Integrated Skills: Using Music to teach the 4 skills

St. Wajdi. A. Shaw
linguistic983@yahoo.com
University of Delaware (ELI)
2007 P4T (Jordan - Syria)
Integrated Skills: Using Music to teach the 4 skills
Janet Louise (WHL 208)

Hi everyone, I hope you are doing well so far. Today, I am going to summarize what we have done and learned in the last workshop “Integrated Skills: Using Music to teach the 4 skills” which was presented by Janet Louise.

Firstly, Janet began the lecture by playing different kinds or genres of music then she started to ask about how we felt when we were listening to each one of those genres of music. I think she wanted us to put ourselves in the places of our pupils so we can choose the appropriate music in teaching them the language, and obviously, there were many different opinio ns about those different genres of music. And here are some of the songs that we listened to:

1. “They Got So Much to Say” – Bob Marley, Exodus.

2. Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor Op. 27 No. 2 “Moonlight” 1st Movement – Beethoven.

3. “Festival Music “(Music of the Malinka” – African Tribal Music and Dances.

In addition, Janet showed the manners we, as teachers, choose a song and that by asking ourselves the following questions:

1. “Is the topic or language possibly offensive?”

2. “Is the theme very suitable for my students’ ages?”

3. “Will the students enjoy the songs, or is it just a pleasure for me?

4. “Is it too short, obscure or simple?”

5. “What’s about time, is it enough to play the song for three times or more?”

6. “What’s about the clarity of the words of the song?”

7. “Will the students get bored before finishing the activity?”

After that, we learnt how we download lyrics and songs from the Internet (free websites) and make sure that CDs or cassettes and lyrics match.
Next, Janet provided us with some songs that might be used in teaching the students in kindergarten or elementary schools with some exercises, like “BINGO”.
She also gave us many handouts of songs that might be used in teaching the secondary school and collage students, as: “I love ESL (Rock Talk)”, “Thank you”, “I can’t Make You Love Me” and “Banana Pudding” before we started to listen to them.

As a wrapping up, Mrs. Louise offered us some of useful websites and books which can be our resources of songs and lyrics or teaching using music, such as:

1. www.rhino.com : Storyteller: Alanis Morissette, 2005. Viacom International, Inc. Warner Strategic Marketing.

2. www.palmpictures.com : Freestyle: The art of Rhyme, 2004.

3. “Rock Talk and the Vowel Sounds”: Music Creating Language Experience: by Jenny Redding, 2005. Musical Educational.

4. “Songs in Action”: Dale T. Griffee. 1992, Prentice Hall International (UK)
Ltd; ISBN (0-19-437055-0).

5. “Fun Learning Songs!” Elementary School Rock; Kindergarten Musical Note2000. Item Workshop Feedback Form

Well, I was surprised by the different responses and attitudes of my colleagues toward the lecture so I am showing their comments in the following Table & Chart:



Table (1)





Chart (1)

**** Teachers’ Suggestions (written just as they are on the Workshop Feedback Form):

a) The presenter could have used Multimedia Programs (Computer) and that would have saved her a lot of trouble and would have saved time.

b) We need more materials to use music in teaching.
**** Astonishing Comments!!!:

a) I think we can still do the same activities without using music or songs.

b) What was the goal of this workshop and how can I (as a teacher) adopt this method
to my classroom? I still do not know ….

c) I didn’t grap any practical thing.

Thinking, writing and learning

Thinking, Writing and Learning presented by Dr. Stephen Bernhard

In this workshop the presenter used new technological techniques in teaching writing. He used the WebCt.
Writing is a means of communication. It pulls together thinking, analyzing and learning, so the presenter talked about different ways teachers can use to improve student writing and communication skills.
Why Write?
Sometimes we write to demonstrate learning, to integrate new learning, to encourage verbalization, or to manage a large project.
Writing could also be used as a feedback on learning and ownership of ideas.
Formal or Informal Writing?
There are different ways of writing ranges from exploratory, questioning, tentative to polished, published and delivered.
All ways help the teacher know about the level of his students and where they really are.
A lesson from WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum)
It helps the students to be good learners, so writing is sometimes used to promote learning.
Communicating and Thinking
Communicators need a context- it could be a sense of purpose, audience, genre or a sense of how it will be evaluated.
Writing offers the chance to own information and understand things in a better way. Writing is thinking and discovery.
College students are most engaged with courses that assign writing because it is the one skill they want to improve as often as any other skill.
What kinds of writing (GENRES)?
Letters, short stories, essays, biographies, memos, reports, forms, charts ...etc.

What kinds of Speaking?
Expert interviews, rehearsals, progress reports, team discussions........etc.
What makes a good assignment?
It should relate to course goals, define clear situations and set standards for communication.
How do we integrate communication?
By reflective writing, using technology, modeling, clustering, etc.

