Again thank you for all the great feedback on Friday!
Here’s (hopefully!) the final Days of the Week song – the “hmmmm mix”. I did it as a very easy first introduction to the Days of the Week, done in a similar way to like I did Head & Shoulders by introducing one word at a time.
Once you’ve taught it with this mix you would then review it the next lesson with the “Where’s Saturday?” mix.
( Plus all the other songs from before…. if you like!)
The idea is to make it even easier for non-native speaking teachers!
What do you reckon?
P.S. Now all we need are your favourite games & gestures for Days of the Week. What would you recommend?
P.P.S. I’ve also been thinking about adding little “icon” pictures next to each day. A cartoon sun for Sunday, moon for Monday are easy as are a frying pan for Friday and Saturn for Saturday. I was thinking of “chewing gum” for Tuesday. Thoughts? Or any ideas about simple words for Thursday (30?? or a hammer for “Thor” (the movie comes out next year!)?? ) & Wednesday? Then we’d have the full set!
UPDATE: Steve just wrote in to suggest “Thirsty” for Thursday! Which I think is great! “When” for Wednesday sounds like a good idea, but what picture to use behind the question mark?
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I prefer the original version. I think hearing all the days each time would provide more repetitions, especially with the “harder” days that come later in the week.
Hallo Richard,
I think it’s a good idea to use a clock for “WHEN-SDAY”.
Best wishes from Austria
Claudia
I agree with Gumby, better to repeat all days each time.
Instead of using icons for the days why not just use a different colour for each and present them on flashcards in writing? My kids usually have a hard time with Tuesday-Thursday, but when they realise that one has the TH it gets better. It might also be difficult to have pictures that make sense to everyone (Thor and Oden are just as abstract to my students as are the days of the week!)
I agree with Gumby too, and the techno version is loved by all the students, it’s too fast for the smallest but they move their heads, hands… and dance in a genki way.
Thank you very much.
Richard, if you have a bit of time… I would like to have something different for carnival, but only if you have time of course. Sorry for asking, but in Spain we celebrate it and I would like to have one of your songs in order not to sing the same last year song.
Thank you very much, your songs are better than the best…
I like the original version, as gumby says.
for icons, might be good for teachers who spend a whole lesson for teaching the days, but I don’t. For me it works best to just run through the song several times:
all together>>in 2 groups>>one after the other>> in a chorus
and this way they get the days in about 15 minutes longest. After that I just repeat them in the beginning of the next lessons.
One activity I do:
I link it with “What do you want to do?”
and ” I can play the”
I make an interview with them, asking what instrument they can play, offering tambourines, different times of drums, xylophone, maracas, piano, guitar…
After they told me “I can play the…”
I ask what do you want to do now?
“I want to play the…”
And then we play the rhythm and sing the weekdays. It is so much fun for the kids, and we even made it into a performance. They get really confident singing and playing and for me it is satisfying as it is NOT ONLY singing the weekdays.
Naturally there is usually one kid in the group saying “I want to sing”, if not we sing all together while playing the instruments.
I’m finding this really interesting! So you guys just play the song and let kids just pick it up from there? No pre-teaching or anything? Would that work for all the other themes too?
@Sussie: We need some images for the picture based learners!
@Lines: What sort of English would you include for carnival?
I use flashcards that have the Kanji characters to give a hint to pronunciation. 3 (san) suns, 10,000 (man) moons, 2 (two – I found it interesting that you pronounce it as ‘chew’)fires, etc.
I just put up the flashcards and then make sure they know what they represent and then just play the song. There are only 7 so it really doesn’t hurt to have them go through the entire song for them to remember the English.
I would then reinforce the days during other lessons, talking about the students and their daily lives.
Hi Everyone,
I’ve read all the good feedbacks above and quite interesting because we slightly differ in some little situation.
IMO,
Adding a little memory icons to both sides left- right. makes the (Days of the week) easier to remember. I’m just wondering, if the said icon is intended for making a poster? or flashcard?
Some of my younger students just remember the colors and the pictures (icon) attached on every days of the week and that’s it, they just grab it made more faster and easier to recall the words of the days of the week. My students cannot exactly say the Thursday though.
If you pursue with the icon, currently I’m using a 43cm by 7cm. cartoon (Days of the week) and it has the icons on it. and this kind of stuff is really workig with me.
Anyway, I’ll go with the majority. I don’t have a problem with that.
These are the icons that appears on my semi poster days of the week.
Sunday sun/bird
Mon eraser/apple
Tues crayon/cat
Wed pencils
Thurs notebook/ruler
Fri scissors/paint
Sat swing and slide/baseball cup,glove and hat
My 5 yen contribution. Got to go now..
@Gumby: Ooo, I find it interesting that you don’t pronounce it as “chewsday”. Which is different, the vowel or the consonant??
@Richard,
Wow is it just me?!
