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Step2 Children’s Whole Language Reading
For more detail :
Magic Box Level 1 – 8
Each level includes 5 coloured small books (24 pages/book), 15 stories in total + 1 Coloured Activity Book + 1 VCD + 1 audio CD + flash cards)
The Magic Box supports parents to be good English teachers as they reach out for ways to help their children at home.
The Magic Box provides a series of experiences for children, which will help them learn reading and writing English in an enjoyable way.
Some viewing guidelines for parent and child to make the most out of viewing The Magic Box:
Values. Enjoyable and supportive, helping children to learn to read by themselves and provide success for all.
Familiar situations. The 120 stories written in a language that children expect to hear in their everyday world, with a wide range of universal themes that appeals to children – such as family, animals, food, weather, space, clothes and toys etc
Real stories. These are real stories with a beginning and an end, rather than a series of unrelated captions.
Structure. The 120 repetitive stories totalling 7,492 words are graded in difficulty from one-word caption in the first episode to three or four lines of text per page in later episodes. The 721 carefully selected vocabularies are introduced progressively and reintroduced in later episodes. Also, there is a gradual increase in sentence length and complexity of sentence structure.
Illustrations.The text on each page is accompanied by vivid illustrations, which provide clues to read the words.
The Magic Box makes good use of the advantages of captioned VCD, CD and pattern stories, which help successful learning. For example:
Reading aloud. Each story is introduced before being read at least twice in a ‘shared reading’ format, with ample opportunity for interaction with the children.
Interaction. This is promoted by pausing and asking children to predict what the next word (or words) will be by using devices such as highlighting of letters and words, linking sounds, words and pictures; asking what will happen in a story or on the next page; and involving children in a question-and-answer conversation on the first reading of a story (each story has two readings).
Remembered message. Reading the ‘first-read’ of the story as a straight read and then using this knowledge – the remembered message – to predict what the text on each page will be.
Predictable patterns. The structures of the stories are repetitive and predictable. For example, a one-line sentence pattern may be repeated throughout a story with only one word changed. Once children understand how the structure works, they can use patterns, along with the illustrations and alphabet clues, to read the stories successfully.
Activity books. The 120 meaningful and interesting patterned stories are divided into eight levels. Each level has one activity book. In the activities, children reinforce their understanding of the words using picture clues, and then they will write the words. Later, with the help of their own drawing and the repetitive simple sentence structure, children can start model writing at an early age.
Research done in New Zealand and New York showed that the children learning with The Magic Box made definite gains both in sight words and on the running records.
