coucoucircus.org - Bienvenue This site gives you access to the theme tunes and lyrics of hundreds of French TV programmes, in particular a lot of children's cartoon series.
Flash Video Big Books This is a great site for anyone interested in using story telling as a key component of their courses. Some free stuff but the books you have to buy are pretty cheap and excellent quality. Highly recommended.
Wordle - Create word clouds This is a fantastic little site for anyone wanting to be creative with Language. It creates key word diagrams on any topic in an arty way. It is a great way to introduce a topic or allow kids to create a keyword list to help them prepare for a speaking test
This post is in response to a request made at a recent training event. I promised that I would upload a video instruction on how to use sound editing software.
The software I work with is NCH's wavepad. There is a free version of this and a paid for version with more advanced features. The free version is very adequate for most of your requirements.
The first thing I would say if you are new to sound editors is that even if you are unfamiliar with the interface, if you know how to select, cut, copy, paste anything in a Word document, you can do this with a sound in a sound editor. The keyboard shortcuts are the same:
It was a privilege to work with colleagues at this event. Here are the session notes and some resource packs for
i) Running a French Singing Assembly
The package is presented in French but can be adapted to other languages pretty easily.
I do this in schools to introduce language learning to children and staff.
All the resources are in 3 formats: powerpoint : Smartboard Notebook : Promethean Flipchart
Download the pack in 2 parts by visiting these links. If you have any problems downloading these contact me using the email address I gave you at the conference and put 'Newquay Primary Languages' in your email header.
ii) Workshop - "Putting the "Mmmm-Factor" into your lessons : Music Makes Meaning Memorable"
Due to copyright restrictions I cannot post either the slideshow or many of the materials I used in this. The notes however give you all the links you need to get started.
Some of the materials are going to be available on my other site hopefully in early May. If you want to be put on the email list to find out when they go live please fill in the contact form on www.souffler.co.uk
Please download the notes from the workshop here. Click on the picture below to see a sample of the first page.
Finally, if you have benefited from this training and think you know anyone who might be interested in booking me to come and further work with them, I'm always open to offers! Please send them the link to this blog post
It was really good to meet so many new colleagues up in Oldham on Friday. I hope that you learnt something that will encourage you to integrate music and rhythm into your all your lessons but especially your language lessons.
I have included all the main weblinks that I think could be useful for you. Much of the music is copyright so I can only point you to where you can download the material from.
Some of the material I have composed myself is on offer for free on this website. Other material is due to be launched on the www.souffler.co.uk website soon. If you sign up there I will notify you when that site is up and running. This will include material such as the phonic songs I demonstrated.
Here are links to some of the resources to download direct from here
I love Apple Macs and I love using Garageband but as so many of the programs I use in schools are Windows based and having installed a Windows partition on my Macbook, I needed a Windows Equivalent for Garageband. I have been using this Mixcraft software and so far am very impressed.
First, it is very good value for money at around £48. It has a very wide range of features, enough to produce professional recordings, and comes with a huge bank of free loops and backing beats that you are entitled to keep even if you decide not to purchase the product. You can check out all of the features here on their site. Go to the Products Page on the Mixcraft Site to check out all of the features. I will try and do a few posts to show how I think it might be useful for language teachers wanting to integrate more music into their lessons.
For the moment, here is a sample of a reggae backing track that it took me about 20 minutes to create from the free loops supplied with the package.
I want to share a few ideas about this that have helped me recently. This work is primarily with KS1/2/3 pupils but to be honest, depending upon your relationship with the class and how they relate to each other you could use it any level.
One of the concepts I have picked up from my recent singing training is how important it is to go through a warm-up routine for your voice. You can't jump straight into singing without awakening all of the vocal and body muscles that help you to be successful. Why should speaking in a different language be any different?
I know that we have been drilled to begin our lessons with a starter and end with a plenary, all good practice.
I would like to offer some starter suggestions that are a bit different.
The main aims I now have when considering what kind of starter to use are:
1) What time of day is it? Do I need to 'warm the class up', start of the day, or 'calm them down', immediately after lunch or break?
