Greetings from Globish! Even since the launch date of the New Kids courses, we have been noticing a lot of excitement and classroom engagement. Nonetheless, Coach Development and Globish’s Education team would like to use this opportunity to indicate the differences between Globish for Kids and New Kids courses. 

The focuses of New Kids are: 

Age and Proficiency Level 

As for New Kids, it includes New Kids Pre Level Part 1 & 2, which were developed for students who are true beginners and new to English, or children age 5 and above. As for reference, the highest level of New Kids, which is level 10, is appropriate for students age 15-17 or for those whose language proficiency is approximately B1. The ultimate goal is for the students to finish New Kids Level 10, and for them to be able to continue to General English G4-5. 

*New Kids Level 7-10 is TBA (As of 26 August 2020)

New Kids is partially launched, and more will be launched very soon.

Lesson in Detail

The number of lessons in each New Kids level is 48, same as Globish for Kids. However, we have divided each level into 8 units (6 lessons per one unit), similar to the unit system of Globish Pro. The unit page describes the overall syllabus of that particular unit and the area that the students will be studying. Practice and Evaluation is the last lesson of each unit. ‘Practice and Evaluation’ is different from ‘Review and Practice’ (Globish for Kids) as it will be a formative assessment, in which the coach will give the feedback or evaluate the student’s performance on how well they can achieve the objectives of the unit. 

The pattern of the lesson might look similar to General and Business English, however, in details, the focus is on the students’ learning journey and experiences. 

Learning Activities and Strategies 

New Kids focus on teaching using various strategies and activities.

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• Learning through singing

In the New Kids Pre Levels, Globish includes the ABC Song which is appropriate for beginners in which the link is provided in the Coach Manual. The task is to sing along with the students, to help familiarize the students with the alphabets and pronunciation. 

• Visualization

In psycholinguistics, it is shown that when we think of a word, our brain maps that word with other different words, pictures, translations, and others, as a web of mind. Using pictures helps learners to map new words with their existing knowledge; thus, they can expand their lexicon. So, we add a lot of visuals in the New Kids course and that’s why it contains around 4-5 pages per lesson. 

• Differentiation

One of the most common ways to help young learners develop their critical thinking skills is to encourage them to differentiate. This could be done by ‘compare and contrast’ tasks. Or any other activities which allow them to spot the differences between two concepts, objects, people, etc. For example, seat-sit-stand.

• Gamification

Gamification is a learning approach used to motivate learners and encourage student’s engagement by using games in educational environments. This technique allows learners to enjoy the learning experience which is a very important factor in young learners’ language learning. 

• Inquiry-based Learning

Inquiry-based learning is a learning approach that focuses on the learners’ acts of posting questions and problems. The process usually starts with a discussion. Then, learners generate questions and sometimes hypotheses. Learners investigate, explore, and interpret data and, finally, draw conclusions.

• Interaction with object 

The learners at this age will have a good memory and skill up by interactions. As we have been taught since we were a child to catch, feel, taste, draw things, and we remember those via interactions. For online classes, we can still have activities that provide interactions with objects which could develop their language skills as well as cognitive development. 

We would like to kindly remind you to write reports for students. The coach report for New Kids focuses on students’ performance and areas of improvement, especially for the “Practice and Evaluation” lesson, or the last lesson of each unit.

According to the table, New Kids covers more on the CEFR levels, compared to the old product (Globish for Kids part 1-4), meaning there will be a wider range of students with different English proficiency levels. Globish has been and will always be focusing on students’ proficiency level, which is based on CEFR, in order to categorize and provide the appropriate course and learning experience for them. 

We would like to kindly remind you to review the Coach Manual of each level beforehand. There are different details and objectives for each lesson. We want to make sure that our new materials and Coach Manuals will enhance the teaching and learning experience, as well as the student's learning journey, as much as possible.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback and comment. Please, feel free to share with us via globish.manager@gmail.com or Skype: globish.support. 

Enjoy teaching,