Billy Bot and the Super Citizens: are you ready for a great, new adventure?
Il nuovo corso di inglese per la Scuola primaria
Who or what is Billy Bot? Billy Bot is a robot, the main character of the new primary English coursebook, Billy Bot – Stories for Super Citizens, by Frances Foster and Brunel Brown.
Giulia Abbiati
Billy Bot – Stories for Super Citizens is an all-new English primary coursebook based on a methodology that guides children to progressively acquire the new language through many different activities and approaches. Storytelling plays a central role in this new project. Right from the beginning, in level 1, there are many stories, both traditional and brand new, written and adapted to be loved by children and to help them grow as Super Citizens, as values and emotions are among the main features in the stories.
The background story involves children in a fun and motivating story: the characters grow up during the five years of primary school, just as pupils do: this will keep the children’s attention focused on the story. The characters in the dialogues at the beginning of the unit and in the stories at the end of each unit face everyday problems that introduce important themes such as the Global Goals and the UN Agenda 2030, citizenship, dealing with emotions, values and more.
The methodology based on Visual English is a brand new feature: all the language introduced is shown in coloured blocks so that children can become familiar with the process of sentence building in English even before beginning to study grammar. This will help children visualize the language and the structures, making it easier for them to remember the new language.
One word we like to use when describing this new project is HAPPY: it’s a HAPPY BOOK! It’s happy because it’s colourful, it’s engaging and fun for the children to use; it’s full of wonderful illustrations and, starting from level 3, we have introduced more photographs, to bring the outside world closer to the children. But that’s not all: Billy Bot – Stories for Super Citizens also provides many fun and happy songs to sing along to. And there are rhymes, chants and listening exercises that will enhance the children’s pronunciation skills, not to mention the many videos that accompany each unit. These include: a lexis slideshow for each opening spread, an animated version of the dialogues, a Visual English video, not to mention a selection of civiltà videos.
What else? Besides the main features, there are also many new and wonderful extra materials for teachers and students.
For the students: Festival Crafts for Kids and the Super Photo Dictionary (with lexis from year 1 to year 5) are included in the pack for the first year. From level 2, an Easy Practice booklet with a lot of extra practice and consolidation exercises. From the second to the fifth year, children will also receive a Graded Reader: an adapted version of a traditional story with audio and wonderful illustrations: The Frog Prince, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Wizard of Oz, The Canterville Ghost.
Along with Student’s Book 4, children will also receive a visual grammar book My Super Active Grammar, with easy and visual explanations, charts and consolidation.
Along with Student’s Book 4, children will also receive a visual grammar book My Super Active Grammar, with easy and visual explanations, charts and consolidation.
Our authors, Frances Foster e Brunel Brown, have always put the student at the centre of their methodological approach, side by side with the most useful and up-to-date resources for teaching English which take different learning, and teaching, styles into account. These represent tried and tested experience of the last 20 years of working as, with and for Primary teachers.
Click on this link to ‘meet’ Frances and Brunel presenting their Billy Bot – Stories for Super Citizens project >>.
Billy Bot - Stories for Super Citizens has the important objective of teaching children all four skills and to help teachers programme their work in different ways:
- horizontally: with cross-curricular topics and themes, thanks to pages dedicated to CLIL activities, citizenship, tips and ideas that are also common to languages and computational thinking areas;
- vertically: helping children develop linguistic and cross-curricular competences that will grow with them in primary school and will prepare them well for secondary school.
Flash Card Happiness
Flash Card Anger
Flash Card Fear
Flash Card Sadness
Flash Card Worry
Teacher’s Books also provide a section dedicated to the new system of valutazione, as this is a very important topic at the moment. You will find a theoretical introduction followed by pre-filled charts with examples of evaluation both on the objectives from the Indicazioni Ministeriali and on each unit’s objectives in order to help teachers face this new issue with minimun effort.
And this is not all: Billy Bot also gives you 3 virtual ‘bags’ full of extra materials that you can use with your pupils!
So, are you ready for a new adventure? Billy Bot can’t wait to have you onboard!
