I’m teaching a group of Italian students at the moment who love children’s songs. One of their worries has been that after the course, they will forget the melodies. To get around this, I have been finding the songs on YouTube and emailing them the links. Sometimes the clips can be a bit cheesy but they do the job:

Lesson plan for the fish song

1. Get your students to chant the following three words:

• cotafish
• letimgo
• diddybite

2. Give the following instructions:

I want you to draw three pictures. In picture 1, a man is fishing. In picture 2, he has caught a fish. In picture 3, he is throwing the fish back into the water.

Get your students to repeat the instructions back to you before drawing.

(Drawing by Barbara)

3. Let your students share their pictures and then ask them to offer you as many reasons as possible why the man throws the fish back into the water. Write these on the board.

4. Chant the three words again (see step 1) before teaching the song.

1,2,3,4,5
Once I caught a fish (cotafish) alive
6,7,8,9,10
Then I let him go (letimgo) again
Why did you let him go?
Because he bit my finger so
Which finger did he bite (diddybite)?
This little finger on my right

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Some more songs:

• Heads and shoulders, knees and toes (sung by Bono?)
• Old MacDonald (sung by Phil Collins?)
• Counting to 4 with Feist on Sesame Street (catchy song)

Posted by admin on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:17 pm.