April 2nd 2011 - Day 1 in my Mission to rescue Language teachers and Pupils from RUBBISH songs!

[Mark Purves]

Originally posted on my Souffler blog. What do you think about the songs that come with certain teaching packs? Where are the goodies? (In spite of my rant, there are some really good ones) What are the stinkers!

 

Right, that's it! I'm today announcing that I am beginning a mission to rescue young children from horrible music foisted on them in the guise of trying to teach them some language!

Please, please language publishers everywhere, can I ask you to STOP producing rubbish music and uninteresting lyrics.

Do you know what kind of music the pupils you are supposedly writing for have on their ipods and mp3 players?

If I played some of the tosh that is out there alongside the children's playlists, the people who sanctioned some of this would hang their heads in shame.

We are trying to MOTIVATE children with this and suggest language learning is cool. So please, please hear this message.

FIRST priority is

COMMISSION  GREAT MUSIC !  If you wouldn't have it on your Ipod, why do you think I am going to buy it!

SECOND is

HAVE FUN with the lyrics. Quirky is good! Have lyrics that are fun, tell a little story. How many singers and musicians do you know that sat down to pour their hearts in a song about prepositions or places in town?

I recognise that saying all of this is hoisting a hostage to fortune as anything I ever produce is going to be judged against this! It's just a plea from the heart to raise your game! After all we are the ones being asked to part with our money and I'm not the one with the big promotional budget.

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

My fave songs are:

 

French telling the time - babelzone's skeleton song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CKMaRwicSg

French Parts of the body - Jean p'tit qui danse - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4FAz16x8Us

French 'le/la' song from Linguascope http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1gzKi94rq0

French - for the 'on/en/an' sound and for clothes - Promenons nous dans les bois http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo2Hb6h4qe4 (although actually the version on Mon Ane dvd is better)

 

The whole of the Mon Ane dvd by the way is very addictive, as is Singing French - but I deliberately avoid using Singing French with Yr 3/4 children as they do actually LIKE some of the more twee songs that you get with certain schemes and of course the many authentic 'comptines' on youtube and I like to hold something back for children as they mature - ditto with the move to KS3 and KS4. Not because you can't use twee songs with older children nor equally 'cool' songs with younger ones - depending on the teacher/class you can play whatever you like and I've taught 6th form who enjoy Jean P'tit... BUT it's a hard slog at times in secondary and you dont want all the kids to tell you all the time - oh we did this before at KS2 - so I sometimes hold back and won't share certain authentic YouTube 'gems' keeping them for KS3/4/5- ssshhhh!