One tried-and-true method to present a song is to use out-of-order pictures. This works nicely with the Get their Attention, Direct Their Listening method I talked about in an earlier post.
I recruit as many helpers as I have pictures (or objects) and line them up in front of the primary, each holding one of the pictures, making sure the pictures are in the wrong sequence.
Then I give the children a listening assignment, and sing the song to them. For younger children, I might ask them to be "picture detectives" (or something equally dramatic) and listen to see if the pictures are in the right order. For older children, I'd use a greater number of out-of-order pictures to complicate things, and be a bit more vague about what they need to discover. I might even be devious and give them a red-herring assignment, like listening for how many times I sing the word "the." Since older children love to point out a teacher's mistakes, hopefully they'll notice that the pictures aren't in the right order, and enjoy pointing this out to me. I congratulate them on their brilliance.
Next I recruit a helper to come rearrange the children (I personally like this better than just swapping the pictures to different children) to put them in the correct order for the song. No help from the audience! Then I sing the song again to the children, as they check to see if the picture order is now fixed. This allows me to sing the song at least twice so that the children clearly hear the melody and words. We then sing it together. (If I use this method to review a song the children already know, I have them sing with me the entire time.)
A variation: have the helpers, after listening to the song, rearrange themselves in the correct order, with the primary children voting on whether the helpers got it right.
In my experience, a sequence of about 3-5 pictures works well for Junior Primary, for Senior Primary, 6-8.
Can you guess what out-of-order song the stick figure children are demonstrating in the illustration above? Have you ever used this method to introduce or review a song? Please share your experiences!
A variation: have the helpers, after listening to the song, rearrange themselves in the correct order, with the primary children voting on whether the helpers got it right.
In my experience, a sequence of about 3-5 pictures works well for Junior Primary, for Senior Primary, 6-8.
Can you guess what out-of-order song the stick figure children are demonstrating in the illustration above? Have you ever used this method to introduce or review a song? Please share your experiences!
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