2) Is it a group activity that will help focus the whole class, get them listening to me, bring them together as a group positively engaged in the lesson? This rules out traditional Q and A sessions that involve individuals answering questions that 29 other pupils have to listen to.
3) Does it lift the spirits of everyone (including me!)? Does it make everyone glad to be in that moment, sharing it and beginning to feel good about themselves? Children arrive in our lessons with 30 different thought patterns bouncing around in their minds. Because they are like the rest of the human race, and we all find it much easier to latch onto negative thoughts than positive ones, and arrive in your lesson worrying about home, friendship fallouts, boy-girlfriend issues, feelings of inadequacy, failure, poor body image, bullying etc etc. Any teacher needs to have some activities which can 'switch' the mood and generate some positive thinking.
4) Speaking, like singing is a 'whole body' experience. Starters need to be both physical and mental warm-ups.
Before you begin, explain that you are looking for a WHOLE class response. They need to all respond, as one voice, all in time together. Repeat until you get this right, Insist upon it. Do in two teams if necessary and judge who does it best.
Here are a few ideas. First, the 'wake up' type of starters
simple breathe and stretch exercises, moving/touching parts of the body, using the target language which they have to repeat as they do the actions. Add a musical backing track that will pick a mood up. (See a previous post on this here)
Vary the above exercise from slow to faster, vary your pitch of voice. One thing I do that children seem to enjoy is to move your voice up and down a pitch as you i) lift yourself up/let yourself down by your hair and say in a rising/falling voice 'cheveux' ii) do the same with your ears iii) press your belly button and voice goes up in pitch as you say 'nombril' iv) do the same with arms/hands/legs being raised/lowered. As you will all look look and sound ridiculous doing this, including the teacher, it gives tacit permission to all to not worry about looking and sounding ridiculous when speaking the language, a crucial factor as your lesson develops.
Introducing and practising group praise phrases. This has proved to be one of the most fun and positively reinforcing activities I have done. You teach your class 4 simple praise phrases in the language you are teaching in. In French I use 'Super, Excellent, Fantastique, Génial'. Pupils repeat the phrases after me in whatever voice I choose but we also do an action (thumbs up for super, skiing hands for excellent, index finger pointed up in the air first right then left then right hand, 3 punches out in front for each syllable of gé-ni-al. You need to match actions to syllables. This is a vital part of early language learning as it helps children with any phonic approach to language learning, to separate sound forms within whole words. The last part is the most powerful part as we take different pupils' names to attach to the praise phrase and add a 3 part silly action that everyone copies to their name. So it might be 'Fan-tas-tique, Co-o-nnor' 'Ex-ce-llent Ma-ri-anne' with a 3 part action to their name, disco sky pointing, hip wiggles, Egyptian shimmy, make up as many stupid 3 part actions you like! The beauty of this is that once the pupils get hold of it you can ask them to come to the front and lead the whole class in praising a pupil. This is quite often hilariously funny as they are all far more imaginative then me in the actions they choose.
You could substitute praise phrases for any language you want to recap on at the start of the lesson. Put on a backing track with a great rhythm and you can put silly actions to absolutely any language or topic you like. Again get pupils to suggest the moves and the language to revise, hence revising it! Put some picture prompts or key language prompts on the board if necessary.
Having done this next one once with pupils, I get requests to do it again regularly at the start of a lesson. It's the French / German / Spanish/ Urdu etc etc Haka. You simply take the vowel sounds of a language, get the class into warrior mode, knees bent, hands on knees, all facing me and looking fierce (model your own fiercest look!!), than repeat the actions and vowel sounds after me. I do 'A' + both hands pushed out in front, 'E' both hands back pointing to me, 'I' one hand streching up, the other down in front of me to draw an I shape, 'O' draw a circle 'o' shape with both hands either side of you, 'U' do a u-shape with both hands' fingers either side of you. You can do this loud, you can do this softly. I ask pupils to suggest a consonant to put in front of the vowels. If they suggest 'j' it's an ideal way to show that 'j' makes a vowel soft in French so we do the 'friendly Haka' in a soft voice! Adding other consonants means that you can repeat this activity.
