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Cheryl Mcloughlin 

Dynamic, easy-to-follow, and highly visual, \nEnglish for Everyone\n is a language course designed to help anyone to learn English. In this interview, we caught up with Cheryl Mcloughlin, who has been using the \nBeginner\n and \nIntermediate\n levels to teach English at the Refugee Council’s Youth Development Project and the Red Cross’ Young Refugees project.\nAs an English teacher for teenage refugees, Cheryl Mcloughlin had three basic criteria in her search for classroom materials: simplicity, user-friendliness, and utility for navigating everyday life. Yet, all the books she could find at a beginners’ level seemed to be aimed at young, primary-school-level children—highly unsuited to her fourteen- to eighteen-year-old students. A colleague pointed her in the direction of DK’s \nEnglish for Everyone\n books when they were recommended by another refugee project in the Red Cross. Three years later, the series has become a mainstay in her classes for both the Red Cross and the Refugee Council.\nOne of key advantages of the series is that, compared to other resources Cheryl had looked at, \nEnglish for Everyone\n “just feels more practical and relevant to what [the students] need—because, at the end of the day, it’s just the basic things: going into a shop, exchanging polite conversation, going to the doctor, trying to fill out stuff for college, thinking about jobs . . .” Her students often arrive in the country alone, and many are placed in semi-independent living situations that leave them on their own much of the time. With \nEnglish for Everyone\n, Cheryl’s classes have become something of a lifeline in helping these students to gain the confidence to get out into the community and manage day-to-day life in a brand new culture. \n\nAccessibility, for beginners and more advanced students alike, has been another important factor in the series’ success with the classes. The shift to Zoom classes during the height of COVID-19 proved a little chaotic, as classes got larger and everyone adjusted to the challenges of online learning; “but, to be honest, I think the book works well with both [forms of learning]—I find it’s just so well laid out.” Especially when the English levels in a given class are more mixed, Cheryl has found that “it’s just really manageable, with the little sections . . . you can skip to the harder ones, [or] for the guys that are struggling you can do the filling-in-the-gaps and stuff like that.” The use of clear, illustrative graphics and the straightforward structure of the chapters help, too, while the content strikes a good balance between grammar and vocabulary elements. And, she says, “the other thing that’s really useful . . . is the audio, which is really easy to access . . . In terms of just getting on, it’s just so straightforward, it’s fantastic, just the way it’s set up.” \n\nCheryl notes, too, that the flexibility inherent in the \nEnglish for Everyone \ncourse makes it especially well suited to the drop-in nature of her classes. Each of her sessions tends to have a few students who attend regularly and benefit from working their way steadily through the chapters; but, for those students that can’t make it every time, “it doesn’t really matter that they’ve missed the bits in the middle.” Using \nEnglish for Everyone\n, she has found that “the units work quite well as a standalone kind of thing . . . it doesn’t matter if they haven’t done sections four, five and six, they can still access it, and it’s still appropriate and relevant.” \n\nAll practicalities aside, Cheryl’s students clearly enjoy her classes and working with the \nEnglish for Everyone \n books. “Ninety-nine percent of the students I’ve had over the last three years are just so ambitious. They all really want to learn, you know; you give them stuff to do, and they do it.” Part of that may be to do with the “useful but light-hearted” nature of the classes: “It’s about just trying to be happy and positive and fun as well; and I think, you know, the books are not too heavy.” Looking to the future, Cheryl is eager to explore more of the \nEnglish for Everyone \nseries. Her current intermediate-level class has “plough[ed] through” the corresponding book, and the next step, she thinks, will have to be the \nAdvanced\n course.

English for Everyone: Lessons in everyday language for young refugees

Mark Soriano 

\n\nHistory: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day\n is a dynamic visual encyclopedia of world events that explores the fascinating story of the human race and more than 6 million years of global history. Mark Soriano, Leader MS and HS History Content, explains how Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City is implementing this title as part of their curriculum for middle school students.\nWe undertook a redesign of our schools’ history program and we decided to move the study of world history into middle school, while moving American history into high school. We were concerned with finding the right “textbook” to support students in their studies. It is difficult to find a history book for middle school which supports our pedagogy, which is inquiry-based learning. The books are either not appropriate for the age range or they are super boring with columns of text and unengaging, small black-and-white photographs.\nWe were thrilled when we stumbled across DK’s \nHistory: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day\n, which we call “Smithsonian History,” as it covers the chronology as we need it to be; it covers all the topics in one- or two-page spreads, and the artwork of maps, pictures, and photographs is really engaging.\nStudents are keeping the book at home so that they can read and refer to it as part of their homework assignments. We tend to assign two to five pages of reading a night, and students are asked to identify the key terms, write a summary paragraph of what they have read, and complete an activity centered on the visual material—the most exciting part!\nThe artwork is a great leveler. Even parents who don’t know much about history can ask their children to explain what is in the picture or to analyze the image. Parents like to see what kids are doing, and the artwork in this book is so engaging, it draws you in. At the start of the school year, we sent home guidance to parents on how to support their children in their studies by engaging in discussions about the artwork. One of my favorite spreads is the coverage of The Age of Exploration. The coverage of Indigenous Peoples in particular is very progressive compared to other texts.\n\n\n\n\n\nBefore adopting DK’s \nHistory \nfor this course, we got input from our schools’ review groups, including the school curriculum writers, and our Grade 5 parents’ groups. The final approval came from Eva Moskowitz, our CEO, who is a History PhD and takes a very personal interest in the schools’ history curriculum and resourcing. So far, the introduction of DK’s \nHistory\n has been a great success; it gets the kids engaged with the content and excited about learning, which frees up classroom time for dynamic discussions and debate about what students have read. Teachers are really excited that the inclusion of this new text supports their efforts to make class time focused on inquiry and exploration. 

How Success Academy Is Using DK’s History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day

Katherine Fedor

\nEnglish for Everyone\n is a smart, simple, and highly visual language course designed to help anyone of any starting level to learn English. Though originally created for learners self-studying at home, ESL teacher Katherine Fedor of Virginia Beach City Public Schools has seen great success in using the series as a classroom resource for children learning English as a second language. We spoke with her to find out more.\nWhen veteran teacher Katherine Fedor discovered DK’s \nEnglish for Everyone\n \nseries online two years ago, it quickly became an invaluable resource in her classroom. With young learners from kindergarten to fifth grade coming to her from over 70 different countries of origin—all with different language-learning needs and a number of them having no knowledge of English at all—Katherine was looking for a resource that could cover all the fundamental areas in the English language continuum and help her pupils build a strong foundation. The \nEnglish for Everyone \nbooks caught her eye because the series was the only one she could find that taught English “as a language.”\n\n

English For Everyone: Teaching a class with different home languages successfully

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