Teach with Music & Songs
“Music is the universal language of mankind.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Music appeals to students of all ages and is a great way to learn. Language learners remember vocabulary through hand gestures, while singing songs (Total Physical Response). They can memorize important facts by singing songs about a certain moment in history. Language learners enhance their English speaking, listening, reading and writing skills by exploring and reciting songs. Check out the slides and the bookmarks below.
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Music Websites
Find lesson plans based on songs at these sites:
- Mathsciencemusic.org is an initiative by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz that uses music as a tool to teach math and science to young people in public and private schools.
- Learn coding with Scratch's music projects.
- MUSED Lab Apps features creative music web apps for kids.
- Math of Music explains the complex mathematical concepts present in music.
- Flocabulary is a learning program that uses hip-hop music to engage students.
Find lesson plans based on songs at these sites:
- TeflTunes.com
- Eslhiphop.com
- Mondostoppops.blogspot.com
- Eflclub.com/music.html
- Englishbaby.com/lessons/celebrities/music
- FluencyMC (Jason Levine) has several Hip Hop and rap videos, in which, students learn English. Check out Jase's free song lyric book.
- BusSongs has many different videos and songs for children.
- Soundcloud.com/freshprep is a channel of Hip Hop songs that teach English, History, and more!
- Soundcities is full of sounds recorded around the world that students can remix. They can also contribute their own sounds to the database.
- The most famous sites for students to learn English with song lyrics, include LyricsTraining and TuneintoEnglish.
- Students can guess songs by viewing word clouds of the lyrics. Two great sites, include Guess the Lyrics Word Clouds and Sporcle.
- Students can create lyrical flowcharts like this one of Hey Jude. They can use an infographic tool like Piktochart, Easel.ly, Canva, or Visme. Try Lucid Chart and screencasting tools, like Educreations and Screencast-o-matic.
- Classroom Lyrics challenges students to change the lyrics of songs that already exist. They can modernize the lyrics. The site provides charts, instructions, and guidance.
- Students can create a music video. Try the video creation apps and web tools here.
- Create emoji video lyrics like the one here. Try the video creation apps and web tools here.
- Students can create music collaboratively with WhoJam, Soundation, and Flat.
- Students can record, remix and edit audio with Audacity, Garageband, and Soundtrap.
- Students will have fun creating music videos with the Video Star and Funimate Music apps. Other fun apps for students to learn English, include the Sing2LearnEnglish iOS App and for children, the #Sing2Learn iOS App.
Bookmarks
Find the tools listed above and many more resources in the bookmarks below.