Children and youngsters thrive when there is structure in their life: so starting and ending lessons in a familiar way rounds them off. Particularly at the beginning of the school year and for various months following I like to start off lessons with songs and chants which introduce and revise the date, weather, time and seasons. These introductory chants are not only meant to be sung repetitively but are meant to introduce the various topics: when we speak of the date we possibly look for and stick up the corresponding day, date and month on the board. (I have laminated sticky-backed ‘signs’ to substitute day by day – see picture). As for the weather, once we have imitated the various kinds of weather with gestures during the chant, I have various cards which they can in turn hold up asking their friends, “Is it sunny?”, “No, it’s not / Yes, it is,” until they can also stick the appropriate weather card on the board. We practise saying different times and seasons according to whim and so all these activities consolidate their knowledge of dates, cardinal and ordinal numbers, years and times – numbers in a foreign language being a notable hurdle even for adults. The end of the lesson is usually rounded off singing a few expressions to tidy up and wish a nice time until our next appointment. These are useful expressions which can also be used in everyday life. So below you have the scripts and audios to all these chants to download. Hope you have fun using them! Susan
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AuthorMy name is Susan Brodar, born in London into a multilingual family and brought up bilingual English / Italian. Archives
December 2018
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