When I first started teaching English, one of the biggest problems was that kids knew lots of words but couldn’t actually use them. Β Β They’d answer if the teacher asked but they couldn’t ask any questions in English themselves. Β (Even though kids *Love* asking questions and we know that questions are the key to good communication and also genius. A big part of Leonardo Da Vinci’s success was his curiosity which is of course sparked by asking lots of questions!) Β Β So this was something we had to fix!
Many kids songs at the time focussed on letters or numbers or colors so that’s all the kids had swimming around in their heads.
So how did I solve it?
I knew from my music production work that you could easily get a question floating around in someone’s head (an “earworm” as we say) simply by flipping the songs and writing the question into the chorus of new songs (think of how the chorus of a Christmas song or Top 10 single gets stuck in your head all day!)
So that’s what I did, Β I based my whole curriculum around questions and used all the pop music and advertising tricks of the trade to make each question into the chorus for every lesson.
And just like that we had hundreds of kids running round the playground singing all these English questions!
( Of course it drove the teachers mad as the kids were asking questions all day long but hey, I’m cool with that π )
Don’t believe me?
Well, try playing this Genki English song on repeat 3 or 4 times & then see what your brain starts singing to you this evening!
Or …. if you want a real challenge, play this “What does Santa do?” Genki French track 4 or 5 times and see how we get the French question stuck in your head! π
See, it’s pretty magic isn’t it!
Of course this is just a part of the puzzle, but now you know how to get your kids saying all those English questions!
(And an extra bonus is that in the chorus they get to hear lots and lots of different answers too!)
Where can I find all these?
You can check out all the songs in Teacher’s SetΒ and your kids can get them in the ios/android Homework ProgramΒ so instead of driving you mad playing the songs over and over in the classroom they can drive their parents crazy as they play the songs on repeat each day!
Enjoy!
