A number of measures to help the fifth form students confidently practise english through songs and chants

The teacher has to know how to inspire them learning by "Helping children confidently practice English through songs and chants".. With all above reasons, I choose the topic "A number of

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The reason for choosing the topic

The goal of education is to train people develop a comprehensive and humane response to meet the technical requirements of the country today In which language is considered to be a powerful and effective tool in the process

of integration and development with other countries in the world English is an international language , so the Party and State are particularly interested in the national foreign language project of the government until 2020 with the common goal: " Comprehensive renovation of the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the national education system " In which elementary students have to listen, understand, speak, read and write simple instructions on topics that are related to themselves and their school Primary English now also attaches great importance and interest Teaching English from small steps will help the children have a good start for the long journey later However, the children's language learning is completely different from adults, they are very playful, not respected to academic tasks To help students acquire good basic knowledge of elementary English program, toward active learning activities, against passive learning habits, creating a solid foundation of knowledge for children The teacher has to know how to inspire them learning by "Helping children confidently practice English through songs and chants" This is one of the important measures in improving the academic performance of students Hopefully this topic will contribute to reduce the difficulties and obstacles, as well as be small contribution to improving the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning English in primary schools

With all above reasons, I choose the topic "A number of measures to help the fifth form students confidently practise English through songs and chants"

1.2.The purpose of research

When I write the experienced initiative, I really wish my students will not only have more useful knowledge to do reading and singing the chants and songs well but also give them the most effective methods to compose new or similar chant and song with high result Moreover overcoming the mistakes, difficulties which students meet in doing the chant and song mentioned in the topic will help them reduce difficulties and be more confident in doing chant and song

1.3 The objects of research

- Students in grade 5 at Yen Thai Primary School

- Reading and singing the chants and songs in the textbook English 5

1.4 The method of research

- Studying reasoning: reading newspaper, books, documents, lesson plan

- Investigating the real situation

- Counting figures and result of studying

- Observing the reality: observing students when they read the chants and sing the songs

- Experimenting the teaching methods

- Summarizing the results, learning from the colleagues’ experiences

2 THE CONTENT OF THE EXPERIMENTAL INITIATIVE

2.1.The rationale

The views of the Party is to improve foreign language skills for the majority of the young generation of the country, and propose innovative solutions to address the pressing issues faced in the rapidly improving language resources for students So far English is considered as a subject to be focused and get a lot of attention at the primary level To meet the requirements of national renewal, each teacher must have completed myself teaching career To

do well the teaching and learning of foreign languages in elementary school , the teachers must understand clearly the children’s psychology in elementary school

as well as their characteristics and abilities when learning language:

+ Children are very active so that they can not afford to sit obediently and listen to the teacher's lecture

+ In addition, children do not have the ability to concentrate for a long time about 5-10 minutes to think and acquire knowledge So in the foreign language classroom, children have been involved in many different learning activities + Children need the repetitive elements I know that children absorb and imitate very fast but forget very quick, too Therefore, materials must be practised as much as possible In English classes, the teacher should create opportunities for the children to further practice through physical exercise (listen and repeat), replaced exercise To meet the specific characteristics of children in the process of learning a foreign language, we have used the techniques and forms of communicative exercises to facilitate formation of a language learning environment Also in these environments where students are exposed more Using visual items for children to be exposed to English native speakers through audio / DVD Students become active elements of lectures

+ Children learn through listening, watching, imitating Children acquire knowledge in a completely different way from adults Adults acquire knowledge

in a sense, analysis, young acquire naturally through intuition So what exercises

to strengthen the observation of children through the audio-visual and mechanical imitation as well as modeling activities of teachers to introduce the new materials must ensure the accuracy of the language, especially pronunciation

+ The ability of children are curious, energetic and creative in a very natural way Children always need to explore their surroundings and interact with people, so that children establish an understanding of the world children live + Children would love to communicate When we monitor children talk, we'll all enjoy the talk, though not as something important When we meet the children who we do not know, through the first minute they might be shy, but after a few questions of our encouragement, they will tell us about their selves,

their parents, interests, including saying bad things that their friends do, and would love to ask questions back

With the above characteristics, we can see that, in order to help them get a better ability to practice languages well, we need to have a reasonable solution

We can not teach children like to teach an adult This shows that the teacher must have a high technical level to enter the world of young children to eventually lead to new concepts, to a deeper understanding of concepts that children initially approached Children learn language depends heavily on incentives This totally depends on the style of the teacher If teachers encourage young children to create a good learning environment, children will learn a lot faster In many teaching methods to promote positive child, there are two methods which are consistent and favorite for all ages are songs and chants There are many English songs for children but there are not many chants Consequently, the teacher must know how to combine the use of all available ones and promote their abilities in self-composing songs and chants so that all class hours achieve the highest efficiency

