interactive english

Working with songs
Choosing the Songs.
Lettin the students choose the songs (but with teacher consorship):

When I have worked with songs in class in secondary school, I have had the students choose the songs they want to study. I do this by first setting the total number of songs I think we will have time to work on in a given period - usually a semester. Then they do a pyramid brainstorming plus voting so that we have this number of songs.

I warn my students ahead of time (before they begin the brainstorming) that I will be "censoring" the songs in the following two ways: 1) if I cannot understand the words to the song with the words in writing before me, it's too difficult to do in class and 2) if the song is basically music, we will not work with it. (I have reached these two censorship criteria after having students choose songs which had one of these features.) I tell the class about this "censorship" when I first present the idea of working with songs because it saves "disgustos posteriores". The students must also bring me the music and the words to the songs they choose. Then I prepare the song at home (although, see below).