Don't Be Afraid of Language
Nouns! Verbs! Adjectives! Adverbs! Ahhh! The parts of speech have always made my head spin! To identify a noun, I would repeat "a noun is a person, place or thing" over and over in my head. To identify a adjective, I’d chant over and over to myself, “An adjective describes a noun! An adjective describes a noun! An adjective describes a noun!”
But when the teacher asked me, “Becky, please tell me any adjective you want?” or “What part of speech is scary?” I would go blank. Completely blank! Nada! Nothing came to mind! I just couldn’t connect the definition of an adjective to what I was chanting to myself. This inability to assimilate what I was learning about the parts of speech led me to tears and big fears in class.
Years later as an adult, when I started teaching English to children, I noticed that many of my students had similar difficulties. I wanted to find ways to ease their fear of not understanding and to help them build pathways to understand the parts of speech, grammar patterns, and other building blocks of language.
To help with this, I found that teaching language foundations through a song or story lowered the fear barrier and engaged a child’s curiosity to discover. For example, the lyrics used in the Halloween song, The Thirteen Treats of Halloween, while cloaked in drama and fun, is indirectly teaching ordinal numbers, nouns, and adjectives. While singing and moving, students subconsciously internalize the patterns and rhythms of the English language.
With that in mind, lets take a closer look at The Thirteen Treats of Halloween song and Halloween module.
Here is a sample of the song. The module includes an MP3 of the song and a karaoke version of the song.
The Lyrics and Write Your Lyrics worksheets encourage students to:
- read and sing along with the lyrics,
- play listening and reading games,
- write their own lyrics using clearly marked spaces for nouns and adjectives,
- and to perform dramas and role-plays.
The Lesson Plan: Activity Sheets include:
- detailed steps on how to use the worksheet,
- play listening and reading games,
- and directions on how to use the song and karaoke audio files for movement, role-plays and musicals.
The Lesson Plan: Activity Sheets include:
- complete a puzzle with further noun practice,
- and participate in an interpersonal activity while asking their friends questions.
The complete Halloween module for The Thirteen Treats of Halloween song has:
- MP3 audio file of The Thirteen Treats of Halloween song
- MP3 karaoke file (just melody, no vocals) of the song for singing customized lyrics
- 5 worksheet Activity Pages (to be copied for each student)
- 5 Lesson Plan pages (30-60 minutes of activities per Lesson Plan page)
- Additional web links to learn the song gestures
Check out the video to learn movements for the song and role-play activities.
The 13 Treats of Halloween Video
I like using songs to introduce language concepts to my students. It helps to lower the fear barrier and engages the student’s curiosity and sense of fun in learning. Even teaching abstract topics like parts of speech can become fun! Use these activities in your classroom and sing, sing, sing!
Click the below Teacher-Pay-Teachers icon to see and download more samples of this module.