2.2.The real situation before applying the experienced initiative:

Through practical teaching in Yen thai primary school I see, there are some advantages following:

Administrators are very interested in foreign language teaching The school has one teacher of English who always tries to self-learn, self- upgrade her skills, create and know how to apply the information technology in teaching, innovate teaching methods appropriate for each kind of students in order to help them quickly understand the lesson That is teacher who loves the teaching job, the kids and who is enthusiastic and responsible in the work, ready to complete all assigned tasks

During the past school years, English teachers’ group ensures the quality of teaching and learning, ends the situation of letting students be in the class which

is not appropriate with their language ability

On the other hand, it also has a certain number of difficulties:

+ At my school, teaching aids are limited, especially the lack of audiovisual media to help students develop their listening and speaking skills

+ There is a number of hard students who are the children of the poor families or the families in which the parents are divorced Therefore, the education of the children in these families are little cared for, which affects the children’s learning outcomes

+ And what is equally important is that a lot of parents do not know English, therefore, it is impossible for them to help their children to learn English

+ Some children have psychology of being shy when speaking in the public

+ Because of circumstances, many children do not focus on learning foreign language, they learn how to cope and some are bored with studying English

+ They don’t speak English fluently because of no regular use

*The survey results in early school year of grade 5 Yen Thai Primary school

Class Total Quality

So how to help the teaching and learning English achieve high

efficiency? Through teaching and research so I boldly launched "A number of measures to help the fifth form students confidently practise English through songs and chants."

2.3.The solutions of implementation.

Through practical teaching in Yen Thai primary school I have researched and used the following measures to help students improve their language learning in primary schools better:

2.3.1 Studying the textbooks:

The purpose of this method is to help the teachers master the English program of grade 3,4,5 to find the most appropriate method for each particular lesson

Currently the school is using the book English of Macmillan education publisher for grades 3,4,5 Through the book I find that the form of this book is suitable for primary school age: pictures are colorful and vivid, the characters are fun and accompany them from the first lesson for the rest of the books, give them the curiosity through each lesson, help them see the characters as their friends In terms of the content of this book revolves around the topic, the topic

is very friendly, close to the lives of the children Each topic focuses on phonics, vocabulary and grammar with very short sentence patterns consistent with age The structure of all these books meets the aesthetic and content for elementary school children As we know, to study well, students need to have a good set of books and teachers have to know how to use the method correctly and flexibly

to transmit knowledge to the children On the other hand, due to the requirements of society and the demands of educational strategies, each teacher must improve teaching skills that are suitable with school age It means that when teaching in the classroom we must take into account that:

+ Children do not have the ability to understand the rules of grammar, do not understand the explanation of rules of language Such rules on the use of the verb

If we explain that: the present simple used to express repeated daily action, habits it is too abstract, children do not have the ability to imagine the content

of rules to understand, as well as remember sample sentences and grammatical rules, so they just learn the prefabricated phrases without being analyzed how

to form these sentences

+ Children have the ability to imitate very quickly what adults do so when learning new things they will absorb very fast but also be easy to forget

+ Children enjoyed singing and dancing as they enjoyed participating in activities not like to sit silently long

So the teacher in the classroom is only the instructor, the students’ role as a positive factor, they voluntarily participate in activities that teacher provides in

a natural way, these activities are songs and chants.In the program English of Macmillan education publisher, the songs also appear in units of lessons with a more frequency, Each unit of the English of Macmillan education publisher has three lessons so there are many chants and songs However, in order to make students love songs and chants in English lessons, the teacher has to master how

to teach songs and chants, help students learn in the most effective way and

create excitement for the English language So I boldly launch "A number of measures to help the fifth form students confidently practise English through songs and chants" to help children practice well the skills as well as use new

words and modal sentences exactly and smoothly

2.3.2 Methods of teaching songs and chants for primary students

The purpose of these methods is to create excitement for students, create a change in class activities, review the vocabulary and sentences, help students practice the pronunciation, intonation, stress…Besides, they are used to switch

to a new or familiar topic, Specifically as follows:

a Songs

Most of children, especially the primary students like singing very much Through the study of teaching songs as a kind of lively and attractive exercises in order to teach children how to learn foreign languages I can give the benefits of teaching songs in a foreign language class

