movement, we regularly introduce “action stories”. Here the language which children hear is supported with actions to aid memorisation and to make the activity more enjoyable. The teacher introduces the movements and the children join in. (E.g. PB: U8, L3, pp. 84–85.)

The book and the authors

This is the first book of the Millie series for primary grades. It’s part of the New Millennium English textbook series, which has been designed specifically for secondary schools in Russia. Millie–2 is intended for the second class (first year of study of English), for pupils aged 7–8. These three books have been written by a team of experienced teachers of English working in schools in different regions of Russia (Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, Omsk, Sochi, St Petersburg and Tula).

Our credo

The book represents an innovative approach to language learning, which is truly child-centred. Our emphasis is on fostering positive attitudes to language learning. This means that the units have been created for children to enjoy English and have fun in the classroom, while participating in a variety of activities and games that engage their imagination and curiosity.

This new approach is success-oriented and caters for all learners of all abilities.

Structure and syllabus

The syllabus is topic-based and allows for a natural introduction of new language arising from topics that have been carefully selected to reflect children’s interests at this age. The book contains ten units. Each unit covers six lessons. The first five lessons aim at developing children’s ability to communicate effectively, by using modern English and developing language skills. The last lesson in every unit is devoted to revision of the unit material, together with an episode of a special story, “The Upside-Down World”. All the units have been developed with careful attention to systematic revision and recycling of key language. An additional lesson after every second unit is devoted to a progress check, where children are encouraged to evaluate their own progress.

Children love stories, because they are associated with pleasure. They are used to listening to their mothers and fathers telling them interesting, exciting stories with unexpected endings.

Using stories in the classroom also can be very motivating. In addition, we can use stories for developing and practicing different skills and language for different topics. There’s one more reason why we should use stories. It’s educational. Every story contains a message we’d like to transfer to the listener. There are a lot of opportunities for personalisation: expressing attitudes, comparing with children’s own experience, etc.

Action stories, besides being motivating, versatile and educational, meet children’s demand to be physically active. Children have an insatiable desire to move around. In the classroom we suppress this desire and ask them to sit still, stop fidgeting, fold their arms and not move them. We wrongly assume that unless children are sitting still, looking at the teacher, they are not learning.

The Total Physical Response (TPR) theory suggests that we learn language items most successfully if we associate them with physical movements. The theory contains a series of powerful techniques developed by Dr James Asher linking language to physical movements. The ideas behind TPR are connected with our natural ‘body language’ and the idea of kinaesthetic memory.