Welcome to the Learning Village!
The Learning Village is an image-based English as an Additional Language (EAL) programme for learners in English-medium schools. It follows a blended approach, with a comprehensive online programme supported by offline, teacher-directed learning. Suitable for learners of any language background, it is also ideal for learners who are not yet literate. The programme is divided into two parts: The Village, for learners aged 6 to 12 years, and The Islands, for learners aged 12 to 18 years.
The programme has three strands. It teaches everyday survival language, helping learners with functional social language and the language of learning. It includes a full phonics programme, leading on to teaching the first 2,000 high frequency words to support learners with decoding the English script. Additionally, it includes academic and technical curriculum language to support learners with accessing the curriculum – primary and secondary – through curriculum content vocabulary and language structures.
The Village and The Islands include:- 10,000+ words and phrases, for speaking, listening, reading and writing
- image-based learning, to assist learners who are unable to read in their mother tongue
- excellent support for Special Educational Needs learners
- techniques to help learners support themselves
- support for blended learning and for self-study
The Village and The Islands adopt a blended approach: the comprehensive online programme is supported by offline, teacher-directed learning and resources.
Online learning
6-14 'The Village'
The Village is designed for learners aged 6 to 12 years. It’s an image-based programme with three learning journeys:- Survival Language: for learners who are new-to-English, covering vocabulary and language structures
- Phonics: teaching reading through sounds. This journey also teaches high frequency words
- Curriculum content: introducing the vocabulary needed for the most requested areas of the school curriculum
Pathways through the journeys are set by the programme and customised by teachers, to ensure that each learner’s individual needs can be met.
11-18 'The Islands'
The Islands is aimed at learners aged from 12 to 18 years. It has a different look and feel to The Village, to appeal to older users. The Islands builds on the learning from The Village to encompass more subject-specific language for the secondary level of education.
The Islands gives learners greater ownership over their learning, introducing them to self-study techniques and encouraging them to customise their own area of the site.
Progressive learning
The Survival language, Phonics and High frequency learning journeys are progressive to ensure the steady scaffolding of language from speaking and listening for meaning to reading and writing. The Curriculum Content learning journey is progressive within topics. Learners or teachers choose topics as they arise in the curriculum to support learners with front loading.
Learn/practise/assess methodology
Learners learn through topics presented in images, audio and text. They practise through scaffolded matching, spelling, sentence ordering exercises and other practice games. They’re assessed at the beginning and end, to track their learning and to support their next steps.
Fun and interactive practice games
The Learning Village is engaging, fun and immersive! Practice games are carefully presented to build learning step by step.
Based on assessment
Detailed assessment is built into the system – teachers can track learners' learning journeys and see how to target their needs. A ‘live learner feed’ gives a lesson-by-lesson breakdown of progress, while weekly reports show overall progress and challenges. The Learning Village is aligned to the CEFR A1-B1, UK EAL proficiency scale & EAL Assessment Framework (A-C), NASSEA (Step 1-5/6) and the New Zealand ELLP matrices (minimal English - stage 2).
Populate your village/islands
Learners make virtual friends as they progress through their learning journeys. Each friend provides a short comprehension exercise, to consolidate learning.
Multi-player games
Our exciting, safe, multi-player game options let students revise learning by playing games against students in their own school – or in the 30+ countries in which the programme operates.
Comprehensive tracking
The programme continually collects data on learners time spent learning, content covered, content they found challenging and progress. Weekly reports give a general overveiw of learner engagement, areas of concern and suggested follow up communications with learners through insite messaging and certificates to acknowledge their work.
Customise your learner's journey
Easily search for and assign lessons you’d like your learners to pre-learn or post-learn, or choose one of the pre-defined progressive learning journeys.
Motivate your learners
Teachers can send messages and rewards to learners, as well as create certificates. Learners use their achievements to upgrade and personalise their own special areas, such as their island, secret hideaway, castle or treehouse.
Create your own lessons
We have a wealth of content for all members to use and encourage teachers to make specific requests for further content and resources. In addition, the programme allows teachers to create their own lessons, on any subject they wish, for their learners to study. Through our Content Creator, images are generated for words teachers wish to focus on – or teachers may upload their own images and record their own audio. This is a valuable tool for those who are faced with a student with a particular gap in their knowledge or who are aiming to cover a very specific area of the curriculum.
Vocabulary lessons
Language structure lessons
Word definition lessons
Text level lessons
Assessment for learning planner & tracker
The assessment for learning planner & tracker is designed to support the planning, teaching and assessment of learner progress.
It allows teachers to choose lessons to be taught and document how the lessons apply to the curriculum or the wider world. The assessment for learning tracker also provides space for teacher judgement and a view of learners' independent progress through the selected lessons. Lessons can also be assigned to Priority lessons groups.
Offline learning
A blended programme
The Village and The Islands provide a blended learning experience, mixing online and offline learning. Independent learning is highly valued, but small-group and individual intervention activities are recognised as being equally important.
The Learning Village therefore provides a wealth of offline resources – and the capacity for teachers to create their own, supporting general differentiation in class and school groups.
Our aim is to keep teachers in the driving seat: they know their learners best and understand the environment in which they are working.
Scaffolded flashcard resources for every lesson
Flashcards are available in various formats for each of the 1,000+ lessons in The Village and The Islands. The time-consuming work of identifying an appropriate image and translation is done for you, with associated games and activities all included.
EAL Scaffolding Resources
Our Scaffolding Resources focus on survival language and curriculum topics. They guide learners from the basic vocabulary needed to access a variety of text types, through to sentence creation based on the learnt vocabulary, then to modelling of the text (which includes the learnt vocabulary and the language structures needed to access the text), to the deconstruction of the text into graphic organisers and finally, into reconstruction of the text.
Role-play resources
Our downloadable, printable role-play resources cover the basics of survival language. Their easy sentence structures form simple conversations for you to practise with your learner.
A blank role-play template is included too – create your own!