English language school in the heart of the Japanese Alps, and English language learners sharing their experiences online. Teachers post regular items about teaching, learning tools, events in the school, their day to day experiences living & working in a foreign country. Students post on whatever takes their fancy - book reports, festivals in home towns, postcards from business trips etc. A little Brit of England in the guts of Japan!
Showing posts with label Super Simple Songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Simple Songs. Show all posts
Started this week's lesson with "Put on your shoes" song...reason being, I wanted to hurry up, hurry up, let's go outside!
A beautiful blue sky, but a bit chilly - makes sense to put on your coat! (A silly idea in summer!)
A simple game I learned from the kids = with a partner, rock/scissors/paper. Loser tags on behind winner. Find another pair, leaders do rock/scissors paper again and repeat until you have one long caterpillar/conga line :)
My take on this = play music at each challenge - I used the 1st half of the Hello song. Everyone joins in anyway because they love the song/know it, and also want to keep warm AND be on the winning team :)
In an earlier class, I played the Walking Walking song - a winner - but everyone ran off or crashed into each other > needed a rethink. This elegant solution, though I say so myself, meant everyone more or less under control, and safe, and in frame :)
If you have a good idea - which I rarely do! - then the smartest thing to do is try to do it again, better...or differently, or backwards...and I have actually seen some young learners trying to use scissors backwards, so bear with me!?
Primary Music Box (CUP) is the starting point for this numeracy activity, to go with the "10 in the Bed" Nursery Rhyme. Obviously, if you have ten or more kids in your class, you can skip this posting! Most language schools, though, usually have up to about 6 in the room - and not a lot of rolling around on the floor room at that!
Confident gluing team
Set about this by numbering the 10 children from the photocopiable resource, and adding a step - using Super Simple Learning's I see something blue/pink songs (still needed two extra verses myself add black & grey). Another excuse to recycle a familiar song/add a 'listening' challenge; depending on the intensity of your colourers, pause between verses?
We made these!
For very young learners this is where the adventure ends, resume next week with the 'bits' cut out - it is very fiddly & time consuming (you'll be re-attaching more arms than it's worth!). For 5/6 year olds plus, should be able to manage the cutting out phase. Do this again with the song so everyone is focused on the same task, not racing away and chopping like fury?
With a small class (2 max!) you might be able to cut as you go yourself, and keep ahead of the next step!
Winking optional!
Whatever glue you use, use sparingly and demonstrate what you want your children to do CLEARLY - prevent eager starters and shut down yapping! Suggest you also do this by nominated colours to prevent chaos/mixed up bits/early finishers/glue everywhere but where it was supposed to be!
Teacher tip; enlarge the set you are making for yourself - fat fingers do not go into the A4 size intended for your nippers!
Count the finger puppets you've all got made now - should be ten! Ask them to find the green/blue orange one etc. Help children getting them all on to digits!
Scissor skills
Press play, and sit together but be able to pause the song at each verse-end; build in a "roll-over" action. Drop ONE finger puppet off and recount the ones remaining. Continue to one ("I'm lonely!" - Give it a hug and ask which colour is left).
Remove table/stand up, have another go without pauses and a 'turn around' action to 'roll over'.
So, think about your class in terms of eye-hand co-ordination (scissors - beware lefties as they will need proper left-handed scissors), how much glue you can cope with on surfaces/are prepared to clean up, time available, for the art/craft bit vs production.
NB Learning the song? Not important - but they'll have heard it & picked up subliminally all lesson if you are good with BGM :)
As many parents of our learners will know, we like to use a lot of songs here at Luna. We particularly love Super Simple Songs and rate them very highly...why not engage at home with your children + animation?!
How did Jim find out about SSS? At an ETJ Bookfair in Tokyo several years ago, Rob Habbick of course, introduced him to Devon Thagard.
I was thinking about drilling last week, and not just because I've got a hole in one of my teeth...and I put the idea into my 'blog about this soon' folder. This folder is just next to 'go home & eat dinner' in my head, and I think I must have been hungry that evening.
I just came across Martin Sketchley's timely post on his really good blog http://www.eltexperiences.com ARGH!!! on drilling which reminded me I had something to say! Martin's post is here by the way, and I especially agree on using music to do the hard work. A couple of the other ideas are new to me, but as our landlord complains about noisy kids (yes, he's a real gas) the full-volume one will have to wait a while. Find Martin on twitter as @ELTExperiences
Devon Thaggard of Super Simple Songs fame is an exponent of using music all the time - warmers up, coolers down (if that is a proper phrase I don't know!), scene shifting & transitioning, background & subliminal input...all of which I like but I find myself up & down like a yo-yo doing that, and so do this once in a while. But I do like to use his songs a lot - check out some of our Audioboos here.
Songs obviously have rhythm, and I enjoy the challenge this brings to my learners as they are in (L1) habit of giving each consonant the same weight, and not elliding (joining words together). Enunciating nicely yes (I hope - they are copying me after all!) but not getting whole chunks out quickly enough or with too much "oomph" (my favourite technical phrase in EFL since my CELTA course!).
