As students complete the four units, they increase their vocabularies, improve comprehension of the elements of a story, practice story retelling and summarizing, and improve oral reading skills. Students begin with the anchor story, where animated characters and key themes such as friendship and truth, are introduced. Working alone, in pairs, or in a group, students help to solve a problem presented in the anchor story by creating a book. Story pictures are sequenced on a storyboard. Teachers can add new words and pronunciations.
Students can create books with text, pictures, music, and their recorded voices.
A drawing program and clip art gallery help students create illustrations. When completed, student books are housed in the Little Planet Library. Students can print their books and check out books written by classmates. A teacher's guide offers ideas for structuring classroom activities in conjunction with the program, provides assessment strategies, and includes form letters to use in communicating with parents. The guide comes in printed form and on a teacher resource CD-ROM which also includes interviews with the collection's creators and a look at Little Planet's Web site.