University of Koblenz- Landau
Campus Koblenz
English department
IFA Area studies
28th of November
Dr. I. Martin
Presentation: Kathrin Kairies, Eva Ofterdinger
Songs and Games
Games for language teaching in primary school
Games are popular for the foreign language teaching especially for the first two
years. Children in this age enjoy playing games and in the main point they
should recognize that “language works”. And of course, games are motivating,
socializing and important for the training of kognitive skills.
The games for the first learner have to have easy rules and to be spontaniously
usable. With a game you can repeat the new vocabulary in a new context. A
repitition in this way is more exciting and motivating, as well.
To create a game less complicated it is useful to take picture cards which show
the new words like nouns, prepositions and verbs.
e.g.: Where is Jack the dog?
Is he sitting on the box? -No he isn’t!
Another great material are inteviewcards:
Each child is getting a card with another character (name/age/...) and they have
to ask each other questions about their new personality.
Game’s objective and learning target
The game’s objective and the learning target are not equal so that the children
train or learn new words without recognizing it. The teacher can reach more than
one learning target in the same game.
e. g.: BINGO: assign the word with a picture and understanding skills
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Children in primary school are keen on playing games. But not every game is
suitable for every child so that the teacher has to be sensible with the selection.
And of course, games make the lesson more exciting. Each game has got a
special activating circle which makes it more or less exciting. A game has to be
undecided until the end to keep the excitement and it has to keep the balance
between coincidence and language skills to make it more interesting for worse
pupils.
While playing a game the children are more relax and this is a good condition of
an effective learning. It is important that the teacher is the game manager
especially in the first years because the pupils have to listen to the right English
pronunciation. If something is incorrect, the teacher doesn’t have to correct the
children immediately this could interrupt the fluence of the game.
Impotant rules for games:
 choose games which fits to the language skills of the children
 prepare enough material
 explain the rules exactly (maybe in German) and do a try run
 if it is better for the learning group to change the rules, do it!
 choose different group arrangements e .g. children with only 4 letters in
their first name are in one group
 choose an eventful point evaluation e. g. pictures on the board
 Stop the game when it is still exciting!
Types of games
Movement game
Change places:
Age: 6-8
Time: 10-15 minutes
Learning target: understanding skills
The game manager stands in the middle of a circle, children sit on chairs.
Manager says for example: Change places if you are wearing green.
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At the same time the manager has to find a place. The person who doesn’t get a
chair goes on with asking questions.
Total Physical Response (TPR)
Robot Game:
Age: every age
Time: 10 minutes
Learning target: understanding skills, speaking skill: to give orders
The pupils have to build pairs. One of them is a roboter who reacts to the order
of his/her partner. Later they can change their parts. Important: to mention
Please
Circle game
Grammer ballgame:
Age: 8-11
Time:10 minutes
Learning target:speaking skill: asking and answering questions
Material: ball
The children are standing in a circle. The first player throws the ball to another
child and asks a question e. g.: Do you like bananas? The child who catches the
ball has to give a true answer: Yes, I do/ No, I don’t. Here are different question
types possible to make the game interesting.
Oral game
Find your twin:
Age: all ages
Time: 10-20 minutes
Learning target: asking questions
Material: cards with names of famous persons
Write names of famous persons on the cards. Each name should stand on two
cards. Hand out the cards and explain that the pupils are now this person. They
have to ask each other questions untill they’ve found their twin. But only answer
with Yes or No
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Board game/Team game
Drawing/”Montagsmaler”
Age: all ages
Learning target: speaking skills; vocabulary
Material: word cards
Make groups of 8-10 children. Each group comes alternately to the board and
gets a word card which they have to draw. The first child of this first team comes
to the board. The child has to draw a picture of the word the teacher gave
him/her. If the team finds the word within one minute, they get a point and the
second child comes on the board. If they don’t guess the word the second group
continues.
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Songs and rhymes for language teaching in primary school
It is well-known that rhymes, poems and songs in the foreign language are one
of the main parts of elementary and primary foreign language teaching.
The kind of English classes, that wants to support all senses, has to involve
music, feelings, movement and creativity.
Songs and rhymes are very popular with pupils from elementary school and they
are highly motivating (Singing together and rhythmical speech cause a positive
common experience).
The individual time of speech increases enormously because of the group
activity. Slow learning pupils profit from singing and speaking in chorus.
Rhymes and songs even play an important role in the process of learning the
mother tongue. They help learning important things like figures, parts of the
body, colours, time, weekdays and many other parts of children’s knowledge. By
English songs and rhymes the pupils learn all these terms in English. In this way
it is possible to build up a basic vocabulary and elementary structures, e.g.
asking for one’s name and introducing oneself.
Furthermore, these texts include authentic cultural elements. That can be a good
startingpoint to make a country’s cultural differences and peculiarities visible.
For example: “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer”  connection reindeer and
Christmas
“Trick or treat”
 Halloween manners
So we can say there are 3 reasons why songs and rhymes are useful in a foreign
language.
1.
Motivation
2.
To introduce the foreign culture
3.
To support the learning of a foreign language
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Motivation
Singing together is a nice variety from usual classes.
Knowing the song for each situation (Christmas, birthday, etc.) gives pupils a
closer connection to the language and makes them feel as if they were able to
speak English quite well already. This makes them feel confident.
To introduce the foreign culture
Songs and rhymes have always been part of the English culture. They make
every kind of English class more authentic. Several songs include special words
or subjects of e.g. typical events like “Halloween” or “Thanks Giving”. So they
can be a startingpoint for further explanation.
To support the learning of the language
For many children it’s easier to sing or speak in the foreign language as a group
than presenting themselves in front of the class.
The melody helps pupils to find the right rhythm of speech.
The frequent repeats in songs and poems improve pronunciation and let children
keep words or even whole sentences in mind. The most appropriate way for this
is a so called “action song” because it links language and movement. This
supports memory activities.
Another advantage of action songs and finger rhymes is that they cause verbal
and non-verbal actions like role play, pantomime, etc. Songs in which children
can play a different role or dress up are most popular.
Pronunciation is also exercised by rhymes, nursery rhymes, songs and chants
(rhythmically spoken texts). It is important that the correct pronunciation is
taught from the beginning because children use to keep the pronunciation they
learned in elementary school.
A later improvement or change is only possible under great efforts.
dog ≠ dock
pen ≠ pan
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It is an important point of teaching English to give all pupils all the time they
need before they have to show their abilities in front of the class. That means
you should not force them to speak by themselves.
Speaking in chorus gives pupils the chance to exercise the foreign sounds in the
shelter of the group.
Speaking in chorus can be varied in many ways:

