Tasks_and_Projects

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT: TASKS AND PROJECTS Introduction: Teaching and doing a music-song Project is a very helpful tool to teachers since most of the students like music and moreover, songs often contain the elements of repetition, rhyme, and rhythm that facilitate memorization and easy imitation. Besides songs facilitate pronunciation much more easily. Regarding to this task, I found general and specific techniques for using songs and music in the classroom offered as a menu, but since classroom time is always very limited every minute needs to be used to provide language to observe and study, to offer intensive practice. On the other hand as Vidal and Ribe’s point out that using a constellation of tasks do not necessarily lend coherence or a sense of progress, or even motivation, to a series of lessons. However, we can take advantage from mixed ability classrooms since this “Music” project has different activities. First adaptation: I have 38 teenagers in one group, the way I would adapt this project is as follows: The classroom will be divided into groups between 8 and 10 members. Each group has to have students who know how to play a musical instrument. Two students who are good at drawing will take the designers and manager role, and they will be in charge of organizing a Rock concert and all the company business as well. An active and cheerful girl who starts the fan club will be needed. It has to be said that the “Band” has to cooperate and help with ideas or inputs during the project development. Second adaptation: Some of my students tend to be very shy and they will not be confident doing this long and demanding project, so another set of tasks will be required for them. These ones include much more activities than the previous one, but since the tasks are much more familiar to the kind they have been asked to solve before, then students will feel that their project is easier. Project description: • Singing along.- Teacher asks the whole team to sing along together, with or without the lyrics and audio early on, so that when students are more familiar with the song, they can sing a cappella and without lyrics. • Father-son/ boys-girls.- If a song has both male and female parts, divide your group accordingly. Ask all the boys to sing the father part (for instance) and all the girls to sing the son part. • Taking turns.- Assign each line of a song to a different student or to different pairs or groups of students. That student would sing only that line. Alternatively, assign each verse to a different student or to a different pair or group of students. • Pop stars.- Have a karaoke party. Ask students to choose and sign up for specific songs so they can prepare in advance. Students can perform songs individually or in groups, with or without the vocalist. • Filling blanks.- Create language activities by reproducing song lyrics on a handout. Delete target grammar or vocabulary and replace that text with a line on which students can write. Ask them to listen and complete the worksheet with the missing vocabulary or grammar structures. If the target language is a verb form, such as the past tense, include the base form of the verb under the blank. • Write a list of true and false statements based on the information in the song. Ask students to listen and mark each statement true or false. Alternatively, write a list of false statements and ask students to listen to the song and correct each statement. • Titles.- Students are asked to listen to a song for which they do not know the title. Then they are asked to create a title for the song. The best title will be the winner. • Puzzle.- The team is asked to draw pictures of the “story” or the situation in a song. Students are asked to arrange the pictures in storyboard and retell the story to their partners, using their storyboards. • Video.- Ask students to use a video camera to create a “music video” of the song. Students discuss the process before and after making the video.