Chapter 20: Getting Youth on Your Side: Coping with Young Learners 293
The basic steps to teaching your class a song are:
- Teach the vocabulary for parts of the body with pictures for the
children to label – and lots of repetition.
- Arrange the children in a circle and begin singing the song slowly,
doing the actions as well.
If you sing much more slowly than usual, they can associate the words and
actions easily. They can also hear the sounds of the words distinctly so you
don’t end up with vague, muffled approximations of the words. You may have
to repeat a song three or four times when you first introduce it. The kids may
not join in with the words but they probably pick up the actions. However,
regularity is the key. So if you sing it again the next lesson you should find
that they start to sing along with a few of the words they recognise.
‘One finger one thumb’ is a great nursery rhyme which has actions too. It
teaches the parts of the body – finger, thumb, arm, leg, head – and some
imperatives (commands): stand up, sit down, turn around.
The idea is to waggle your finger and thumb. Then to push out your arm and
leg, nod and follow all the commands in time with the song.
Here’s the whole rhyme in case you don’t know it. You’ll have to ask around
for the tune unless you have a recording of it!
One finger, one thumb, keep moving.
One finger, one thumb, keep moving.
One finger, one thumb, keep moving.
We’ll all be merry and bright.
One finger, one thumb, one arm, keep moving (repeat twice).
We’ll all be merry and bright.
One finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, keep moving (repeat twice).
We’ll all be merry and bright.
One finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, one nod of the head, keep
moving (repeat twice).
We’ll all be merry and bright.
One finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, one nod of the head, stand up,
sit down, keep moving (repeat twice).
We’ll all be merry and bright.
One finger, one thumb, one arm, one leg, one nod of the head, stand up,
sit down and turn around, keep moving (repeat twice).
We’ll all be merry and bright