Second, the 'calm down' type of starters
Simply put, you can do any of the above but change:
to sitting instead of standing
the type of music or slow down an upbeat track using sound editing software (Audacity / Wavepad)
the speed of the exercises
from louder voice to softer voice
from whole group responses to two team responses where you award points for the best pronunciation, the team that best responds as a whole unit, as ONE voice
A bit more of a challenge would be to build up a bank of singing stories. I have started to do this. To calm a group down, you could move a simple story to the beginning of your lesson. I then get them to sit and listen to the story, but get them to repeat key sections with a silly action. I also set bits of the story that are often repeated to music and create mini-songs within the story. Take a track from your stock of backing tracks I have been encouraging you to build up. You can then move from the story onto exploiting some of the language introduced in the rest of the lesson.
You can add in a simple breathing trick to get quiet. Invite the class to take a breath, and hold it with you until you say a word/phrase you want to revise, which they then repeat letting out their breath as they do so. Usually the noisiest kids are also the most competitive about wanting to show how long they can hold their breath for! (Tip: get them all to take a gentle deep breath in)
Hope this is all of some use.
Post a comment to share some of your own lesson starter tips!
Just thought I would share some ideas for doing singing warm ups for lesson starters.
I made up this very short ditty. The words are:
"Moi, j'aime chanter en français
Moi, j'aime chanter en français
Moi, j'aime chanter
Moi, j'aime chanter
Moi, j'aime chanter en français"
You need some actions to go with it as half the fun is seeing how the pupils cope with beginning slowly and then speeding up. They love the challenge of seeing how fast they can sing it without developing a tongue hernia!
So, 'moi' point to self. 'j'aime' hands clasped over heart, 'chanter' both hands raised to mouth to suggest words coming from it, 'en français', I just lower my hands from my face to my sides in time to the syllables, but make up your own actions.
Varying pitch and speed are always fun challenges. You can do this easily with sound editors such as Audacity or Wavepad.
I use backing tracks a lot to recap on previous lessons' work. As long as a track has a strong rhythm to it, you can do anything to it. To begin with I would speak the language in time to it until you become confident. If you are a confident singer and feel like letting rip with an adlib tune, then great!
The basic format is that you call out the word(s) and pupils copy you. They follow the actions and a tune if you are using one. Adding silly hand actions to the words adds a great fun dimension to them. If the hand action follows both the beat and the rhythm of the word syllables you are saying/singing, it also aids pronunciation, and later on, reading/listening.
You will find too in time that pupils will become more confident about adopting your role as the caller and leading the rest of the class. You could even set them a homework in small groups to come up with a list of key words for a topic spoken or sung to a tune of their choice that they present to the rest of the class.
Here are a couple of tracks that work
The first is a backing cover of Billy Ray Cyrus' 'achy, breaky, heart' that you can download for free at http://www.guitarbackingtrack.com/
The second is a funky blues number.
It is hard for anyone to listen to music like this and fail to be 'picked up' by the rhythm. One of the other reasons I do this singing warm up is because I have no idea what is going in the lives of the individuals I teach. Anything could be worrying them,could have crossed them or could be competing for their attention. They could be sitting in the room with me but have thoughts a million miles away.
The music is an instant way of bypassing all of this and going straight to someone's heart. If you have a whole class standing up and following your lead on this, it really isn't long before everyone is joining in. It happens without you having to challenge pupils or to cajole them to focus, they just do.
In the last few weeks I seem to have been on creative overdrive. I have been running a Singing and MFL project in a Derbyshire Primary school, working with all yr 3/4/5/6 groups over a 4 week period. With their class teacher, TAs and their French teacher present in the lessons we have been looking at how the use of rhythm and song can become far more integrated into lessons and support learning.
In addition to that, I have just started a new PPA position in a Derby school where I definitely feel I have stepped into a foreign culture as 95% of the pupils are from non-English speaking backgrounds. I have been trying out some of these singing and rhythmic ideas here as well.
