Speaking of songs ...

Songs are a very powerful tool when it comes to language teaching - especially with small children.

It makes learning the words so easy, you don't even realize that you are actually learning.

Have you ever heard a song in a language that you don't even speak and found yourself singing it? You didn't understand anything but important was only that the words somehow sounded like in the song. It would probably sound something like this:

Leddit gooo, leddit gooo and holit back nyoreeeee

LEDDIT GOOO, LEDDIT GOOOO

hmmm hmm and hmmm the doooorrrr

(btw this is Disney's Frozen song: Let it go)

Yea, we've all been there, haven't we? But the cool thing about this is ...  melody engages your brain. And imagine what you are capable of retaining with melody when you actually KNOW the words!

Amazing!

Now, there is a little catch with this. What many inexperienced teachers do is that when looking for songs to sing with their kids, they take songs that have been written for native speakers. This is in itself not really a bad thing, but sometimes not the best idea to do.

How often did I come across a teacher who taught his or her first 2 lessons and the kids barely knew how to say "Hello. My name is .." and were then supposed to sing a song like "bah bah black sheep" with at least 20 words that they have never heard of before.

Find songs that have been written for ESL kids. Yes, you might have to buy the CDs, but it's really worth it. See everything you buy as an investment in your job. You will not only use it once but for many many years to come. Often you can also find some for free on youtube and even with cartoons.

I like the supersimplesongs, for example (have a look at the video above). There are more and more songs out there especially written for ESL learners that deal only with the vocabulary the kids learn in that particular unit. The children only repeat the words that they are currently learning in the unit without having to get confused about what all the other words might mean.

You can still take songs from native speakers from time to time if you feel that they are really useful. You should make sure though that it doesn't have a lot of new words and use a loooot of pictures or even a video to make kids understand. I love the itsy bitsy spider song, for example. But I always teach them the vocab beforehand and show them a video by BBC which is like a cartoon and explaining what is happening.

To make things even easier for the kids: always use gestures when teaching and singing the song!

I always introduce the vocabulary and song lyrics before actually singing and have the kids come up with their own ideas for gestures (a lot more fun than making them do what you think would be fitting). We then use those gestures while singing the song.

If you teach different classes, they may come up with different gestures, so try to remember what class used which gestures ;). If you can't remember, it's also a good way to also repeat vocab. Ask them for example .. what gesture did we use for xyz? And have all the kids running around the classroom doing the gesture. Great fun!