Usually I do my “look back at 2005” post at this time, but I haven’t had time to sit down long enough to write it!
Which is just as well as over Christmas I’ve been back in the UK, and once again it’s the music here that makes it so good. I came up with a load of ideas for new songs, so today I sat down and recorded the new “Make a Face” song.
With the high profile of GE in Japan, and especially at the bookstores, I always feel under pressure to come up with “new and amazing” ideas. But with the feedback from CD5 what I found out was that I can’t just focus on what’s best for the kids, I also have to make everything easy to teach for the teachers! In Thailand as well, they weren’t really looking for fancy ways of teaching “What do you think of…?“, they are looking for ways to teach the “bread & butter” language. I’ve always shied away from those as there are already plenty of songs like that ( i.e. “Heads & Shoulders”) and always felt I didn’t need to duplicate anything. But not all songs are as good or as available as “Heads & Shoulders” so I decided to write a simple “parts of the face” song as it allows teachers to do the popular “fukuwarai” New Year’s game. So the motto for the new songs is: “Keep it simple”!
For the production for this song, it turned out the best thing was a similar thing to what I did for the Phonics “d” song. Again, until now I’ve always shied away from re-using production styles, instead preferring to come up with 100% different tracks. But as a teacher said to me last year “that doesn’t matter, a song that works now is better than a super-original one next year”. Good point. So I’m going to get cracking on these new songs, forget about making them too flashy or clever, as long as they work in the classroom, that’s what matters!
I also tried recording with my posh new Samson CO1U microphone, which plugs straight into the computer without using a mixing desk. Very nice! I thought…. but it doesn’t actually work with a digital mixing desk! So I had to use my old mics, oh well, never mind, let’s go with what works and just get the songs into the classrooms!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Hi,
For the first time I did the Make a face! theme this week and the kids loved it! (Small groups of 2-9 kids and there are no blackboards where I teach)
Firstly, I showed both A4 and A5 face cards (in the latter the kids were saying “It’s a blue face with brown eyebrows” so I managed to practice colours too :.) )
Then we played a game with two teams and the die.
At home, I used a saucepan lid and drew a circle on a blank A4 sheet. Then I made a copy and laminated both blank faces plus one extra blank A4 sheet for storing the face parts later on.
I cut out the coloured Make a face! worksheet items and also the items on the A4 minicards (I had to make an extra copy of the cheeks and made extra eyebrows out of the ginger hair as this would not fit the head!).
Lastly I also cut the words (cheeks, eyes…) into labels from the same A4 mini cards – no waste!
I then laminated all the pieces.
So I stuck the two blank A4 faces on a wall with blue tac and left a space between them. Then I held up a face part and the the kids had to identify it and then I stuck it on the wall space with blue tac and so on.
Next each team player took their turn to role the die, say the face part, choose one item from the selection and stick it on their team’s face.
The winning team was the first to complete their funny face. They quite often rolled hair over and over again so you may want to set a time limit. However, the kids were more interested in making a funny face than winning and we all had a giggle at the end especially at the face with the tuft of ginger hair!
For the older kids I then used the labels and each child would pick one up, turn it over, read it out loud, remove the relevant face part from it’s funny face and stick it on the blank laminated A4 sheet. So the kids practiced reading and speaking and I had help tidying up and preparing for the next class!
Of course they were also sticking the face parts on their own faces and laughing too as they raised their funny ginger eyebrows!
It’s a portable game that can be used over and over again. I have two daughters who are eager to play the game and they are native english speakers!
Sorry about the long comment. :.)
Hi
I found a site where you can create different faces and then print them off. I made a man, woman, boy, girl and lastly a really funny looking face!
I showed each face and asked them to describe what they could see e.g. brown hair, it’s a man, it’s the Mother and so on.
They all burst out laughing when they saw the last face. It had a blond bob, big hairy brown eyebrows, a reddish brown moustache and big teeth!
Then one child said, “It’s Grandma!”
I am now going to use these for a Family theme lesson too but maybe not the Grandma one! LOL