Monday 21 November 2011

Sing a song of Spanish phonics


In recent months I've done a lot of phonics work with my KS2 Spanish students.  However, a fortnight ago, at the end of our Family and Pets unit, I noticed that they were still having a problem with the [x] sound (the ge/gi/j sound that we can't write in English!)  So I decided to have a lesson about just that sound.  They like singing so I set out to make a song with as many words with that sound in as possible.  I later decided to add words with the [g] sound so that we could work on the rule for when you say each sound.


I collected all the words that we have covered that had those sounds (there were more than I thought) and thought up a tune.  The song has ended up having four verses and is a nonsense song due to the diverse nature of the words involved!


You can have a listen to it here.  It had its debut with the children last week and they seemed to like it.  I've also done a "th" sound song, which I'm going to use with Y4 as they do more phonics work.  You can listen to that one here.  I have also uploaded the resources that go with both songs (scroll to the bottom of the page).


With Y3 I have worked on the vowel sounds by doing a chant, which you can hear here.  The lyrics are:


a - a - a, Gran Canaria
e - e - e, Té en el café

i - i - i, Lidi y Pili
o - o - o, ¿Loro o lobo?

u - u - u, Purucú, Perú


I recorded the songs using Songsmith, which I think gives a really professional finish for something I have recorded on my laptop in my front room.  The difficult thing was recording the vocal in one take, as I am still suffering from a post-cold "viral chest"!


I wrote the scores with a very reasonably priced and easy to use program called Finale NotePad.  I made the backing track for the chant using Aviary Roc and then recorded the vocal using Audacity.


Are there any other Spanish sounds that you think would benefit from having a song made in their honour?





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