Listening has always been considered as one of the hardest skills to develop for many ESL and EFL students. However, when talking about young learners, a different difficulty usually pops up. It is not a secret that children are active learners, but many times, as teachers, we tend to use and sometimes overuse the same boring strategies; oftentimes these are strategies we implement with older students. In many cases, this turns our songs lessons into a mere repetition of the previous ones. To skyrocket your songs lessons, I have compiled and adapted 15 creative ideas to make your songs classes much more engaging for your children!
But Adriana, you might be thinking…to develop a high-quality listening class in ELT, ESL, and EFL teaching, we commonly have to include the three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening.
Yes, this is true! That’s why I have divided these groups of strategies into these three stages. Just make sure you mingle them in a wise way, keep the balance, and do not exceed when planning, because sometimes it’s hard to finish extremely complex and creative lesson plans. Trust me, I have good reason for saying this!
Pre-listening ideas to use when teaching songs:
In this stage, the students are getting ready to deal with the song. During this stage we must help them approach it through an activity that involves the theme or the vocabulary of the song. To accomplish this, I propose the following ideas:
1. Image Brainstorming: Generate an original image with an AI and encourage your learners to brainstorm. I have recently used https://www.fotor.com/ and I concluded that the generated images are cute, and it works relatively fast. You just need to type a sentence related to the topic of the song and wait. In just a few seconds, you will have a nice and original image. After, invite your young learners to brainstorm about this image by asking them questions that are suited to their age and level.
2. Runners and Secretaries: Find a short biography (no more than 10 lines) of the artist who sings the song (adapt the level of difficulty, if necessary). Print this biography on a small piece of paper and post it somewhere outside of the classroom. Set up pairs using one grouping technique. If you don’t know any grouping techniques, click on the image below and learn some that might be very helpful!
Then, ask each pair of learners to choose a “runner” and a “secretary”. The runners must go outside of the classroom, read the first phrase of the biography, memorize it, come back to the secretary’s desk, and dictate this phrase to him/her.
The secretaries must then write what their pair has just said. It is important to clarify to the groups that the secretaries must try to write as good as they can since the runners are not allowed to take the pencil. You may continue doing this for a few minutes, then ask the students to switch roles (the secretaries become runners and the runners become secretaries).
The game continues this way until the first group finishes; when this happens, everybody must sit down. The papers will be exchanged with other groups and the biography corrected with the teacher’s guidance. The group with the fewest errors will be the winner. Ask the students if they like this artist and if they can guess the name of the song they will be working on during the class. Believe me, your students will love this game!!
3. Taboo: Check the song and select some words your students might already know (basic ones). Split your class in two groups and ask one of the groups to send a “competitor”. Ask this competitor to look towards the class and avoid looking at the board. When the student isn’t looking at the board, you will write one of the words on it that you have previously listed. Ask the competitor’s group to try to explain to their player the written word. If your group is extremely basic, you may ask the group to “mime” instead of “speak”. On the contrary, if your class is a more advanced one, you may add some additional words to the word written on the board. These additional words can’t be mentioned during the explanation. For example, if the target word is “dentist”, you may add the words “teeth” and “brush”, which means that the group won’t be allowed to use any of these words when explaining to their partner.
Having done this, the competitor must guess the first word you have written on the board, the “target word”. If he or she does so, his or her group will get a point. Do this until you finish the words. The winner will be the group with the most points.
4.Word Puzzle: Use this tool when you want your students to get familiar with the new vocabulary. Choose 10 target words from the song and create a word puzzle. Ask them to solve it in pairs or groups. I always use the following website to create word searches for my children:
If you want to see how to use it Click here and check out my video on my Instagram account.
5. Unscramble the Letters/Words: Extract the most important vocabulary from the song (verbs, phrasal verbs, expressions, etc.) and create cards with them (complete words or single letters). You may ask your students to unscramble either the letters or words. They must unscramble them as they listen to the song.
While-listening ideas to use when teaching songs:
In this stage, the students are supposed to be more challenged. They must try to go a bit further and make a bigger effort, which means that they must listen to the text much more actively. In order to accomplish this, we usually design tasks in which we ask our learners to identify general ideas and specific details.