Everybody whispers.

Boys and girls recite the lines alternately.

The rhyme is spoken very slowly at first and then faster and faster.

Words get replaced by sounds or gestures.
Tips
Tips for introducing poems and rhymes
1.
Recite the poem and carry out the movements.
2.
Look, if the pupils can guess what the poem is about.
3.
Practise the poem with the whole class. Pay attention to a good rhythm
and -if necessary- to problems of pronunciation.
4.
Teach the children the movements and make them do these movements
while they recite the poem. It doesn’t matter, whether all pupils speak
along in this phase.
5.
Write the whole poem or certain parts of it on the blackboard and explain
difficult words or translate the complete poem.
6.
Ask the pupils to look again at the poem on the blackboard and then you
erase one or two words. You can replace them by pictures. Now, let the
pupils recite the poem again by reading the text including the “invisible”
words. Then, erase some more words and let the pupils recite the poem
again. Go on until they read the whole “invisible” poem.
7.
The pupils say the words and carry out the movements.
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Tips for introducing a song
1.
Tell the class what the song is about (depending on their linguistic
facilities, do it in English or German).
2.
Go through the English text speaking word by word with the class. The
pupils have a written version of the text on hand or you write it down on
the blackboard or a film for the overhead-projector.
3.
With an action song, in a second step you show the accompanying
movements. There still is no singing.
4.
Read aloud the text line by line and have it repeated in chorus by all the
pupils. At this point, you can notice if the text has been understood and
whether everyone pronounced the new words correctly.
5.
Now, there is the singing. Either you sing it to the class line by line
yourself or you have it done by a CD. Of course, a just learned song has to
be sung several times in class.
6.
When a song is new, make sure that it is regularly sung in class within the
next weeks. In that way the song becomes part of the pupils’ knowledge.
Exercising listening comprehension by a song
1.
Listen how often something appears. Each pupil (or the whole class)
has to look how often a certain sound, word or sentence appears in a
song that is played or sung.
2.
On the blackboard or the film there is an incomplete version of the
lyrics. After listening to the song, the missing words shall be
completed.
3.
On the blackboard or the film the lines of the text are shown in a wrong
order. After listening to the song the correct order has to be
established.
4.
On the film there is a picture that refers to the song but includes
several mistakes. The children are to find those mistakes after listening
to the song.
 Having great fun singing and making music remains most important.
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Songs
Head and shoulders, knees and toes (action song)
Age: 6-10
Time: 10 minutes
Learning target: Linking words and movements. Learning rhythm and
sounds of the English language, vocabulary: body parts
Pupils touch the part of their body that is mentioned in the song.
Little Miss Elizabeth
Age: 6-8
Time: 5 minutes
Learning target: improving the pronunciation of the “th”.
A perfect dream
Age: all ages
Time: 5 minutes
Learning target: vocabulary: numbers 1-10, food and drink, language
structures: ten… please. We end that meal with…
Everything has got a colour
Age: all ages
Time: 5 minutes
Learning target: vocabulary: colours, fruits, animals , language structures: I
like plums/apples…, the banana is yellow/small…
Action rhyme
Charlie Chaplin
Age: all ages
Time: 5 minutes
Learning target: Linking words and movements, Learning rhythm and sound
of the English language
Tongue twisters
Swan swam over the sea, swim, swan, swim!
A beautiful blackbird brings a bunch of bluebells.
Three grey geese in a green field grazing,
Grey were the geese and green was the grazing.
Learning target: improvement of pronunciation
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Sources:
F. Klippel: Englisch in der Grundschule, Cornelsen Verlag 2000
G. Lewis, G. Bedson: Games for children, Oxford University Press 2000
V. Reilly, S. M. Ward: Very young learners, Oxford University Press 2000
Krivanek, Schwarz: Songparade, Schroedel 2002
K. Becher, R. Kreis: Songs, Rhymes and Poems, Schoedel 2003
K. Funk, R. Kreis: Ready, Steady, Go, pb-Verlag 2001
W. Maier: Fremdsprachen in der Grundschule, Langenscheidt 1995
R. Kreis, C. Schultz: Songs, Rhymes and Poems, Seasons and Festivals,
Schroedel 2001
S. Williams, Round and Round the Garden, Oxford University Press, 1992
Collins, English Nursery Rhymes, Collins 1990
Usborne, Children’s Songbook, Usborne Publishing 1997
Moor, Playground Rhymes and Chants, Evan-Moor 1993
www.englishbox.de
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