Language Arts
Figurative Music
Smile
You make me smile like the sun
Fall out of bed sing like a bird
Dizzy in my head spin like a record
Crazy on a Sunday night
You make me dance like a fool
Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Ohh you make me smile
-Uncle Kracker
A Brief Overview: Another great idea (read about the first here) that Ginno Kelley gave when he came to talk to my technology class was to play music clips for the class and have students pick out the aspect of language you are studying (metaphores, similies, rhymes). In the example above, students can pick out several similies in the chorus of Uncle Kracker’s new song “Smile”.
Perceived Strengths: I have found that children love music and they enjoy opportunities for music to be incorporated into lessons. Incorporating a variety of genres is also an easy way to reach those hard to get students. Another strength of integrating music into the classroom is that music can be difficult to forget. You get that song stuck in your head and it keeps playing and playing like a broken record. If a teacher can get her learning objectives to continually run through the students heads then they will hopefully have that when it comes time for the assessment.
Perceived Weaknesses: It can be time consuming trying to find appropriate songs that showcase the literary elements you are studying.
Opportunities Afforded: Students are exposed to a wide variety of musical genres while learning that what is being covered in class has real connections to their own lives outside the classroom. This can be a great way to activate background knowledge for students.
Threats/potential issues using this idea in teaching and learning: Be sure to preview the entire selection that you will be playing in class many popular songs today have inappropriate sections.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Batman and the Onomatopoeia
A brief overview: About a month ago, Ginno Kelley, from Promethean, came to speak in my Practicum in Educational Media course. He gave an amazing presentation about the wonders of interactive whiteboards. I know most of us have used them, have them, or at least have heard of them before. But, during his presentation he gave some amazing ideas that can be used for various subjects. The one I want to mention now is about using old 1960’s Batman clips to introduce onomatopoeias. The idea is that by showing the old clips, which can be found online, students can discern for themselves what an onomatopoeia is and then will likely remember for much longer than had they been told or had to use the dictionary to look it up themselves.
Perceived strengths: Other than the fact that showing a fun superhero clip would awaken any child and bring some excitement to the classroom, students are far more likely to remember the information. An added benefit is that this strategy would also work great for ELL’s. The visual cues and the written words to accompany would be helpful for any ELL.
Perceived weaknesses: If your classroom doesn’t have a Smart Board or some other type of interactive whiteboard it may be difficult to show the comic to your students. Unless of course you have a projector that you can hook up to a computer. Of course, you’ll also need internet access. Thankfully, the comic is available from places other than youtube.com, which many schools have bands on. Here are a couple of links where you can find a few video clips:
Batman Intro and Batman Fight Scene
Opportunities afforded: Showing old Batman is a way to show students that what is being taught in school is relevant, that they’ll see this stuff somewhere other than school. Providing the opportunity to allow students to delve into the world of classic TV and superheroes as well as giving students a chance to figure things out for themselves.
Threats/potential issues using this idea in teaching and learning: Anytime the Internet is brought into the class the teacher must be careful. Make sure to preview the clips ahead of time to ensure their are no inappropriate adds on the site.
Examples of how this idea has been used in teaching and learning: The teacher could show the clip and have the students determine what the words were or the teacher could provide the definition and allow the students to pick them out or count how many were used. Then as an extension, you could have students make their own comic (possibly using Comic Life) and inset their own onomatopoeias.
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Classroom Ideas 