Attendees’ comments:
The workshop was interesting. The teachers liked the idea of using modern technology with modern methodology and they also liked the interacting through writing in the chat.
For some teachers, the workshop fell short of their expectations. They hoped they would learn specific new techniques to guide their students to better writing.

summary of storytelling

The presenter of storytelling was Debra Darrell . she coverd the following topics :
1.the benefits of storytelling in the classroom like; help students to make sense of the world
and gives them the ability to imagaine.
2.language skills practice with storytelling like;oral stories which develp listening in a unique and resposive way.
3.Helps students to understand the structure of a story.
4.It can give students a sense of writing techniques such as strong beginning and end.
5.the presenter was clear and she used different techniques ,like painting ,role playing.


Audience response:
All the teachers' responses were possitive.

American culture summary

Dear teachers,


I hope my summary for( AMERICAN CULTURE)/American ways ,which was presented to us by "CHRIS WOLFE" will be of great benefit to all of you!


Chris told us that what he tried to explain to us is how "American people" understand themselves. He made it clear that AMERICANS have high respect fo the LAW but low respect for the GOVERNMENT eventhough the government is the one who makes the LAWS.He talked about the historical background of AMERICA and the Europian origin,he also mentioned that AMERICA is a nation of immigrants and gave us these statisics:
9.3%of the current population was born in another country.
13% of Americans normally speak a language other than English at home.
40% of all new students at NYD do not speak English as their first language.
Chris mentioned some generalities of American culture such as;individual freedom and self reliance,equalityof opportunity,strog sense of individual privacy.
The way he presnted all that was really great because he mentioned many examples of his own experience since he has travelled alot and saw different cultures.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
The response of all teachers to the lecture was positive.One teacher thought that one lecture was not enough and another asked for a CD which talks about AMERICAN CULTURE.

Discipline and Classroom Management Workshop.

Hi every body!

I'm going to write about one of the workshops that we had. The title of that

workshop was "Discipline and Classroom Management". It was presented by Dr.George Bear.

The workshop started with meeting some American teachers in Delaware.

Dr.George divided us into groups according to the class level we teach,then we had comparison discussion with the American teachers.

We compared the Jordanian educatinal system with the American system. We

also discussed what types of discipline we can do in our classrooms.

We also discussed some major facts of discipline problems in our classes. After

that we asked each other some questions like the following :

1- Why did you decided to be a teacher ?

2- What standards do you follow?

At the end we discussed how we can prevent problems in the classrooms.

hi every body I'm glad to be with you .

Syrians are in - day 1

We are glad we are here and we hope we can catch up with you soon.

Hello

Hi

Mouhammad Utmah

This is Mouhammad Utmah, an English Teacher from Syria. I'm really interested in learning new techniques for teaching

oral intelligibility

The question of what makes a speaker intelligible was raised by Earl Stevek in the beginning of 90s.Then the trend was captured and developed.Dr Scott,the presenter,successfully introduced different techniques of teaching pronunciation on segmental level,rhythm,intonation,linking,projection and reductions on the suprasegmental level.Each technique was discussed accurately and different types of examples were offered.The most interesting ones were:1)using rap music to practise suprasegmentals;2)using nursery rhymes to practise stressed elements;3)teaching linking through sound productions;4)teaching the change in meaning by sentence stress paraphrasing;5)using kazoo to immitate intonation patterns. The importance of drama based methods on the example of Manhattan transfer and oral dramatic readings was interestingly presented.All the feedbacks from students were positive.

Technonlogy: Introduction to THE BLOG (Baerbel)

St. Wajdi. A. Shaw
University of Delaware (ELI)
2007 P4T (Jordan - Syria)

Technology: Introduction to the online P4T course materials, assignment and the Blog



Hi everyone! It is Wajdi and I am going to summarize the way how to use The Blog or how to post a massage to the Partnership for Teaching blog site. Although it is easy process but I have to write something about it because some of my colleagues have asked me to do so.

Baerbel said at the beginning of the lecture that if one wants to get an account at the blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), s/he should have at least one account at either (http://www.yahoo.com/) or (http://www.google.com/) in order to receive an invitation to get an access into the blog.

After she made sure that everyone had an invitation, she showed us how to sign up by following these steps:

1) Go to (http://www.blogger.com/).

2) Click on the “New Blogger: using your yahoo or google account.

3) Type your username. Your username is your e-mail address.

4) Type the password that you selected when you created your account.

5) Click on SIGN IN.

6) Click on New Post under the Partner for Teaching 2007: Jordan-Syria.

7) Type a word or phrase for the title. Then type your message in the big box.

8) When you finished with your message, click on BUPLISH at the bottom of the screen.