+ Help students improve memory , concentration, association

+ Help bring motivation for them

+ Help students relax after the stressful study

+ Help the children get along with other students in the class

+ Change the status of a classroom effectively, help the English lessons more interesting, balance energy level in the class

+ Especially, help students review as well as practice the materials such as vocabularies, modal sentences, pronunciation and intonation effectively

Sometimes songs are used to teach new materials.They are really sticky, make children remember material very well

However, in order to teach a song successfully, the teacher has to master the basic steps to teach it:

* The process of teaching a song:

+ Review or introduce the main structure in the song using pictures/ objects when possible

+ Play the recording, let children hear the whole song once This step helps them have a chance to access the melody of songs , create emotion and curiosity for this tune This is also a step which creates excitement for the children so that they are ready to take part in

+ Let children read the lyrics line by line At this time, children have to pronounce exactly the lyrics They have to particularly pay attention to the sound of wind because Vietnamese also have negative wind but its position is not the same in English

For example, the sound of wind in English appear a lot at the end of many words such as : Piece / pi : s / , wish / wi∫ / and wind sounds in English is difficult to pronounce, especially when they stand at the end such as: “chair / t∫eə /, watch / w ס t∫ / , village / vilid / Students often miss the sound when singing This makes our Vietnamese be turned , lack of tonal English

+ When reading vocabulary, we need drill the children to read the stress properly ('apple, 'every, 'beautiful) because in English songs, the word stress is very important However, the sentence stress doesn’t take any important roles because it is dominated by songs When training them to read the lyrics we should pay attention to interrupt as the way the song breaks, do not interrupt as the grammartical request In this way, the children will be able to acsess the rythym easily

For example: In the song “What do you do in your free time?” the

following sentence is interrupted as the rythym below:

Hello,my friend, how are you?

What do you do in your free time?

In my free time, I go camping.

I go camping with my friends.

So when practising the children to read, the teacher should teach them to interrupt in this way so that they can sing the song in the correct rythym

In the process of teaching children to read, the teacher should explain to children the meaning, content of the song However the teacher only explains the common sense without teaching each sample sentences appearing in the song We still provide for them corpus in principle as they are prefabricated units

For example: When teaching the song “Where will you be ?” we only

teach them know the prepositions go with locations" in the mountains, in the

countryside, at the seaside,at school " and know how to use prepositions with locations:

Where will you be next weekend,

In the mountains or the countryside?

I think I'll be in the mountains.

Where will you be tomorrow,

At the seaside or at school?

I think I'll be at the seaside.

Where will you be next year,

In Viet Nam or England?

I think I'll be in England.

+ Let children sing each verse, teacher composes the movements fit the lyrics This step children often imitate fast melody and lyrics Teachers can use

CD or DVD, get the children repeat each sentence The reason for this requirement is that the songs in the disk are sung by British, American children The intervention of the teacher's voice isn’t often as positively effective as the young native voices

+ Open tapes for children to sing along and make movements When children have grasped the whole ways to sing each verse, children need to be connected to sing the complete song Again CD / DVD gives opportunities for children to adjust the sound and rythym

+ Have children sing in groups, combining both singing and making movements

+ Call on some students to perform before the class

After finishing teaching a song, the children will be very excited and the lessons also become more interesting By the way teaching English through songs will be easier for the teacher to teach as well as for children to study These songs are often used in less controlled practice / Production, warm up or checking the previous lessons Along with songs, chants also play an important role in practising children new words, modal sentences, intonation and stress

b Chants

A chant is simply vocabulary spoken over a background of music or rhythm They are useful because something about the music energizes the students, and they have to pronounce the word in a rhythm I found that a chant

is a lot easier to teach than a song However, I also use chants often in my regular weekly classes Also, if you are not comfortable with singing in front of your students, chants are useful

In the process of learning a foreign language, we have used the nature of this type of chant to train the students ability to speak English correctly with the

sentence stress and sentence rhythm as well as remind students the grammar that they were learned as sample sentences, vocabulary Teach students the language functions such as explanation, asking for information, developing listening and speaking skills, creating a fun atmosphere in the classroom appealing to help students learn to speak a foreign language easier The chants are all constructed on the basis of common everyday words, not poetry Rhythm, stress and intonation of the chant is a version of a natural language, a word of

those who have studied in For example, when we read the chant “How do you learn English?" How do you practising speaking ? By speaking English every

day How do you practise reading?By reading comic books (chant) our

reading must be the same as the words saying in the society, although it echoes the rhythm of poetry Chant for foreign language classes often serve the purpose

of teaching, grammar (sample sentence), pronunciation (stress, rhythm sentence, consonant - vowel sounds) We call these kinds of chants as Vocabulary, Grammar chants or Phonics chants.To help the students study well, the teachers must master the process of teaching a chant:

