Using songs in the classroom

I like songs. I use songs at the lessons. I teach my students. They also like.

thanks. the songs are enjoyable for kids and They like English by songs and the other activities...

Great job; thanks for sharing.  I'm not familiar with this song; can you post a link to it or to the lyrics?  Thank you!!!

Does anyone have any ideas for songs for adult learners rather than children?  Thanks!

Such a fantastic way to motivate!  The results portray the passion and vice-versa! Brilliant promotion, thanks for sharing this...

I like your viewpoints about teaching songs and about the use of action verbs.However,I'd like to add that a choice of songs should be taken into account. For instance "Head,shoulders,knees and toes" song is a wonderful support to introduce new vocabulary about the body. Besides it's motivating !

yes i'd like to but i don't have educational songs do you have?

Great idea. I have used it for teaching when I used to teach in Fiji but here New Zealand, it's not much of a buzz about songs. It does teach a lot of things and also the fluency and confidence to say words. Also makes children creative and keen listeners when asked to insert their own actions. They try to give exact meaning to actions in relation.

Love it. Songs in the classroom. Believe it not. I sometimees ask my students to make a rap about digestive system or read an article with music.

this method is really good i use some other songs in the class rooms for geting rhythm and stress would you mind giving me some liks for latest songs

 Your effort is praiseworty. You are a teacher with genuine interest in teaching. I wish I had the communication key with you.

Really, songs can work effectively when we teach small children. it's like they remember different advertisements and their memory flashes in the moment they hear something familiar and then reflections follow one by one. It is also very nice when children were brought up in love to listening poems from early years. But further on it becomes more difficult to use this teaching device in the classroom, especially when working with students, for example. However, singing songs in English are rather attractive during extracurriculum activities.

I'm quite a new teacher but I've used one or two songs or chants with my adult group and my one to one adult learners. In my group o Ukrainian professionals, we were doing the theme of 'Fit and healthy' (Elementary level), as outside work, they all go to yoga, dance classes or to the gym. After labelling body parts and doing various activities, we did a chant with 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' around the conference room table, which was great fun - my adult group loved it. Then we had a look at the Bruno Mar's song, 'Just the Way you Are' on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk). We watched the video first on mute and the adults had to guess what body part words he would use in the song, then on a worksheet I made a word gap exercise with words like face, lips, hair etc missing for the students to write in as they listened to the song. With the one-to-one students, we look at different songs, trying to link them in with the lesson theme, usually including some vocabulary we've learnt in a particular lesson. I use CDs or even old cassette tapes!. You can do word gaps or give the students a list of words with an extra word that's not in the song. The student ticks off the words as they appear in the song and is left with the extra word. Recently I did the song 'Where you Are' by Whitney Houston, as it was topical and one of my students particularly liked her songs. It has quite simple vocabulary. Hope this helps. Lucy (Cyprus)

I enjoyed watching the video about your classes, Seema. It's amazing how quickly young learners pick up the words and how much they enjoy all the actions. Thank-you.

I have been using songs for a long time and I do think this method is very effective.

Not only students get engaged but also learn a lot.

Halina

please help me,

The speed of my internet is not suitable to let me watch the videos

please put  texts which describe the videos

Hi everybody, who is using songs at lessons!!!  For my students, in our small town in Russia (Sharypovo, Krasnoyarsk krai), it's the one way to hear the native speakers. We hear and sing songs with pleasure, even I haven't an ear for music :-)))

Thanks a lot dear Rob for  excellent topic, I mean, using songs in the classroom is the main motivation for students, kids. I use them very often, and it works greatly! This is called effective teaching and learning. Kids like such kinds of activities, they start remembering things better, they learn everything with great pleasure, and are always interested in learning useful materials, which promote their way of thinking, enhance their scope of knowledge, enlarge the vocabulary, and just cause them to have fun!

Thanks for sharing this experience, it is very educational.

I teach  adult students and sometimes I use songs to help them pronounce and understand the meaning of words.         

I usually have the lyrics writen down and I ask them to read until they pronounce it well enough and understand the meaning as if it were a spoken piece of writing. Once they have mastered the pronunciation (without musical rhythim) then I play the song and ask the students to listen to it withouth reading the lyrics so they can learn from it while it is spoken. Finally they do an exercise in which they listen to the song and read the writing at the same time, in order  to reinforce their learning and the way it is correctly pronounced.

This might not be the best method but it has worked for some of my students. I would like to have a link where I can find some "pedagogical" songs with their lyrics and also I would like to know if there is a better approach to this type of teaching.

Thanks,

Efrain

Hi..thanks Seema for this wonderful video..I am totally convinced with teaching this way..but actually I have no resource to get songs from..so how can I get songs especially I am teaching 8 - 10 years old students.

Thanks again

I like listening to songs to improve my EN

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I really enjoyed watching this video. Thanks for sharing!

There is a book, called 'Music and Song' by Tim Murphey, which is very useful for listening and singing activities. Teachers can adapt some ideas from that book and use them during their lessons.

When working with teens and adults, I try to choose familiar songs which they can relate to. Here are some fun exercises:

Go around the room and have each person read one word of the song in sequence. A great way to keep everyone's attention.

Have someone or several people do a dramatic reading of the song.

Stage a video clip of the song.

Write an additional verse to the song.

Many non-native speakers sing along with the radio but mispronounce many words. This is an opportunity to improve their listening and pronunciation skills.

And back to young learners, when one of them tries to remember a word, very often I remind them of a song with a word in it and that helps them remember it.

I often use songs with young ones myself. I've also "invented" mixtures of "loopty loo" and "hokey pokey" with a vaudville style ending. Something young 6 year olds find fun is a cheer: 2,4,6,8 let's do the body shake, hands up, hands down, clap your hands and turn around. Let's do the shake, yeah, let's do the shake.

With older students (8-10 years) I enjoy working with rock songs. I've found old "Police" and "Sting" songs of great help. For example, Message in the Bottle, An Englishman in New York (which usually follows some lessons about American colonisation and the differences in American and British English). I am now thinking about "Walk like an Egyptian" (Bangles) for a class of 9 year olds who are being introduced to the Egyptian period in History. I've also tried "Queen" with pieces of "We will Rock you" and "We are the Champions".

I find they have lots of fun and begin to realize what they are actually singing when and English language song is playing on the radio. It arouses their curiosity and they don't even realize that they're "studying", because they enjoy it so much.

Of course, this goes side to side with traditional textbooks.

I like songs very much