Model Class

GUITAR, VIOLIN, SAXOPHONE, DRUMS, BASS, PIANO

Taking into considering the students’ interests and motivations, the teacher must decide the specific topic or vocabulary that is going to be develop through the entire class. In this case, the class is going to be developed in a group of students that are really interested in MUSIC. Most of them agree that music is an enjoyable way to learn and practice English. This class is arranged for an intermediate group level in a 45 minutes class. It is designed to be used in Elementary, High school or even English Academies Institutes. Here, we present the target and the expansion vocabulary. The idea for this class is that the students can identify the most common musical instruments.

POP, ROCK, JAZZ, RAP, CLASSICAL

Moreover, the teacher is going to use some words that students are familiar with. Words that happen to be almost the same in L1 and L2. These words are the kinds of music people normally listen to.

Some other words that students can learn in this class are:

SINGER, MUSICIAN, ORCHESTRA, BAND, FAVORITE, FOLK

Following, we present the structures that are going to be developed through the entire class. At the beginning, we will ask questions like:

Besides the structure presented above, the class is designed to teach present progressive, using the singular pronouns “I – he - she”, the verb “play”, and as a complement the name of the musical instruments.

Also, the teacher is going to use questions like the following ones, in order to encourage students to answer them using the structures above.

What’s she doing?What’s he doing?

What are you doing?

Do you like _____?

I’m playing the guitarShe’s playing the drumsHe’s playing the piano

Do you like pop music?

At the beginning of the class, we will motivate our students to participate taking into consideration their personal interests. We will present different pictures related to singers and musicians. Also, students will listen to different kinds of music, from rock to pop, classical, jazz, folk and others. We will ask whether they like or not these kinds of music. They should express their likes or dislikes showing their “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”

ENGAGE Phase

I’m playing the bass STUDY phase

The teacher will ask the students what musical instruments they can hear in the different songs. The Teacher should use the target language but if the students do not understand well, he/she might use the native language.

Students will say the musical instruments in Spanish and then the teacher will present a picture of the instrument and s/he will do a mimic and say a whole sentence. For example: “I am playing the guitar”. S/he continues with the other musical instruments. Then the teacher will encourage some students to make the mimic with him/her. The teacher will also ask questions like “What is she doing? What is he doing? What are you doing? ”

in this activity, three different techniques from two methods can be observed. TPR method is applied in the performance of the action; Audiolingual method is applied when the teacher encourage students to repeat the sentences, and also when students substitutes the subject or object of the sentence to create a new one.

The natural approach is also considered in this plan. Realia comes up when students listen to the sounds produced by the different musical instruments.

She’s playing the violin

Active phase

He’s playing the guitar

In order to promote the participation of all the students and activate their learning process, it is accurate to use a game. Games are always motivating and enchanting. In this case, we will do a Memory game. First, it is necessary to have three participants. The teacher is not going to select them, s/he will ask some questions related to the topic, the student who gets the correct answer is going to be selected. The questions will be said in English and in Spanish. Having the three participants, the teacher is going to ask the rest of the class to stand up and form three lines, facing the whiteboard. Then, the teacher is going to say a specific instrument to each student. The teacher explains that this is a SPECIAL MEMORY GAME, where there are not any cards. The cards are the students. Students must pay attention and when they listen to their names, they have to turn over, do the mimics and say a complete sentence like “I am playing the guitar”. The three participants selected before are going to be the players who must listen and see the musical instrument that each student is playing. A player has the chance to call out the names of two students and if these students are playing the same instrument, they will join to that player’s group. At the end, the group with more students is the winner. The game works in the same way the famous board game.

Listen and Number

Evaluate and Encourage Phase

Draw and Say

The evaluation is going to be done individually. Students will have six pictures of girls and boys playing musical instruments. The students are going to watch the pictures first. When they are familiarized with the pictures, the teacher will explain that they are going to listen to the sentences and number the pictures in the same order that they listen to the sentences. These instructions are going to be said in Spanish. At the back of the page, students are going to draw themselves playing their favorite musical instrument. Then, they will show the drawing to the rest of the class and say the sentence.

Advantages: • Asking for students’ interests might motivate them; as well as, making

the affective filter goes down. • Creating an enjoyable environment. Melodies can make students feel

relax and peaceful. • Presence of the three types of learning: Auditory (listening to the

music), visual (looking at pictures), and kinesthetic (making mimics to express likes or dislikes)

• Positive interference: most of the terms used to classify the types of music are the same in L1 and L2.

• Most of the students like music. • Students are not pushed to talk in the target language since the very

first beginning. They can use body language (mimics and gestures) to express themselves.

• Cooperative learning. Students are encourage to help their classmates to produce correct sentences. They can monitor each other.

Disadvantages:

• Teacher must prepare this activity in advanced. Recording the music and printing the pictures.