Bilingual Basics: English/Español!
CD and Reproducible Resource Book teaches primary school concepts in
both English and Spanish. Topics include: the calendar, clock, coins,
colors, counting, patterns, cross cultural respect, and manners.
Bilingual Basics also features resources for adults such as such as
summaries of how to use music to teach and learn and a quick guide to
phonics in Spanish.
Five great opportunites to use
music in the educational setting:
•
Starting off the day or lesson with music helps set a mood or a tone.
Likewise, using music at the end of a day or a lesson can help leave an
impression.
• Calling a group to attention with music is friendly and inviting.
• Playing soft music during student seat work can be simultaneously
stimulating and relaxing.
•
During times when student talking is permitted or encouraged -
playing a tape or CD can set a limit on the volume of students’
talking, i.e. "If I can’t hear the music then you guys are talking too
loudly."
•
Sprinkle music with a message throughout the day. Music can be a kind
of rallying signal. Consider the power of simple songs like, "It’s
clean up time… Time to put the toys away."
Five great reasons to
use music specifically to teach and learn academic content:
• Music is fun and contributes to an atmosphere of low anxiety which is
crucial for academic learning.
• Music engages and integrates both sides of the brain, the left side
that thinks with the right side that likes to play.
• Music, particularly
when integrated with movement, activates a
variety of intelligences, accessing the strengths in many children.
• Music, even just chanting in rhythm, imprints lyrics into memory.
• Repeated readings of poetry or lyrics build reading fluency as well
as comprehension.
Five great ways to use music to teach
and learn academics:
•
Read the lyrics together while listening. With beginning readers, in
either language, talk about sound symbol correspondence in addition to
word meaning. Sing together when you’re comfortable with the song.
• Highlight key vocabulary. Sometimes let the students seek and
identify key words.
• Sketch or add pictures by lyrics to edify meaning. This is especially
helpful when done through collaboration between adults and children.
Ask,"What should we sketch here?" or "Where should we put this
picture?"
• In classrooms, using an overhead to see and work with a song can
work. Students can also have their own photocopied lyrics pages. On
chart paper though, songs can stay up and the text and graphics can be
a resource for students.
• Make up dances, motions, or use sign language to go along with the
words.
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