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The Role of Popular Culture in Primary English Section 6: Music
Music is an important part of many children’s lives. Radio is becoming increasingly popular due to digital technologies and children have always listened to recorded music on CDs, but now frequently on MP3 players. This passion for music can be drawn upon in the classroom to promote literacy in many ways, such as:
- Analysing lyrics to popular songs
- Writing additional or alternative verses for songs
- Compiling music magazines, with features about favourite singers
- Researching and writing biographies of favourite singers.
Student teachers need opportunities to consider ways in which children’s interest in music can inform the literacy curriculum. They could be given the following case study of how one teacher approached this topic and be asked to reflect on it, using the questions below as prompts for discussion.
A Karaoke Party with Year 5s: A Case Study
I am a teacher in an inner-city, multicultural school. I have always been aware of my pupils’ passion for music, but thought little of it in terms of the literacy curriculum until one girl, Ayesha, wrote about her karaoke machine in a report on their favourite hobbies. I thought about how this machine might help Ayesha with reading, as she was not a confident reader. That weekend, I bought a relatively cheap karaoke machine that could be linked to a television screen to view the words. My family were greatly amused by my renditions of ‘My Way’ and other favourites! I became very interested in the potential this technology might have in the development of reading and writing. When I had become used to it, I bought a CD of current pop favourites and set the machine up in my classroom. Needless to say, the children were very excited when they saw it. We then held a karaoke party, in which children took turns to sing with each other. Whilst some children did find it difficult to follow all of the words, others were scanning the text to help them sing the songs – a few children knew some of the words off by heart! Following this, I asked children to collect lyrics for their favourite songs that they could placed verse by verse in Powerpoint – the slides would then be clicked along in time with the track when played. This not only enthused children for reading and writing, some of whom were difficult to motivate previously, it provided a real purpose for the use of ICT, with children adding images and animations to their Powerpoint slides. The upshot of all this is, my family now call me the ‘Karaoke Queen’ – and I think some of my school colleagues agree with them!
Questions for student teachers’ discussion:
- What was the value of this work?
- Can you foresee any difficulties in undertaking similar work in classrooms?
- How could these difficulties be overcome?
- What other activities could be devised using song lyrics to promote reading and writing?
 
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