The whole experience has honestly been some of the best teaching, with the most fun and greatest positive response I have had in my career. It reinforces my opinion that if language teachers could become more confident leading singing in their lessons, understanding how to do it, what music to use, how to make use of backing tracks to support pupils' learning of new vocabulary and structures, it would be a significant boost in colleagues' own levels of enjoyment whilst also boosting pupil performance and motivation.
I am going to share a couple of tracks that I use to illustrate my point. My overiding reason for doing this work is that a child's first exposure to learning a language should be about fun, about picking up the 'sound' of the language above and, in my opinion, beyond a mere acquistion of vocab. Good pronunciation, a willingness and confidence to 'have go', the creation of a safe environment to do so, are all critical in this first phase of language acquisition. All of this is easily achieved by using music to support learning a language.
There a lot of things I have learnt as I have worked with the national Sing Up campaign in this process.
I have learnt that singing lesson starters are a great way to focus the children, to get them following your lead, to get them cooperating and acting with one voice in response to your lead.
I have learnt how to teach a song properly, breaking it down into manageable chunks. I have learnt what kind of material appeals to children and have been inspired to make use of some material others have produced as well as writing quite a bit of my own.
I have learnt how to source backing tracks from websites that I can, with a bit of work, add lyrics to in order to teach a topic. All of this requires some time and application to learn and apply but the rewards in terms of pupil response are so much fun and rewarding that I heartily recommend it to all language teaching colleagues.
I have learnt how, by using simple audio editing software, Audacity or my own favourite, NCH's Wavepad software, you can clip extracts of favourite tunes, change their pitch, slow them down, speed them up, gradually building your own library of music that you know pupils will feel inspired and lifted by. Muisc and rhythm turn what can be a difficult, boring, repetitive, intellectually challenging process, into one that sparkles and engages.
With colleagues in the Secondary school sector in particular, increasingly pressurised to produce results and justify their place on the curriculum, there is a danger that MFL lessons become a bit too serious. Inject music and rhythm into the diet and the whole atmosphere of what you are doing lifts. I believe what the pupils learn is also achieved more quickly and with greater good will in their part.
At the primary level, I know that the same techniques can be applied to any curriculum area, not simply in language lessons. Most primary teachers are aware of the power of a good song in helping to deliver content, they are perhaps less confident in applying this in another language. Learning to do so will not only help their pupils, it will also allow them the time and space to practise good pronunciation along with their classes as they master the songs.
Here are a couple of websites I use with a couple of tracks that I know work. I can't offer them for download as I would be breaking copyright but you can buy them very cheaply yourselves.
1) I use a site called Audionetwork. They are a production music library whose composers sell their tracks to film and TV companies. You will recognise some of their tunes from programs particularly on Channel 4. The musical content is therefore of a very high order. Thecost of the licence you purchase with each track is proprtionate to the use you will make of it. The Educational licence per track is £.85p. Choose tracks with a strong rhythmic element.
This rap track is called Mischief and pupils love practising dialogues to this tune. It has a slight Eminem feel to it. If you are not very good at singing and want a track to 'speak' to rhythmically, I recommend it.
This track is some boogie woogie piano I picked up from somewhere whose origins escape me. However you can easily pick up something similar on ITunes or from Amazon mp3. Tracks you download can be adjusted using the audio editing software mentioned above until you have something at a speed you feel comfortable using. I use this as a warm up track to practise parts of the body or do Call and Response work with vocab we have been covering (eg: Quel age as-tu? J'ai 8 ans etc) It is difficult for anyone who might feel miserable at the beginning of your lesson (including you!) to feel miserable after a couple of minutes of a track like this!
2) Another site that I collect backing tracks from is karaoke-version.com. This site gives you performance and backing tracks for a vast array of golden oldies to current hit songs. If you click on the country flag at the bottom you can also find a selection of current French, German, Spanish songs.
I have clipped well known tunes from this site and added my own lyrics. Here is an example where I took a section of a track by the Killers called "All these things I have done". This is the original section
I downloaded the Karaoke version, clipped the section I wanted to use in Wavepad, and imported the mp3 into Mac Garageband to add the new lyrics.
