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We Wish You a Merry Christmas

December 6, 2011 in Holidays, Resources, Videos by Super Simple Learning | 1 comment

One of the challenges of teaching traditional Christmas songs to emerging speakers is that the language in the songs does often not resonate with young children. In “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, good tidings, kin, figgy pudding, etc. are all interesting words but not terms that young learners with small vocabularies can latch on to. Adding some simple action verbs allows young learners to interact with the song right away, and as their language develops, they can “graduate” to the traditional versions.

Check out this amazing video from Eva and her students in Slovakia.  Now this is what Christmas looks like!


Super Simple Songs – Christmas includes this version and a karaoke track so you can add your own actions to the song.

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My English Passport

November 9, 2011 in Resources, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | 3 comments

My English Passport from Super Simple Learning

Student passports are a great teaching tool!

As teachers, we are always looking for ways to engage with our students. When teaching children in groups, it’s often difficult to find ways to interact with students individually using natural dialog. One tool that we’ve found particularly helpful is a student “passport”.

Students of all ages, from the very young to our older kids, look forward to this part of the lesson. Passports can be used in a number of different ways and are easy to incorporate into your lessons. Whether you see your students only once a week, or daily, you can easily make passports a fun part of your time together.

They are a great review tool and they become a fun momento for your students at the end of the year. You’ll find that many of your students will take great pride in the fact that they have a passport full of stickers by year-end. It’s also a great incentive for them to always come to class!

Download and print this free English Passport. It’s double sided, but if resources are an issue, you can print just the outside and leave the inside blank for stamps and stickers. If possible, print it on thicker paper so that it will last the whole year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Everybody Up!

November 1, 2011 in Resources, Videos by Super Simple Learning | No comments

Everybody Up Starter LevelThis past year, Troy and Devon from Super Simple Learning had the pleasure of creating 40 original songs for the new Oxford University Press primary series, Everybody Up. It was a great opportunity to work with some amazing people. Patrick Jackson, author of one of our favorite series for young learners, Potato Pals, is one of the co-authors of this series that encourages children to use language in a natural and meaningful way by connecting English to their everyday lives. Everybody Up also includes songs by Grammy Award winner Julie Gold, Grammy nominee Red Grammer, and NY-based singer-songwriter Julie Weiss.

One of the reasons it was so exciting to participate in this series was the commitment to using songs as teaching tools. This series includes over 100 songs from the Starter Level to Level 6. Songs are a big part of every level.

Here’s one of the songs Troy and Devon made for the Everybody Up Starter Level, “How Many?“:


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Halloween Topics – Halloween Characters

October 24, 2011 in Holidays, Picture Cards, Resources, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | No comments

Super Simple Monster

"Hello, My Friends. Let's Go Trick-or-treating!"

Halloween is filled with all sorts of colorful characters. Meet witches and ghosts, spiders and bats, cowboys, pirates, monsters, and more! There’s a lot of vocabulary to have fun with. One way to help young learners remember all these new words is by associating the word with a gesture. Gestures serve as a memory trigger and they are just fun to do.

Most Super Simple Songs are designed to be used with gestures. When you use gestures, very little pre-teaching is necessary. Teachers can seat the students in a circle and use the Halloween picture cards to teach some simple motions to go with each word. It’s always a good idea to have the students create the gestures themselves.  When they create the gestures, it helps them internalize the language even more. Then have everyone stand up and play the music. You can sing along and demonstrate the song while the students follow your lead. Many kids will start to sing along as well, but even the kids who aren’t ready to sing will be able to participate with the gestures.

One of our favorite songs to sing in October is Hello, My Friends from Super Simple Songs – Halloween. It introduces a number of common Halloween characters/costumes in a super friendly way. Doing all of the gestures to the song is just challenging enough to keep the song interesting all month as we head into Halloween.


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Halloween Topics – Counting

October 22, 2011 in Holidays, Resources, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | No comments

 

Work on counting with Five Creepy Spiders Halloween Song

How many spiders?

One of the first skills we work on with our students is counting, and one of the first phrases we teach is “How many?”. We don’t drill or force the students, just constantly practice counting as part of our lessons. Learning the numbers is a fun and easy way for students to build confidence and enjoy English. There are many ways to incorporate this into your lessons through songs, worksheets, story time books and simply by counting everything around you.

Even older students benefit from the constant review. Read the rest of this entry »

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Valentine’s Day Song and Worksheets

January 20, 2010 in Activities, Holidays, Resources, Teaching Tips, Videos by Super Simple Learning | No comments

As we say here in Japan, “Hisashiburi!”, which means “Long time, no see!”  We had a very busy Fall and Winter with lots of travel, lots of presentations, and the release of Super Simple Halloween Songs and Super Simple Christmas Songs.  The next big holiday we are looking forward to is Valentine’s Day!

Link to Skidamarink page

Our favorite song for Valentine’s Day is Skidamarink.  It is, of course, super simple and super fun. We usually play the song in the background as we make Valentine’s Day cards or explore some Valentine’s Day worksheets.  By the time we are finished with the cards or worksheets, all of the kids are familiar with the melody and most of the words and are ready to learn the gestures and sing.

Many people ask us what “Skidamarink” means.  The answer is… nothing.  It’s just a fun word kids really enjoy playing with.

Check out the song, lyrics, gestures, video, and FREE Valentine’s Day worksheets on our Skidamarink page.

We’d love to know what you do for Valentine’s Day.  Let us know by leaving a comment!

Skidamarink a dinky dink.  Skidamarink a doo.  We love you!

ASL Songs

December 11, 2008 in Resources by Devon | No comments

We had a great time presenting at the Tokyo English Language Book Fair a couple of weeks ago.  We were very happy to have our display right across from a display for “Signing Time“, an amazing resource for teaching American Sign Language (ASL) to young learners. By the end of the weekend, Troy and Tanja were communicating from across the room in ASL!

When creating a Super Simple Song, we always think about the gestures and movements that will go along with the songs, and frequently visit the American Sign Language Browser for ideas.  As a result, we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from ASL teachers, as well as Baby Sign teachers.  When you put the gestures and signs together with the words and the songs, it’s very powerful.

Language learners depend a LOT on non-verbal cues to make sense of the new input they are receiving.  Children especially rely on non-verbal cues, and their natural interest in learning to master their motor skills makes the pairing of the spoken word and signing a really excellent tool for helping children internalize the langauge they are learning.

Looking for an easy song to teach through ASL?  Try Open Shut Them (you’ll need to check the ASL Browser for the correct signs), and let us know how it goes!

- Devon

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