UNIT 2: Working with a song

2.3.1 Theory content

Music is a great teaching tool,  it is appealing and able to  connect all cultures and languages. This makes it one of the best and most motivating resources in the classroom, regardless of the age, level  or background of the learner.

Choose a song thinking about the skills you want to check or improve.

Grammar, Vocabulary, topics, critical thinking, creative writing,

2.3.2 Practical Activity

Six steps for making a song the focus of your class

1. Listen to the song or as an alternative, you can show a video clip if you have one. In fact, I strongly recommend it, as it will cater to more learners’ learning preferences.

Ask learners if they’ve heard it before and write some comments, let them enjoy the music.

2. Ask some questions about the title

Here are a couple of examples of the types of questions you can ask:

• ‘What is a ‘jealous guy?’
• ‘What are three things a jealous guy might do?’
• ‘What kinds of jealousy are there?’

You can give possible answers and assign points to the right guess?

Is the boy jealous (a) or is he simply disappointed (b)?

Such questions tend to work really well as conversation starters, so group three or four learners together and then get feedback from each group on their thoughts. If you think it would help, make this your first step, i.e., before the initial listening.

Alternatively, prior to having listened to the song you can teach a couple of words and give a simple task for the first listening.  You can also  give three or four words from the song and ask students  to listen to the words that rhyme with them or find more rhymes. Giving scores

3. Listen to the song again, this time with lyrics

This time, you should give learners the chance to read the lyrics to the song. At this point you might do one or more of the following activities:

• You can make a lyric worksheet as a gap fill; learners fill in the gaps as they listen.
• You can make cut-out strips of selected missing words and again make a lyric worksheet as a gap fill; this time learners match the word strips to the gaps as they listen and get points.

4. Focus on vocabulary, idioms and expressions

It’s also useful to focus on the creative and artistic use of vocabulary we encounter in lyrics. Start with questions like these (again, for Queen’s classic song ‘We are the champions’):

• What does ‘I’ve paid my dues’ mean?
• What does ‘my share of’ mean?
• What does ‘I’ve taken my bows’ mean?

Go through the meanings, illustrating with other examples if necessary. Songs often serve as really good contexts for phrases and idioms, but it’s good to make sure that the meaning is clear.

5. Round things off with some creativity

Creativity is an important part of maintaining motivation but it shouldn’t be limited to the teaching approach. Depending on the factors highlighted in the first part of this post (age, language level, cultural specifics, etc.), you might want to try finishing things off with an activity that stimulates creative thought. Here are a few examples of things you can do to get the creative juices flowing:

• Write another verse of lyrics, maintaining the same mood and style as the original. This can be done individually or in groups. These new lyrics can be presented to the rest of the class. Perhaps several groups can work on this to come up with a completely new set of lyrics for the whole song. ( create a chart assign points)
• Have the learners plan a music video for the song. In groups they decide the location, the characters, and what happens. Then each group explains their idea to the rest of the class and the learners vote on the best one. The results can be surprising, as they frequently come up with an interpretation that hadn’t even occurred to you!

Creating a contest where students can present their works and get votes/marks  for the best video/song using  Kahoot to create surveys, questionnaires and discussions, obtaining feedback from students in real time.

2.3.3 Glossary

Teaching tool: object  that can be used in the classroom to support student learning