Song and chants.

While teaching kids, catchy rhythms of songs and chants are very important, specially if you want to keep kids motivated and interesting on learning.

But, what is a song and a chant?, well, its pretty simple, a song  is a short metrical composition intended or adapted for singing, and a chant is  simple vocabulary spoken over a background of music or rhythm, and they are based on a model of repetition and learned response.

 Example of song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e54m6XOpRgU


Example of chant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiJ8tlsmA7w

In order to choose any song or any chant to teach, is very important to take into consideration the age, the stage, and the purpose of the song.

To integrate  any song or any chant in a lesson is really important to have clear the objective of the lesson and the purpose of the song or chant; for example to include a song or a chant as a warm up, we can included iic we have already taught a topic and look for a song that contain that vocabulary or simple we can look up for a catchy song to break the ice. But also, they can be included in a during stage, so students get familiar with the topic and the vocabulary in a catchy, interesting and funny way.

As teachers, is really important that we think in the best ways to help our students, and the benefits of using any activity. With songs and chants we can help our learner to become familiar with the pronunciation, intonation and stress of words, that means that we are not only developing speaking skill, but also listening skill. It also help us as teacher, so we cant get closer to our students an provide them  a relaxed, active and motivating learning atmosphere.

Catchy rhythms of songs and chants are very importan, so we can encourage our  students to get familiar with that language and expose them to the real pronunciation and intonation of words. So, as teacher, we need to be able to adapt any song or chant with an specific purpose to accomplish our objective of the lesson.