As I begin my second year as an AET, my mind begins to turn to matters of teaching and how to be a better teacher. One aspect of classes that always gets me is the warmer.
The theory behind the warmer is to get your students ready to start thinking in English mode and to get them hyped up for the lesson. In an elementary school this usually takes the form of a game or a song. The difficulty with warmers is striking a balance. If you find a game the kids like you have to be careful that you don’t let it completely engulf the rest of your lesson or that you don’t use it too many times, familiarity breeds contempt.
Songs tend to be more repeatable but you have to be careful with the older kids, they tend not to like the singing. I can vouch for this, being faced with a whole class of stone faced, frowning 6 graders just staring at you as you try to get them to sing If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands can put a bit of a dent into your enthusiasm.
One set of songs that I really found interesting though is Dansinglish. Only used in one of the schools I teach at, Dansinglish is used as a warmer for the entire of the third and forth year classes. In total there are 8 songs and over the course of 2 years they are taught to the kids.
For those who are not au fait with the lyrics here is a small example:
What’s your name?
My name is Masami.Ouch!
Are you alright?Let me try! Let me try!
This is fun.
That is a small part of the first song which is imaginatively titled Hello. Each line has a corresponding action, for example, Ouch! has you touching your head, while My name is Masami has you showing an imaginary name tag.
Thinking back, it was my very first day of work that I was confronted with this and my impressions were: This is rubbish. I didn’t know any of the dances, the kids didn’t seem to know any of the words and the only one who seemed to be getting anything out of it was the home room teacher.
Gradually though, over the course of the year I learnt the dances and the kids (mostly) learnt both the words and the actions. It became rather fun, I would genuinely look forward to doing it (especially with the 3rd years). It was a great opportunity to ham up the mimes and see if I could get the kids to do the stuff in the same over the top way.
By the end of the year I felt that most of the kids knew both the actions, the words in the songs and, most importantly, enjoyed it. However other than a bit of a laugh, what is the educational value of all this? Are the kids just parroting lines and not realising the meaning of their words or are they taking it all in?
I hope that with the actions they have a bit of context about what is going on and in similar situations would be able to repeat this language even if the usage or tense is not quite right. Next year I think I will test them by conspicuously banging my shin on a table yelling “OUCH!”, to see if I can get an “Are you alright?” out of them. I do hope though that the next time I go up to one of them and ask “What’s your name”, I’m not told “My name is Masami”.
That would be heartbreaking.
Unless their name actually is Masami, then that would be ok.
When I searched for this stuff on Google I was shocked to find the only mention of Dansinglish was on a forum where some teachers were moaning about it, but how could you not enjoy this:
This post has been a submission to the April 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by NihongoUp.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
I read an article recently about how adding gestures aids memory retention, and this seems like a great example of using gestures as a learning aid. Hopefully the kids do actually get something out of it! And that video is adorable–especially that kid in yellow! He killed me!
April 18th, 2011 at 12:59 am
That boy in yellow is nailed on to be a star, I reckon.
April 21st, 2011 at 10:35 am
This looks good, I might investigate further. I’ve always found that the more students move around and have fun, the more they enjoy AND remember things. I also have some adult students who have memorised certain English songs, but still find it hard to remember a lot of grammar points. The key is repetition. I’m sure a lot of peopl had that science teacher at school who said “if only pop songs were about the periodic table, you’d all pass with flying colours”. That’s the key: making accessible and memorable ways to learn.
April 21st, 2011 at 3:07 pm
We use the Eikaiwa Taiso for our third graders at the end of the year and the picture cards from third grade up (we start in third grade).
The third graders think the dance is ridiculous and therefor lots of fun. Actually I was playing with a bunch of (newly turned) fourth graders today during recess and another group hit me square in the back with their dodge ball. When I said “OUCH!” They all went “Are you alright?!” or “I’m sorry!” which relieved me that they will actually us the responses outside of warm up or dancing or English class. Although I’m not sure if I can get them to begin the conversation.
I also agree with Alice. I think I read that somewhere too. And from my personal experience, clearly the gestures have helped retain something. :)
April 21st, 2011 at 5:15 pm
@Dom
But….. there is a song about the periodic table. In fact there is one in Japanese too.
@Sarah
Glad you had good results with it. I still have to test the kids in my school.