During the Annual Enrichment Seminar hosted by the Fulbright
Program, two English Teaching Assistants (Ian + Ayumi) in Nepal presented on an
innovative method to teaching spoken English using song. This approach used
music to motivate students to relax and improve their communicative, listening,
and writing competence. Contrary to what I have done before with just playing
songs and having the students just listen, this method involved
competition—something the kids love. To make it even more interesting, the two
ETA’s in Nepal added an idol twist (i.e. Ian Sir Idol). To begin this activity,
students had to split in groups of four or five and create their own band
(example: The Jokers Pop Band). Unlike the ETA’s in Nepal, I performed this
activity in two parts—audition and the actual competition. For the auditions, I
provided the song, Here Comes the Sun
by the Beetles. We went over the song lyrics, highlighted vocabulary, and
deciphered the meaning of the song together. After completing the dictation and
comprehension I had the students create their song by replacing the lyrics of
‘Here Comes the Sun’ by the Beatles. Amazingly enough, the whole class was
excited for this activity. To make the feel of idol more genuine, I assigned
four students to be the judges. The student judges had their own judging score
sheets and did not participate in the performances. To be fair, every band made
it past the auditions but their score determined their rank in the competition
at the moment. For the competition portion, each of the bands had to creatively
write their own songs. If they included any vocabulary from previous lessons, they
would get extra credit.
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| Judges,
Nitin (l) and Samiran (r), while judging a bands’ performance |
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| Following Sandy Ma’am Idol, the final scores
were posted up in VI-D’s classroom. |
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| Sandy Ma’am poses with the winners of Sandy
Ma’am Idol—Mathematical Force. |
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| Sandy Ma’am stands with two of the judges and
the 2nd place winners of Sandy Ma’am Idol—Best Ever Band. |
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After completing the 'Sandy Ma'am Idol' survey, I showed my
appreciation of thanks through prizes. I gave each student a pencil and a piece
of candy for participating. The picture above displays the
prizes that were given to the winners.
The gold boxes on the top were for 1st
place winners, the prizes on the left were for the 2nd and 3rd
place winners. The prizes on the right were for the judges and assistants. The
students were shocked and extremely happy. |
