Update 49

Howie Gordon
Feb 19, 2021
2 min read

Are you as excited as I am. The next update will be number 50. Who knows? Maybe a few surprises will be shared.

You are never too young to play and learn music as seen by this young three-year-old on his drum set. Lyonya Shilovsky

Look at him go.

Children learning through rhythm, often by a method of repetition, is key to all languages. A study at the Northwestern University, Chicago, found that playing music, particularly when developing a sense of rhythm, can also boost language-learning skills. In one test it found a strong parity between reading ability and those able to keep accurate time to a series of beep sounds.

You can read the full article here

I often would teach reading, poetry with a beat, a rhythm. Chanting is often used to teach reading and oral ability. Nonsense chants to remember spelling rules of longer words.

Keep clapping and moving to the beat.

I started with this topic to celebrate the wonderful children that sent in their performances for the E-Talent Competition. We received over 130 entries and the judges are working hard to choose the winners. In my eyes they are all winners as they engaged in English in creative and meaningful ways. The winners will be announced on the 17th March.

This year was the first time we ran this competition nationally and we are hoping to make this an annual event.

Thanks to Marlene Saban for summarizing the competition with her fifth graders.

I just had a lesson with my 5th graders and asked them to reflect on the process of producing the clips. It's a pity you weren't there to hear. They spoke about how much they all learned. They mentioned all the different aspects - learning the sentences, their meaning and pronunciation. They also spoke about the difficulties and how they overcame them, including the social aspect. I am really so proud of them. I could've chosen to group the strong kids together but I deliberately chose to submit heterogeneous groups which I thought would truly reflect the varying levels in the regular EFL classroom.

Digital Tool

Slido

https://www.sli.do/

Slido is an easy-to-use Q&A and polling app that will turn your silent listeners into engaged participants.

I have it as a Google Slides extension and it really livens up my presentations and encourages audience involvement.

This week our Learn in Tune Hishtalmut came to an end and the teachers presented their final projects. I will be adding the fantastic work done by the teachers to the Learn in Tune Site. Watch the site for details bit.ly/learnintune

Purim

Well it is that time of the year when we get in costume and behave like kids again. Not that we need an excuse. Please make sure you celebrate wisely and safely. I think the newest of the Purim clips for this year.