The consonant is different.
I pronounce it TWOsday as in the number 2.
Ahhh, it looks like you’re right for quite a bit of the US. And here was me thinking “twosday” was just for people from Brooklyn! 😉
Hmmm, back to the drawing board….
Unless you don’t happen to say “twoing gum” do you? 🙂
Richard,
I don’t do much of pre teaching for weekdays as they have a concept of it and it is like remembering numbers or A=B=C (Well, you know they don’ t learn the alphabet from me, but just as an example)
I don’t want to say that this is the best method, but for me it works this way, they remember the days in the shortest time, (as I said up to 15 minutes) and I don’t find it that interesting to teach weekdays, that I would want to spend my time preteaching it.
By the way, the same is for month.
I don’t use the picture cards at all with this topic. The song is enough and they get it really quickly.
I once did use some “hints” and that were the japanese characters for the weekdays as pictures, but that won’t work internationally.
I must say so, that it didn’t help them to remember the days any faster.
For the pronunciation sorry I’m not a native speaker but
Tuesday and Chew
I pronounce differently:
I’ve learned:
TJU
and
Ch(j)u
(do you know what I mean? this is difficult to write out)
Devil’s advocate…..
I’m wondering why there would be a difference between rote learning the abcs, months, days etc. but then pre-teaching other topics?
Other than the fact that we probably learnt them by rote, is there any difference between these and the other themes?
If not then wouldn’t it be simpler to do all the themes in the exact same way? Just rote learn everything?
Just rote learn everything?>>
NO WAY! You know my opinion on this.
And I don’t want to keep you from making images, either.
I think they are cute and they will help kids, (though I’m also afraid they might confuse others, but I think I’ll get them over that)
Still, isn’t it a difference to learn things that have a sequence and learning for example emotions or sports or…
And watching especially little kids(kindergarten) I always feel that they really have fun repeating things that are in a sequence. And usually they are very proud on themselves and feel confident if they can count to ten, say the names of the month or…in the right order.
So in general I’m talking about kids 4,5 years old. Does this still not excuse my method?
It really works so well, but you know you’re too good in convincing me.~~
(The video with the train on the forum was horrible, by the way. )
I think Margit and I are agreement here. I generally don’t like teaching anything that requires rote memorization. Days of the week, months of the year and perhaps planets (My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas) and animals in the
Chinese zodiac (My students just taught me a little dance to go with this that finally helped me remember them 🙂 ) are those that I would use rote memorization.
Even when I teach these, I use visuals that will help them remember. Unfortunately they are very Japan specific so they would be no use for teachers outside Japan.
I wouldn’t just end my teaching here, though. I would find ways for students to associate it with the meaning one by one on different days and in different contexts.
Lots of studies that show children learn BETTER when similar words are not taught together. However in this case with a song, it’s just a great mnemonic tool for them to remember how to say the words. I think just getting them to listen to the song over and over would work better than to spend one class trying to teach and explain each of the seven days.
Rote memorization would work even less with other themes because they are non-sequential and in fact not even necessary to learn as a group. Ideally, when I teach a theme, I would focus on the question or main phrase and let the students choose to remember the other words as they apply to themselves.
I agree with you,( one image has more valiu than one thousand words)this is what we say in Spanish.This means the things that we can see,we can remember them better than the things that we only hear or listen. Your pictures are very nice and my pupils also make mistakes with Tuesday and Thursday, so WONDERFUL idea, they are never going to make mistakes from now.
Carnival is like Halloween but… in a funny way, not scary. The vocabulary we use is: clap your hands, stamp your feet,shout, dance, laugh and sing, join hands.As English speakers don’t celebrate it, there isn’t anything in the text books but my pupils always ask me for something.
Thank you very much for asking.
How about if we have a new brand of chewing gum called “2” for Tuesday? Then you can choose either “2sday” or “chewsday” as your pronunciation?
What do you think?
(It might also help in China where Tuesday is literally “2 day”!)
Love your song! For my French students I make a combination between a day of the week and a verb: on sunday I sleep, on monday I work, on tuesday I sing, etc. It’s too complicated to explain what each day means. I think the song will help them enough to learn how to say the days of the week correctly. Thanks again for the lovely songs. Keep up the good work.
Funny you talk of days of the week in China and counting them – I’ve latched on to it fully and use counting on our hands for remembering the days. Sunday is literally ‘sun’ day so that’s like naught (or fist) and then we count 1-6 as we say/chant/sing the days. By the way all single digits can be done on one hand in China! 6 = thumb and little finger sticking out! It’s a brilliant system!
A Wedding for Wednesday?
Especially after the Royal Wedding!
Thank You for Thursday. Linked to accepting a glass of water and the thirsty idea.
I taught the Sports theme last week and am using the picture book to teach the days of the week this week.
I am still not entirely sure how to go about it though. So have used a 7 days of the week song too.