9) You can see your new massage by clicking on VIEW BLOG.

10) Finally, when you finish what you want to do, DON’T FORGET to click SIGN OUT at the top right area of the screen.

Note: Also, with the blog you can see what are your colleagues’ ideas or questions about the program or any subject concerned in (P4T) program or anything else.

Wajdi. A. Shawagfeh
linguistic983@yahoo.com

Teaching listening

listening is the most important skill. That is very clear in our daily life. For example , when a pregenant woman suddenly hears noisy , she reacts or does a sudden movement so her baby will respond and begins moving. Why ? Because he hears sounds.

In the classroom , the essential point is that students need to be able to understand what is said in order to function satisfactorily in the situation. One way of doing this task is that students talk to themselves through a routine day and try to note all the different listening situations that occur, for example to make an interview with his friends, to listen to the news , to read the instructions.
One of the reasons of why students listen is ( listening for comprehension ) , and the aim of listening for comprehension in the classroom is that students should learn successfully in real-life listening situations ( as I mentioned before ) , and what sorts of things the student needs to be able to do in order to comprehend in a very successful way in a variety of situations.

- Using pictures , drawings , letters to be circled is a good way of teaching listening.
- Using signs , gestures helps also .

Technology-Podcasting

what is podcasting?
it is about recording voices and souds to be put in the computer and used as a mean of teaching (listening & speaking).

why pod?

we can use it for different educational purposes like teaching speaking or listening.It makes the lesson more enjoyable,it makes lessons student-centered and it can be another kind of assessment in a way it enables teachers and students to see the progress they make during the scholastic year by comparing their records at the begining and at the end of the year.
Students can evaluate themselves when they listen to their voices and it can help them in pracising speaking like story-telling.

How do we pod?

the first thing we should do in order to be able to pod is to open an account on
www.tunaruna.com/podcast/
When we record anything (e.g. interview with host family) we can upload it as following:
1- use a wire to connect the tape recorder with the computer.
2- go to (start) then (audacity) then you will have an empty screen with buttons on the top.
3-turn on the recorder at the same time hit the recording buttonor on the audacity screen.
if you want to save it you can go to (file) then (save projet) but if you wish to add more sounds you can do the following:-

1-check www.tunaruna.com/podcast/
2-go to (freesound) 6th on yhe list.
3-type the soud erea you like(e.g. park.birds)
4-hit (submitt)
5-you have many sounds,choose the one/s you lik
6-on the right side of the screen use a right click to hit (download)
7-save target as..
8-discktop (or your flash)
9-go to audacity=>project=>descktop=>choose it.
10-now it is added to the audacity screen.

# if you wish to delete a part of your recordind use (I) to make the target erea the hit (delete).
#if you want one of the recording to start before the other you can use (<->) to pull one of them to the right side of the screen and it will sart later.
#to save go to file =>save as MP3 then it is at the desktop.

have a nice day with shopping in u s a
hazar

hi to every one in my group

i'm dlade to see you

hi; i miss my family soooooooooooooooooooo much

hi all

hi eveybody,this is ur new blogger amer from jordan

najeh

i am najeh saleh i am from jordan , i am married i have two kids . i am an english teacher. i have been teaching english since 1993. you are welcome

welcome

hi,
i am Hussam i have been a teacher for four years ago, and i teach 4th and 5th grade in Jordan. I am very glad to be in the united state. it is very good experience

greet every body

hi every one.i hope every one is okay

hi 2 all

hi,good 2 join u all.

welcome

hi im suhad madanat .Iam an English teacher from Jordan. I teach 1st ,2nd,3rd ,4th and 5th Grades .I studied in Muatah Univercity .I am very interested in learning English Language . I .ve been teaching English for 8 Years .

greetings

Hello!I am Marianna Viktorova.I was born in Ukraine,lived and studied there,then at the age of 17 my family moved to Jordan,where I studied at the University of Jordan.I am very much interested in learning languages,teaching.Ihave finished M.A.degree and have been teaching English for 10 years at Rosary School in Amman, Jordan and at the University of Jordan .

hii all

hii all this inas your new partner in this programme

Hope but Cope

Hope but Cope

Whenever you see a light
Remember
There is an end to every night.

All the time there is hope
However,
Just keep holding to the rope.

And never say it's not my day
It's yours
But there might be a delay.

It is time to work hard
Look!
We've already lost our land.

If you postpone you goal
Careful!
You might also lose your soul.

Those are for normal persons
How about
When it comes to senior citizens?

Our mission as teachers
Is
To shift normal to senior creatures.

And when they are senior
It's better
To drive them to be superior.

Teachers are not only who teach
In addition
They are all who need to reach
The ecstasy of this beach
The beach of peace and love
The love of share and care
The care of all who dare
To be there, ready and willing to teach.