Speaker: Adriana Alcalá, Senior Commissioning Editor
How do you ensure that Share with Friends! is as easy to teach with as it is to learn from?
Adriana Alcalá: We kept what teachers loved the most about the original Share It! and managed to enhance lessons without adding extra time or work. Teachers should feel reassured that the flow of the lessons is enhanced, lessons are more intuitive and instructions are more explicit. And for students, we made sure the Student's Book is colorful, fun, motivating and full of opportunities to speak and share with friends.
What’s your favorite update in Share with Friends! and why?
Adriana Alcalá: There are so many but we have new endearing story videos, updated photos, beautiful illustrated, new progress tracker games, new characters, enhanced phonics activities, aiming at improving the pronunciation of English words and much more.
What strategies did you use to make the grammar support and scaffolding even more effective for teachers to use in class?
Adriana Alcalá: We provided different practice exercises and free opportunities for students to build step by step the understanding of the language. Thus making it easier for teachers to reinforce the grammar concepts.
In your opinion, how does the course help teachers get shy students to participate more in class?
Adriana Alcalá: There are many different types of activities and classroom layouts that any child can benefit from, starting with the student profile in the student's book. Not only students can benefit from it, but also teachers can learn more about what works best for each student. For example, there is an activity presented by Raya - one of the new characters, at the very opening of each unit, which is intended as a whole class activity. There are projects that are team activities perfect for curious kids or children who like to research and also we have the progress trackers which is the progress tracker, which is a fun review that can be done individually or in teams. This new edition was designed to take all children into account.
Which Sharepal character is your personal favorite and why?
Adriana Alcalá: Tween Raya is my favorite character in the world. In levels five and six, Raya, one of the new characters, has grown up and it shows not only her style of hair or her clothes, but in the type of questions she asks. I love to think that her curiosity mirrors that of our students.
