Review ~ Kid’s Box 2
Great kid’s course: colourful, interesting, fun and full of language – what more could you ask from a kid’s course book that doubles as a preparation course for the Starters level Cambridge young learner’s exam?Like many other good young learner courses this book takes us through the basic language you would expect; colours, family, numbers and alphabet, classroom and household vocabulary, prepositions of place, food, animals, clothes, hobbies and sports. The great thing about this is that the pages are so well designed, with the target language foregrounded as colourful illustrations, that the language is really attractive rather than looking like hard work.
Even without the teacher’s book or the audio CDs it’s easy to see that the pupil’s book offers a lot of language in a very colourful and interesting format. Although the themes are not new, the material is presented in a fresh and modern style which will come as light relief to teachers of young learners who tend to end up word perfect on the old favourites; and also to twenty first century kids who tend to prefer modern looking material to the more traditional and old fashioned looking course books.
Although the main body of this book is in cartoon form, it also features photographs of real children participating in the various activities. Both the photographs and the cartoon characters show children from a range of ethnic backgrounds, and in a variety of geographical locations. This adds a cross curricular strand and global view to the course which can be exploited to extend the material provided.
Kid’s Box 2 is one of a series six books that take the young learner from beginner to A2, or Cambridge Flyers level. It is intended to be suitable for both general English courses and as a preparation course for the Cambridge Starters exam – making it suitable for use in school where not all learners choose to take the exams. As a fun looking book which is teacher friendly, it can’t fail to achieve this intended use.
I really like the DVD, which features real children in real situations- rather than the cartoons so beloved by publishing houses that are guaranteed to drive teachers to distraction after the first fifty viewings. Although the individual tracks are quite short, they lend themselves to considerable follow up and project work. The DVD comes with a small booklet containing teacher’s notes and photocopiable worksheets.
If the activity book and resource pack are of a similar standard to the pupil’s book and DVD that I reviewed, then it would make this an excellent course for eight to eleven year olds. It would also be equally appropriate for intensive and academic year course