The other day I was introducing my YLs to the this/that concept...by way of a song in English Time 1 (OUP). The children already knew the vocab, so simple matter of sticking the flashcards out of arm's reach (around the room, spread out a bit). Having never hear the song before, I just asked them to listen and touch or point at the approriate card. Windmills! Second time was more co-ordinated, and they wanted to join in (fine - not me forcing them too, and they wanted to know what the other words were...OK, I gave them!). They wanted to try again and do better...it's working!
The lyrics for the songs are in the back of the classbooks, which I really like - and they are also indented to identify different 'parts' in back & forth or question/answer chants. This is a flower That's a bird This is a flower That's a tree......
This makes it really easy to assign parts to students individually or in pairs/little groups, reading their 'bit' and hearing the other bit (a slow read through, focusing on actually reading - remembering? - the words). And then press play for a full speed go with all the words in, emphasising the this/that distinction as a 'battle'. Replay quickly with roles switched, and the little troopers will be singing all the way back to home :)
Here is a very impromptu audio grab of our efforts - remember, this was the 1st time they'd come across the song!
My students know the song quite well, but we haven't "done it this way" before. The Super Simple Song is just as it says on the tin, and very suitable for even very young learners. I wanted to make it a bit harder today, so we had a lot of flashcards on the floor, including numbers (more on that in a mo).
Make sure kids aren't going to dive headfirst at each other to get to the cards first (important!). As they hear the song mention colours, touch the card, then find other things that match around the room (having an interesting/colourful room helps a lot!).
After the song, a sit down - sort of! Leaving the flashcards on the floor we played colour bingo. Again, a bit too easy as most children quickly 'get' colours, so I wrote the word (blue, green etc) slowly on the board, asking the children to read the letters to me as I did so (taking a while to get fluent here). "That's it" = cue to go find the flashcard with the matching word - turn it over to reveal the colour. Get back to the table and do the bingo thing.
The actual bingo became a side show against the fun of reading out the words and finding the same spelling quickly.
We played the same game with numbers, and then placed the cards along the chalk board rail under the same (number) word (out of order). We played a "janken game" in teams - start either end of the row of cards, and read the card/say what is on it. When players meet in the middle, they do 'rock/scissors/paper' to decide a winner - who continues on while the other team replaces their player & start at their beginning again. This can get very noisy but is nice and simple, takes very little prep and is monitored by everyone! Weaker ones can go last & see how to do it/get prompting from team etc. I always answer if kids ask me nicely "What's this, please"!
Once we were done with the bingo game, I played another Super Simple Song "Seven Steps" and asked the children to point to the numbers in time to the music. Harder than you think! Remember, on a bingo card all the numbers are in different sequences...guaranteed giggles and re-starts & pleading to do it again (just what I wanted to do, but it was their idea!)
How do you teach colours & numbers after the first time?
She's our very own, properly qualified teacher who has joined us to co-teach our immersion pre-schoolers this year. How come you haven't heard about her yet? She's very good at avoiding the limelight, and very good at looking after our tiny ones. No drama, no shouting, no panic...sensible, organised, and lovely (cute!)
So how are our young gentlemen responding? As you can see, they are already picking flowers! What else are they up to? Well, more or less stopped crying as soon as they enter the building - Eriko's shoulder has been a damp place so far. We have been building stuff - but bizarrely more intent on cleaning stuff up (must be a world first that Super Simple Songs' most popular song is the 'clean up' one?)
We've tried the big guns - our rather large case of Lego: Zoo of Champions! The even larger 'castle' - we can build it like Bob the Builder and it comes down even quicker (and harder!). Magneto things - half the room long.
How about reading a book or doing some drawing, tracing, colouring? Uh uh?! No thank you! Diving into every box that we have within arm's reach and flicking every switch (fan, fish tank, PC, CD player etc? Oh Yes! Chucking things (projector on the wrong shelf) and eating lunch as fast as possible? Grabbing the camera and taking control of the DVD player?
Eriko is super patient and quietly in control of things; it is very reassuring for us that she is very good indeed with little children and does not panic. Her teaching background is quite obvious, too. Quick nappy change? OK. Spilt a drink? OK. Lego everywhere? OK. Having her nose pulled? OK.... I think we got lucky! Why not come and have a look for yourselves?
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeMy own experience at a high school in Japan is that students' own tech is forbidden in the classroom - phones are actually collected up and locked in a cupboard in the teachers' room. I asked if we could engage the students using their phones to write each other messages (in English, as part of our writing course) and was looked at with a mixture of condescension and horror...the foreigner asking extremely dumb questions again variety of look. So, the chances of getting their gadgets out are very remote indeed. And there goes a fabulous opportunity to engage the students on their terms.
Another year of students will graduate without realising the wonderful potential of the technology at their fingertips - beyond gaming and MP3 players. Fail.
Do we use gadgets at Luna? Not as much as I'd like - I would personally like to see all of our learners using apps, songs, audiobooks etc on iPod Touches, but the expense is a big ask in the current economic climate. We do use our own iPhones/iPads to showcase certain apps that we like/recommend, and they are genuinely useful and educational. Sadly, a lot of teachers are technophobic/still got chalk in their hands...
