At Songs for Teaching we believe in the power of music and the power of lyrics! That is why we include lyrics with nearly every song on our website! Having lyrics available can be an incredible tool for any classroom.
Top Ten Tips for using LYRICS in the classroom!
1. Print out lyrics OR project on a screen/smart board and have the children follow along. (Promotes literacy, word recognition and listening skills.)
2. Print out lyrics and have the children circle sight words. (http://www.literacyconnections.com/dolch1-html/)
3. Print out the lyrics and have the children circle words that begin with a certain letter. Extend it with having the children create a small poster with the chosen letter and cutting out the sentences or words in the song with that letter. Then play the song and have the children point to the words as they hear them in the song.
4. Pull spelling words from lyrics. – You can start with a song and create your own spelling list OR you can start with spelling words and find songs with those words in the lyrics. Then have the children circle the spelling words.
5. Write out lyrics on flip chart paper leaving out a word at the end of a line. Then have the children fill in the blank with rhyming words to change the meaning of the line. “Mary had a little lamb” becomes “Mary had a little spam . . .” or “Mary had a little ham . . .”
6. Print out the lyrics for each child and have them circle the nouns and put a rectangle around the verbs. Do the same for adjectives and adverbs or pronouns and prepositions! For those who dare, try diagraming sentences!
7. Create a mad lib with song lyrics. Then have the kids sing the song with the mad lib lyrics. This works best with a well-known tune and an instrumental track. “(proper noun) had a (adjective) (noun)”
8. Make a book. Give children the lyrics and have them illustrate the song. (A great one for songs like This Land is Your Land). Assemble the illustrations in to a book. Read the books together while singing the song.
9. Print each line of the lyrics on tagboard sentence strips. Give each child
a piece of the tag board and have them arrange themselves in order. Play the song and see if they got the correct order. The class can sing karaoke style!
10. Have a class camp out. Print out lyrics to a number of songs and create a songbook. Then gather on the floor around a pretend fire and play the songs you have learned. If you don’t mind a little clean up, serve s’mores or popcorn!
If you have other ideas that you have used, we would love to hear them! Email me at alice at songsforteaching.com
