MEMORIZING PARTS OF THE BODY BY USING RAP SONG AND  DANCE

I love having fun when I am teaching English in class. It is because I usually get bored easily and lose my patience in facing those rebellious yet cute looking teenagers. How should I feel when I have to be in a not so large class with almost 40 noisy pupilsin the hot noon with only 2 old fans hanging on the ceiling trying to wipe the sweat in vain? So I usually make some easy games or tasks to make my students quite active and keep them busy with their books , discussions or nerves. Why nerves? Because they have to pay attention seriously  in order to be able to answer my quizzes and get some small gifts or prizes. A one thousand rupiah snack or even a piece of star card is already make them happy and often they have to push one another to be the first in accomplishing the task and get a bar of snack. J

Then we came to a topic about parts of the body. After some explanations, quizzes and exercises,, I thought  about how to make them easier in memorizing parts of the body. When I was browsing  Youtube, I happened to find a simple rap song about this body parts topic. So, I played the song in the classes (I believe many teachers are actually annoyed by this), showed some example of simple dance steps videos and then I divided them into groups with 6-7 members each. Each group must present a dance based on the song and have to perform suitable  gestures with the body parts mentioned in the song lyric. I gave a week for them to practise and not only promised some prize for the best one but also assignments for  group with lowest score. I hoped they would make their best efforts because many students like songs and dances.

When it was the time for performances, I became so glad and I admitted that I was having so much fun. Watching them dancing and sometimes singing too had made me laugh a lot. My students were energetic and quite creative in making  dance moves. So I decided to make  dance battles betwen the groups to choose 5 best dancers. The results were awesome!!! A handful of boys could dance well like those B-Boys and real dancers. They turned around and around and  also made plucky acrobatic task. And the most important, all of the groups were adjusting their dances to the body parts song. I really appreciated their performances and seriousness. I wish that they would remember the lesson about parts of the body and had fun too.

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