Education experts have looked for teaching methods to help children learn in an innovative way when attempting to speak English. This is how Carolyn Graham’s Jazz Chants arose. These are poems that use jazz rhythms to illustrate English stress and intonation patterns. Jazz Chants provide an innovative and exciting way to improve our student's speaking and listening comprehension skills while reinforcing language structures. This method can also be used to help children learn the contents of the subjects taught in school in an easier and more effective way.
These songs are used as teaching methods because they have an easy and repetitive rhythm that encourages students to learn and improve their oral communication. By using these chants the teacher achieves more dynamic lessons that foster students to participate by clapping their hands, stamping their feet and moving their body. Jazz Chants may be use in any subject and with students of all ages. In advanced courses, we can ask them to create their own jazz chants from the contents taught in class. This promotes creativity, a sense of rhythm and communication among students. It also fosters the expectation of creating more and better songs. You can use jazz chants in different ways: to practice stress and rhythm, to help your students sound more natural when speaking English, to review important words and structures, to practice pronunciation...
In order to create a Jazz Chant we will choose an interesting topic for students. Then, we will select three words containing one, two and three syllables. The words we will use should be related to the subject we are going to teach, so the words to be used will be real language adapted to the students’ level. The words order should be the following: first the word with two syllables, then the one with three and finally the word with one syllable. This order will bring musicality to the song and will be the pattern to follow. Once created the song, we will put it into practice in the following way: first will sing the three words twice and students will clap their hands at the end of the pattern, after they will repeat the first two words twice, and finally, they will sing the pattern again. In the following video we can see how Carolyn Graham creates a Jazz Chant: 
Hello Marta!
ResponderEliminarJazz chants are an exceptional topic to share, which I chose in my first post! You have elected a well structured video that shows us perfectly how to make jazz chants. Moreover, it became easily to get the idea with the relation between your comments and the video.
Jazz chants seems to me a considerable option to motivate our students at the same time they are learning. Additionally, the most that I enjoy from this, is that children who may feel shy singing would start gaining confidence. As a result, this might help pupils to communicate orally in a more comfortable way.
I hope we develop this at our classrooms when we became teachers.
Thanks for the resources, :)
Cristina
Great post, Marta!
ResponderEliminarWorking with music brings so many possitive effects! First, we can use different types of music depending on what we work in class ( I have just remembered our Music subject, with Carla). In this way, we would work the classroom management with different rhymts ( what do you think?)
Thanks for the explanation in the second part of your post in order to create a chant! :). And you also add a helpful video! As you said, teachers can use to work other important features such as pronunciation, key words and structures!:)
Rebeca