For many this last step may be further than you feel able to go. If so, simply use the backing track and hand the rest of the process over to the pupils, get them to write suitable lyrics and see if you can't link up with the Music Department to get the reworked song recorded.
I hope this has given you a taster of what is possible. I am not a professional musician or singer and could never be either. But anyone can develop these skills sufficiently to enable you to add this to your repertoire of elements that will help create language lessons that engage and inspire.
On another post I will share some of the other work covered in the primary project where we have been putting simple vocab to well known tunes, using a song I wrote to teach the 'ch' phoneme to children with 1 year of French, using 4 different styles of tunes from Audionetwork as a basis for singing 4 different versions of the same lyrics on the the topic of 'House' and the same 4 tunes to teach 4 different versions of the same lyrics for the topic of "Town'.
Both 'house' and 'town' are topics that usually leave me feeling somewhat uninspired. These 4 tunes have proved to be a great way of repeating core vocab whilst also adding a bit more colloquial colour to the lyrics.
I wanted to show how with limited singing and musical skills, you could use some simple audio-editing software (in this case Apple's Garageband software) to a) build parts to embellish a song b) use the software to help teach a song.
If you haven't got Garageband on a Mac a friend of mine has apparently recorded the whole of his first album using Audacity. I don't know this software well so I will have to let others comment as to how easy it might be to record different tracks using this. One other option on Windows is to use NCH's Mixpad. It would however set you or your school back about £46. I would think that a lot of music departments would already have access to the software and hardware you need.
So, if you think this is really not what you might spend your energies, money and time on as a language teacher, think then how you might see this working as a cross-curricular project with the music department and encourage your pupils to take a basic song you use in your lessons, embellish it, remix it, add harmony parts and then re-present it to the class. You might end up with 20 different excuses to sing the same lyrics! Rote learning sorted!
First, this is the original track that I found on a wonderful Canadian site called "Languages Online". Have a look at it for lots of other resources, but the song I used was this simple greetings song. The point here is that you need to select a song with a fairly simple chord structure.
I do not know who originally recorded this but my thanks for such a simple catchy tune.
Here is a Garageband remix to give you a sense of what is possible
So, I've added:
i) a drum backing chosen from a bank of pre-recorded options that come with Garageband (these 'snippets' of instruments are called 'loops' and there is a whole industry devoted to supplying an ever-widening range of them)
ii) a vocal harmony
iii) a bass line created by choosing a 'horn' instrument in Garageband played low down the keyboard. You enter the notes by playing an onscreen keyboard, one fingered! (see image)
iv) a simple piano overlay - again, one fingered!
v) two simple, 3 chord guitar parts.
Here's a screen shot of the musical typing board with the garageband tracks.
You can save these tracks in any variation you like by muting the parts you don't want. So, if I wanted to teach the just the tune stripped of too much accompaniment I might save only these:
And then just the harmony part
Finally, the backing track to perform too once you have taught your pupils.
I haven't really shown how to do all of this using Garageband per se and could do so if people were interested. I have put up athe vocal and instrumental parts you hear on this page on my other site at www.souffler.co.uk if you want to download them. There is also the garageband mix if you have that software to see how it works.
Hint: give your Head of music the URL of this post, apologise for the musicianship and singing but PLUG the idea of doing some linked work!
This is a post about how to use a popular sound editor to break up song tracks into learnable chunks.
This is the end product created to teach pupils how to present their families in French based upon the Simpsons characters.
In this video I have used Wavepad from NCH software. I know many use Audacity but I find some of the controls on Wavepad to be easier to use, especially pitch and speed change, and I like the 'copy to new file' function which I use all the time to create new sound files from originals.
NCH will of course want you to buy the 'masters' version (which does look really good) but the free version is more than adequate to achieve what I am going to show you here. There are 6 separate videos as the single file was rather large.
1. Intro to the software
2. Clipping the musical intro to use as a backing for class warm-ups
3. Clipping parts of the song to learn parts of the song
4. Using the speed change controls to slow song clips down
5. How to speed the song clips back up
6. Pupils can practise their own recordings against the singing model
I will posting more free songs that have been edited in this way via my other site
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