ESL Showcase and Song
Written by Wendolyn Craun
Summer will be here soon, so now is the time to think about what content to use for this summer’s ESL camps. If you are teaching kids, you are going to need to decide how your students will show their parents their English language skills. Rhythmic Patterns WAM English songs are what you need to make your summer camp a success!
Rhythmic Patterns WAM English songs sets are not only a great tool for learning English, but they can also be used as students’ performance content. I suggest performing a combination of two song sets together. For example, students could perform both colors songs and character songs. That’s a performance of 10 short thematic songs. Performance can be varied with students singing a full song together, individual students presenting a particular song, or a small group of students singing different parts of an individual song. Live accompaniment of songs by a pianist or guitar player will make your performance even more enjoyable! However, this is not requried as your WAM song set material includes the audio backtrack.
One fun learning tool while working on a performance of WAM English songs is to put actions to selected song vocabulary. Combining physical action with sound production will help students with both comprehension and memorization of English vocabulary and grammatical patterns. Students can help create actions or the teacher can decide these movements prior to class. Dancing and singing are always a fun combination for all ages! Even students who say that they don’t like to dance and sing are likely to give you a smile when they join the classroom fun!
The beauty of using WAM English songs as your performance content is that every song can be taught individually and each song fits into a unified performance thematic presentation. For example, the teacher can share with parents that during this camp we have been learning about colors and characters. A song presentation gives an opportunity to display proper pronunciation, vocabulary comprehension, and memorization of English texts. When you are thinking about what to do for your summer camp English performance, choose Rhythmic Patterns WAM English songs.