My school has a high population of English Language Learners. When I teach songs I make sure that all students know the meaning of the words.
One of the ways I do this is through using the EduCreations app. I search for images from Google Images and save them to the iPad. In the app I select a picture and then type lyrics on top. I move forward one page and repeat the process for the rest of the lyrics. The last step is to go back to the first page, hit the record button, and then I sing the song along with the images.
During class I mirror my iPad to the AppleTV. I play the video and we sing along. I can pause and we can discuss the picture and the words. I can also point to each word as we sing, like live karaoke!
I think this process helps all the students learn the words of the song.
What's better than music class once a week? Music class twice a week! The students in the Special Day Class at my school receive music instruction during with their classroom teacher and they also come for music as a special day class group. This group of eleven kids ranges in grades from 2nd-6th.
When I was in their special day classroom observing, the teacher was talking about how to know what to wear based on the weather. I thought this weather song would be a good tie in.
The first week I taught them the weather song by rote. I like how this video models teaching the song with the speaking voice first and then adding the melody. Afterwards, I sang and they sang back to me keeping a steady beat on their body.
I showed pictures of each of the types of weather that the song discusses using my iPad. When we were singing about sunny, there was the picture of a sunny day. I asked for which two we should focus on and we sang the ending phrase on just those two.
The second week I reviewed the song using half drawings. I wrote Sunny, Rainy, Cloudy, Snowy, and Windy on pieces of paper. Then I started a drawing of each one. As we reviewed the song, I used these for the new visuals. The students then finished the drawings in pairs, adding something to the picture that had to do with that type of weather.
I finished our review of that song on that day by singing the song again with student volunteers coming up to the board and pointing to the order of the pictures that occurs in the song.
Next week when we review our song, we will talk about how the weather is predicted and what type of clothing we should wear for each type of weather.
