The following is a guest post from Marsha Goren. Marsha teaches in Petach Tikva, Israel, where she has creatively begun the American English School in her city. Enjoy the following tips for how she uses songs and videos to teach ESL. You can find Marsha at her blog, GlobalDreamers.org.

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I am an American who has been teaching English in Israel for 32 years. I recently retired from the formal school system and am still working in an afternoon school program called “America English School.”

Normally, according to the ministry of education, regular classes start to acquire English as a second language in the fourth grade. However, many schools in Israel allow teachers to begin English in the second and third grade. Teachers usually teach the oral skills through games, drama, songs and visual aids. The written skills are usually taught at a later stage after the reading stages.

Children are normally very creative and especially talented in their oral skills. I began to take advantage of these skills by using songs and drama. They especially enjoyed learning English through songs and they acquired many skills such as vocabulary and grammatical structures. More importantly they learned about different cultures through the music and their English has improved tremendously.

Everyone is aware of how important it is to know English. The whole world uses English as an international language. Children should be given the opportunities to stay on their own preferred paths to excellence. Since English is a very prestigious subject within the Israeli curriculum, it is vital to expose these children to a variety of opportunities for success.

Last year, I decided to teach my fourth graders many of the curriculum language goals through different songs and chants. I found the learners imitating the language and even the accent. This convinced me even more that the method was well worth the hard work, and I decided that a large part of my lessons would be for teaching reading through songs and music.

Youtube is a phenomenal resource for finding great ways of teaching and, of course, songs. I came across a unit by the GiggleBellies which offers wonderful songs on youtube and started teaching the songs to my class.

I immediately realized how resourceful the songs could be for my ESL teaching and for others around the world. I contacted them and told them I had begun writing worksheets, although their DVD was basically for toddlers and small children. I created worksheets (17) for DVD-GB1 and  (22) DVDGB-2 for my fourth grade students. The worksheets contain different exercises and skills which collaborate with the songs.  I donated these units which are now being used by thousands of children, educators and their parents around the world. Both of these worksheet units are a free download on the Gigglebellies free area on their website.

Last but not least, we sent the GiggleBellies a short movie of my fourth grade class singing. I invite you to watch it on youtube here.

With over 125,000 views, we are honored and happy to share this movie with the cooperation of the GiggleBellies whom I have never met, but have connected with in the common goal of helping equip ESL students with a valuable language skill for their greater future success.

GiggleBellies Volume One and Two created by Kerry Miller Johnson and Pauline Saab

 Post by: Marsha Goren, GlobalDreamers.org

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