Air Guitar, the universal symbol for fun

This week in class, I decided I would take a break from teaching the kids new vocabulary and grammar and do something a little more fun (at least fun for me). While learning languages, I always liked learning music in that particular language, whether Sublime or Shakira songs for Spanish or Benabar songs for French. So now its my students’ turn to learn some English songs and what better music to use than some good old Beatles music. I picked “Hello, Goodbye,” pretty simple in vocabulary, plenty of repetition and not to bad in terms of actual listening pleasure. Also, my friend Natalie had tried it out with her kids and found the activity to be pretty successful.

Thinking about the activity, I was a bit weary about singing in front of my classes. The odd thing though, is that as soon as I got up in front of the class, I realized I was dancing like a mad woman and the song was just coming out of my mouth. Any of you who know me, know I don’t like performing in front of anyone, hence staying behind the camera and not going into the acting route. The last time I sang in front of a group was in 3rd grade for some concert that I had a solo in and all I remember is hearing my own voice out loud and feeling like my heart was going to fall out of my chest from beating so fast and loud.

Turns out here, as long as I can act like an idiot in front of my kids, it really doesn’t matter what I do. So basically, I’ve been teaching them the song using a lot of gestures, but of course the most important part is that I get them to play the air guitar. At each little guitar solo in the song (there’s about 5) I gesture to them to play the guitar and mimic the sound of the wailing guitar. It’s awesome they love it, which it makes it so much more fun! (Even the teachers start singing by the end of the class).

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not “all” smiles and fun. With some of my classes, I have to stop and calm them down a bit, they get a little too excited over the music and dancing. I remind them it’s not recess and that we’re still in class. My tough classes though seem to get into it and while, I still exert more energy than I would like reprimanding them every so often, I’m getting better results from some of the more difficult kids. All and all, while I think all the singing has taken a bit more energy out of me, I like how my classes are reacting and that’s the fun part about teaching.