* The process of teaching a chant:

- Have students listen to the teacher read the form once, the teacher says while clapping to the beat all Have students read new words Teachers explain the meaning of new words using pictures and illustrative movements without translation into Vietnamese Speaking content chant, teachers just explain to children of all common sense chant, through images, gestures, situations Not taught phrases appear in all chants We offer corpus for children in principle as they are prefabricated units

- Teaching reading the post chants Teachers copied chants on the board then marked * or underlined sentence stress for students to read properly Read each statement of post chant and clap in accordance with the accent and rhythm

of each sentence Note repeatedly until drill their students to memorize Teach student the movement in post chant

- Divide the class into two groups A group repeats each sentence of the chant while other claps their hands in the correct rythym of the chant then switch roles to do the steps above

- Call a student reread chants

- The class read the chant again to review the entire phonics of the chant

* For example : Teaching a chant to practice the phrases and words in the

English 5 –Unit 8: What are you reading? – Lesson 3 (part 3) Let's chant

- Teacher shows some pictures and posts or writes the chant on the board

What are you reading?

What are you reading?

I’m reading the Aladdin story.

What’s Aladdin like?

What’s he like?

He’s clever and he’s kind.

What are you reading?

I’m reading the Cinderella story

What’s Cinderella like?

What’s she like?

She’s beautiful and she’s kind.

+ Listen though: Let students listen to the teacher reading the chant a few times to create the impression of rhythm

+ Teaching the meaning: Explain the main ideal of the whole chant, not translate each sentence Have pupils read the chant and check comprehension

- Play the recording all the way through for the class to listen and follow in their books Play it again for them to do choral and individual repetition Show pupils how to chant and do actions Devide the class into two groups: one group says the questions and the other says the answers Invide two groups of four to the front of the class to chant The rest of the class claps their hands

2.3.3 Composing and guiding students to compose songs and chants:

a Songs

In the book English 5 there is one song per each unit and one chants so the teachers change songs and chants matching the theme of the lesson But there are too many English songs so sometimes it seems difficult for the teachers to find a suitable song for their class The appropriate requires here involve many aspects: suitable for ages, suitable for the topics that they learning, suitable for

to the ability to acquire, and suitable for children’s understanding Sometimes

we find a good song which is suitable with the theme but its rythym is very difficult for the children to imitate

To solve the above proble, the teacher must know how to compose a song at the request of her However, it’s impossible for teachers to compose the rythym of the songs because they are not musicians and do not understand the basic music

So teachers can use the melody of the songs that are familiar with the children,

or the songs are taken from English books for primary students or the songs in the course of their own and then compose the new lysics However, to do these the songwriting, the teacher needs to master the following steps:

+ Step1: Select the samlpe songs (with interesting melody but also easy to remember)

+ Step 2: Select the topic, theme matching the content that the teachers are teaching or teachers need to review

+ Step 3: Find words related to the topic chosen for replacement (to do this step students have to find the words that are suitable for both content and number of syllables

+ Step 4: Merge the selected words in the lyrics to make a new song as the topics that teachers select

* For example: To practice Ss the model sentence: “What’s the matter

with you ?” and the vocabularies about the topic “ What's the matter with you ?”

in Unit 11 English 5 I have done the following:

+ Step1: Choose the song “What's the matter with you? ” for model This

is an interesting song with familiar melody

What's the matter with you?

Come on,get up.get out of bed.

It's time to go to school.

I'm sorry,Mum, I don't feel well.

I have a headache and a fever,too.

What's wrong? What's wrong?

What's the matter with you?

I'm sorry, Mum I don't feel well.

I have a toothache and a sore throat,too.

(Teachers presents the song -> Let the Ss listen carefully to recognize the melody of the song)

+ Step 2: Provide training requirements for students is learning phrases

"What's the matter wiyh you?" And the topic of vocabulary is "Physical states" + Step 3: Find the related topic to replace such as "sick, OK, hot, tired, stomach ache, earache, sore eyes "

+ Step 4: Merge the selected word into the lyrics of a song to create new song

For the teacher’s composing gets good effectiveness, the teacher also guides students how to compose songs in order to promote the knowledge they have learned Teacher brings the topics for the students to discuss and they compose the songs for themselves That's the next extremely important step for them to practice language effectively

* Drill:Basing on the steps of composing a song and the sample song

above Teacher gives a topic,some modal sentences and vocabularies, then asks

Ss to make new lyrics with this melody

* Here are some students’new lyrics :