1. Listen and Touch: Print or write the different verses of the song on different pieces of paper. I suggest you use a large-sized paper and a clear font so your students can read them easily. Post the verses around the classroom and ask your children to listen to the song carefully as they go around touching the verses they listen to.
2. Stanzas Organization: Type the complete lyrics of the song and separate them by stanzas. Cut out each one of the stanzas and place them in a container or envelope. Divide your class in groups and give each group one of the envelopes. Ask the students to rearrange the song in order and give out prizes if desired.
3. Cut and Paste Fill in the Blanks: This is time consuming but it’s still one of my favorite ones. Create a fill-in-the-blank worksheet in which you challenge your children to grasp some target language (words, phrasal verbs, expressions, etc.). Include the target words as a cut and paste exercise; you can mix pictures and words or just words. I usually work with this in groups since there are students who may take longer doing this activity and might need help. However, it depends on the level, so feel free to adapt it to your needs.
4. Mistakes Correction in Groups with Signage: Create a worksheet with the entire lyrics of the song. Make sure that these lyrics have a certain number of mistakes or differences with the actual audio. Divide your class in teams and provide each one of the teams with two signs, one saying, “IT’S CORRECT, CONTINUE!” and another saying, “IT’S INCORRECT, STOP!”. Challenge your students to raise one of the signs after, and only after, you play a segment of the song. Make sure you prepare the segments you want to play in advance and be careful not to play very long verses, as that might be very hard for the basic levels. After having done this, read the signs that each group raised and ask the groups who found the errors to explain them. The teams will then need to make the correction(s) on their sheets. You will repeat this process until all of the lyric segments have been played Award points to the winners, if desired.
5. Playdough Fill in the Blanks: This a really cool one! It is special for young or very young learners. Let me tell you that even my fifth-grade children love it and show great motivation towards listening when we play it. You know hands-on lessons are always a blast among children!
By using PowerPoint or another program of your choice, you will design a fill-in-the-blank presentation that will be displayed on the board. Divide your class in pairs or teams. Give each team some playdough and ask them to be ready to listen and write. Display the sentence/stanza on the board, play the segment of the song, and stop the audio. Play the audio more than once if necessary. Using their playdough, the students will write the missing word on their playdough boards. Feedback can then be given, and incentives provided to the group, if you consider it appropriate.
Post-listening ideas to use when teaching songs:
In this stage, the students must use what they have learned (vocabulary, grammar, information about a topic) to respond, interact, or exercise their decoding skills. My hands-on proposals are the following:
1. Sing and Dance: Challenge your learners to prepare a concert with the song (they must sing and dance). Establish a score for each of these abilities, for example: dancing-4 points, singing-6 points. I usually give a higher score to singing as this is more related to our subject objectives than mere dancing. However, feel free to set the scores based on your group and your objectives. If possible, bring different accessories to class, such as hats, gloves, glasses, etc., that your students can use in their presentation. Don’t forget to give them the necessary time to prepare and present.
2. Art Talking: After having understood the song, ask your children to create an artistic piece about it. You might use the materials you have, such as paints and paintbrushes, colored pencils, crayons, etc. After they finish, ask your children to talk about their pieces. Prepare some prompts to help your weakest learners and display them on the board for them to use if necessary.
3. Act it Out: Depending on the lyrics of the song, you might propose that your children act it out. In intermediate and more advanced groups, you may allow them to create their own dialogues; with beginners or with weaker groups, you might create some prompts. Give them time to rehearse and have fun!
4. Write a Response Letter, Card, or E-Mail: After having understood the song, ask your children to think of an answer, advice, or solution for the problem or situation presented along it. Depending on their age and level, you will probably need to provide them with some prompts or support worksheets.
5. One More Stanza: Provide children with the original lyrics and ask them to create a new stanza using words that sound similar to the ones included in the lyrics. Provide some options and examples when working with lower levels.
But many of you may be asking, “Adriana, could you give us an example using some of the strategies mentioned previously?”
And my answer is yes. If you want to see an example, click on the image below and download these two hands-on versions of a special song for Earth Day. They were designed to help you when working with mixed-ability classes or differentiated instruction.
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