Author: Alice

Trolling around twitter today I see the common Friday hashtag #friendsfriday and think, “What a marketing ploy!” I can’t help it. It’s the business woman in me. Then I surf some more and see that today is #NationalBestFriendsDay! My first thought was what if we took these hashtags seriously. What if we committed to building our current friends, reconnecting with old friends, and lastly, meeting new friends! As the old girl scout favorite goes, “Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.” 

This article by Carol Stern is reposted with permission from Educational Activities . Please see our song suggestions below!

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports month, so this month’s blog focuses on physical fitness in the classroom.  Everyone knows that being physically active is good for you. There are obvious benefits to being active.  For instance, it helps reduce the risk of obesity and it helps build and maintain healthy bones and muscles. But did you know that physical activity also has some very important benefits for children in the classroom?

Reduces Stress

Regular activity has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression in children and adolescents.  Additionally, aerobic activity produces brain chemicals that promote a feeling of well-being.

Increases Self Confidence

Children who are regularly active have a higher sense of self efficacy, which means they have better confidence in their ability to complete tasks and learn new activities. (source: Active Academics)

Increases Concentration and Improves Academic Performance

Physical activity breaks during the school day have an effect on children’s behavior, attention span, ability to concentrate and test scores. In fact, studies have shown that students did better on standardized tests after moderate physical activity as compared to students who had been sitting for 20 minutes prior to testing. (source:Neuroscience, 2009)

Develops Empathy and Social Skills

Team sports and physical activity have been associated with improved self-esteem, better nutrition and less smoking and drug abuse among children.  Additionally, studies also show that physical activity fosters leadership skills and empathy in children and may also reinforce healthy lifestyle behaviors.

No Gym? P.E. in the Classroom

Many schools don’t have gyms.  Therefore, they don’t offer children the amount of physical activity needed to be successful.  Some have even cut out recess – a time for free play – from the school day entirely.  Here are some ideas you can use in your classroom to help your students get the physical activity they need.

• Start the day off right with a quick 10-minute yoga sequence. Grab your students’ focus right from the start. Creative Yoga Exercises for Children incorporates relatable animal activities that are easy for children to learn.
• During reading time, read a book aloud while the children walk around. When they hear an “action word” (verb) have them act it out.
• Lessons on the go – Walk to an area (either indoors or out) where you can focus on your topic. For instance, if you are studying measurements, take the kids to different areas of the school to practice measuring different objects like the height of a step or the width of the hallway, let the kids stretch, squat and move around.
• Hopscotch math – Have kids answer math questions by hopping onto the correct numbers on the floor.
• Acting out – Try reviewing vocabulary words by playing charades. Children will act out the words as others try to guess them.
• Take your science lesson outside – if you teach in an area where you can take the kids outside to experience hands on science, do it!
• Take short (3-4 minute) activity breaks throughout the day to get the blood pumping, relieve boredom, reduce tension and increase your students’ level of alertness. A good way to do this is with music. Silly Willy Workout is an engaging album with songs that can be used individually for short breaks, or the entire album can be used as a physical education class.
• Most importantly, don’t forget to stress the importance of being physically active to your students. According to the CDC, children should have at least 60 minutes of exercise per day. Encourage them to go to the park after school or participate in a sport.

For more information about physical activity in the classroom check out our other blog articles:

Encouraging Physical Activity Indoors  and Increase Student Focus with These 9 Movement Activities

For more information about the importance of children’s health on learning, visit the CDC’s Healthy Schools website.

 

Today’s blog post is by Kayte Deioma AKA Auntie Kayte

Research shows that social emotional learning is far more important for preschool and early elementary children in predicting later success than mastering academic concepts early. Story songs can be a great way to engage children in social emotional learning in a fun way. Stories improve language development, increase cultural understanding, and develop empathy. Adding music to stories makes them even more fun and makes the stories easier to remember, especially with a catchy chorus to lock in the moral of the story.

In traditional fairytales, there is either a child or children whose bad decisions get them into trouble and they have to find their moral way out, or someone has been cast under a spell, cursed, or locked up – usually a princess – and has to be rescued. The good guys and the bad guys are pretty clearly delineated.

When I started writing story songs, they were inspired by conversations with kids about traditional fairytale and storybook characters that veered into deeper territory. Is the Dark Knight always the bad guy? Should you summarily sink pirate ships along with the pirates aboard, or should you show mercy? Do princesses always need to be rescued, or are princesses smart enough to get themselves out of trouble? Could unicorns really exist?

My first CD, Rufus the Unicorn and Other Upside-Down Fairytale Songs, addresses some of these issues, using the power of story to capture kids’ imaginations, and opening the door for discussions that take the lessons even deeper. Each lyric sheet from Songs for Teaching comes with discussion notes.

Inspired by a conversation with my nephew and also working with kids who have parents in jail, Pirates Are People Too addresses consequences for bad behavior as well as compassion for people who have done bad things. The discussion notes include a “Crime and Consequences” game. The song, I’m Sorry, models apologizing for unintentionally or intentionally hurting someone, which follows nicely as part of a discussion on how you feel and what you should do if you’ve done pirate behavior.

