Jazz Chants, Keep The Beat!!

Hello again, this week I want to share with you one technique called “Jazz Chants”. To be honest I didn’t know about this, until we worked with it last Wednesday in class. However, since the first activity that we did with it, I realize that this can be a wonderful technique to develop speaking skills in children. In fact, it was created 35 years ago by Carolyn Graham and still be widely use nowadays.

Firstly, this technique consists of linking the rhythm of the spoken language with the rhythm of music. Through this, you will help your students to improve their fluency, pronunciation and many other aspects related to the spoken language. In fact, it can be use in a variety of fun ways in order to practice greetings, review vocabulary or grammar, practice stress and rhythm, and so on. Besides, it is not necessary that the teacher create all the chants, the students can also create their own ones. As a matter of fact, Children are extremely creative and if we prepare a suitable environment with proper scaffolding, they will be able to make it without any problem.

Moreover, you can scaffold the activity in many ways depending on their previous knowledge about the topic and their cycle. On top of that, this tool is used not only for children lessons, but also it may be implemented in any kind of ESL class. That is why, Carolyn Graham recommends to establish a set of guidelines for the proper development of the activity, nonetheless you may adapt it depending on the needs of your students. You can find this guideline and more information here.

• Practical Application:

For instance, if you want to practice the vocabulary related to the parts of the body, the farm animal, the fruits and vegetables, etc. using a cumulative chant, a good way of work with it can be using TPS (Think, Pair, Share). First you should ask them about the parts that they remember and then they must write them on a piece of paper. After that, they can work in pairs or threes in order to compare their answers and make a list. Finally, all the groups can share their answers to check if there some parts missing.

After that, you can show them how start, following and structure and a simple rhythm (you can set the beat tapping your fingers on the table), like:

“What are the parts of my body? (From the top to the bottom)

In my head, I have an eye.

In my head, I have an eye and I have a nose.

What do you have?

In my head, I have an eye, I have a nose and I have an ears. 

…

Then, the students have to add more and more parts following the same structure and the rhythm. After this example you can encourage them to create their own chant and also to perform it with gestures. 

To conclude, and as far as I'm concerned, the possible applications of the Jazz Chants in class are endless. What is more, this tool offer strong benefits to the students such as, their develop of High Order Thinking Skills at the time that they should create their own chant using their previous knowledge, as well as the improvement of their fluency and pronunciation, among others. 

If you want to know more about the "Jazz Chants" click on the link and watch the video: 

Teaching Jazz Chants - Carolyn Graham

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions"Albert Einstein

The Art of Storytelling

Hello everyone, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alberto and I’m a future bilingual primary teacher. As all of you can see in the description of the blog, I will write about a wide range of topics resources and techniques, or at least I will try, all of them related to the exciting world of children’s literature. The aim is to post useful materials and resources to give you ideas about how to work the literacy in class and at home following the CLIL approach.

To begin with, along these two weeks, I have seen different ways to work in class the Phonics using Yo-yo Phonics and Jolly Phonics. Which, in my opinion, it is very important for children to learn the sounds and the correct pronunciation since the early stages in order to create a good “previous knowledge base” that they will use all along their lives (hopefully). Moreover, we also explored The Nursery Rhymes as a way of work multiple things such as learn common structures and difficult vocabulary, and also how to use it in a cross curricular way.

However, I would like to focus this first post on the art of storytelling. I know that most of you are going to think “Why storytelling?” , the answer is very simple, because as the title of the post says it is an art, and also it is full of possibilities to work in class and at home. I highlight that “it is an art”, because I believe that it is not something that you can do without practice. In fact, if you want to perform effectively in a Primary class, you should work some aspects such as the facial expressivity, a specific tone of voice as well as a good repertoire of onomatopoeic sounds. Apart of that, the storytelling must be active, dynamic, interesting, and purposeful in order to create an empathy with the children that are going to watch it.

Here we have a perfect example of a well-known poet and storyteller. He is Michael Rosen and as far as I’m concerned, he is amazing in his performance:

As you can appreciate, the storytelling is not only a performance to entertain your students; it is also an excellent way for the children to practice different linguistic aspects. In fact, you can use this resource to work in class a wide range of contents not necessarily only related to English language, but also related to science, mathematics and so on. Moreover, you can adapt the storytelling to the level of your student using different scaffolding techniques such as realia, puppets, using repetition, chunking the story into bits, etc.  Apart of that, It gives you the opportunity to involve the students in their learning process.

Practical Application: 

For instance, you can perform the story alone first, in order to be their model, and then you can foster some of the student to participate in it. In this way, you will be using a type of scaffolding called modeling and also you will attract their attention and create a good atmosphere in class. After that, you can encourage them to create their own story, in groups, and perform it in class. To do this you should provide some key vocabulary and structures in order to guide a bit the process depending on the level of your student. 

Finally and thank to this, the student will work in a cooperative way and they will learn unwittingly. Besides, as I said before, you can work with this resource in a cross curricular way.

I hope you enjoy this first post and see you in the next one.