A Princess Can Be Smart encourages girls to embrace both their princess side and their brainy side with a litany of intelligent and adventurous career opportunities for princesses. It also helps break some stereotypical beliefs that boys have about what a girl can be when she grows up, which can be reinforced in follow-up.

Rufus the Unicorn is a bit of an ugly-duckling story, where Rufus is ostracized by various animal species before finding his tribe. Children empathize with Rufus not fitting in and even kids as young as three will think about and talk about what they might do if an animal or child who is different wants to play with them.

The Cowboy Song and The Cowgirl Song are variations on the same story that encourages both cowboys and cowgirls to value work and play and take an oath to protect those who are weaker.

Just like with story books, story songs can lead to different conversations every time you play or sing them as they spark new questions and ideas from young audiences.

A special thank you to Auntie Kayte for this blog post.

Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Nelson of Sing in English. Jeanne and her husband, Hector live in Mexico and write and record music for English Language Learners. They produce a TV program, “My School con Anna y Rocco”, seen on Mexican educational TV 

Do you speak a foreign language? Do you speak it fluently? Not many Americans do. Why is another language so difficult to learn? Are we too lazy? It seems almost anyone we run into from another part of the world speaks some English.  Or maybe we haven’t figured out effective ways to teach foreign languages.

I can’t talk about all schools but I can tell you about my own experience. I studied French a long time ago. I remember liking it in the beginning but I don’t think I applied myself.  After awhile I was lost. I certainly didn’t realize that I needed to develop an audio awareness of what I was learning. Or in other words to be able to close my eyes, not see the words, and yet understand by ear even beginning French. At that time my school was just about to install a language lab with ear phones to help one concentrate on listening to languages. Maybe that would have helped me.  And I certainly also remember struggling over lists of verb conjugations that I tried to memorize.  That was difficult and boring, not a very good way for me to learn. Needless to say, I never did learn French.

Now I find myself living and working in Mexico and yes, I have been here for many years. But guess what? I’ve learned a language through living the experience! I’ve learned Spanish without much effort and I learned rather quickly, having fun and enjoying it!  What a difference!

Now my partner and husband Hector and I create ESL material for children. I’m going to share with you some of the things I’ve learned along the way:

To really dominate a language the audio is essential, probably more important than reading and writing because that part will automatically follow.

The younger you start, the better. When one is young languages come more naturally. And yes, little kids aren’t reading and writing yet. It’s all by ear.

Instead of teaching vocabulary words that you just repeat, combine with a verb. Verbs are harder to learn so start using verbs.  For example instead of saying the word “sun” you can teach “I see the sun.”  Or “book”, “I have a book.” etc. (“Sol, veo el sol”. “Libro,  yo tengo un libro”. etc.) And I suggest you start teaching verbs in the first person, “I”, all the rest will follow.  It really is quite amazing if you know enough verbs and the basics of a language, you can make yourself understood.

It’s easy to learn short phrases. For example: “I don’t know.”- “Yo no se”.- “Je ne sais pas”. See, I even remembered that in French!

Use repetition. If you repeat often enough, it will be remembered.

Teach useful words. Begin forming a base for your students of English, or whatever language you’re teaching, that will be useful for life. And choose useful verbs. For example, I don’t think one needs to learn the verb “fetch”. “Bring” or “get” are much more common and useful. “Mother Goose” rhymes and songs are fun for English speaking kids but not very relevant for others. And stay away from cutesy words, for example “itsy bitsy” or “teeny weeny”, etc.  Silly songs don’t translate well either. And I say stay away from slang.

Yes, songs are great! We all know that songs are excellent for teaching because songs are fun!  If your students are learning by listening to songs be careful that the pronunciation is very clear. Children’s recorded voices are usually difficult to understand. And don’t use songs that race along.  One needs to hear every word clearly. You know how you hear a strange language spoken somewhere and it’s so fast it just sounds like gibberish?  That is how English sounds too when it’s not your first language.

Precisely because teachers here in Mexico asked us for songs in English with all these qualities, Hector and I started writing our own songs specifically for ESL, and created “Sing in English”. Through our songs, we’ve tried to develop a useful base of English.  Our songs are fun, sung with clear pronunciation so you can distinguish every word.  And we don’t sell to just Spanish speaking countries, we know from our sales that our songs are sung by children in countries all around the world.

Now Songs For Teaching has our series of 3 CD’s titled ABC’s for Beginners which teaches all the letters and phonetic sounds. I’m sure you’ll find all these new songs are a lot of fun to teach and sing! And they are great fun for English speaking kids too! We offer lots of “Holiday Songs” and because it is December I have to mention our “Christmas Songs”, a beautiful original production, perhaps my favorite!  I also have to tell you, because we are quite proud, of our new TV program, “My School con Anna y Rocco”, seen on Mexican educational TV every Saturday and Sunday.

I love teaching, I enjoy working with students of all ages. I try to make learning easy! And who knows? Maybe one day I’ll still learn French!