FunSongs Workshop at Paris TESOL

 
 

 Charles Goodger teacher the action song "Water is Everything"

Friday 7th November Charles Goodger flew to Paris from Riga to hold a FunSongs workshop at the annual English teachers' colloquium organized by France TESOL in Paris. He was presented to participants by Prof. Mauro Verde from Milan representing TESOL Italy and whose blog you can view here. Though most of the teachers registered for the conference were not primary school English teachers,  feedback from the organisers confirmed  the workshop was highly appreciated. You can view a video clip of teachers acting out and singing "Water is Everything" on the FunSongs YouTube channel   and download  Goodger's power point from the TESOL France website.

FunSongs Halloween events in Italy and Latvia

Kids at the Halloween Fashion show at Laimite, Riga

Halloween never fails to fascinate children with its ghosts, witches and pumpkins. One of FunSongs most popular download packages is “On Halloween” with nine graded worksheets to recycle and practise different aspects of the song, including difficult plural nouns. The song is also the basis for the FunSongs Halloween Show performed this year in a number of school and venues in different countries. In Italy the Cutural Association for Interactive Learning, as well as staging several Halloween shows, organized another American Halloween Event for families in Bologna while in Latvia English teacher Vita Caice put on a Halloween fashion show for the children at the Laimite Children’s Centre in Riga as you can see from the video.

FunSongs Robin Hood Show for Scuola Media

Australian actor Costa Latsos as Professor Krettin

As well as Halloween Shows and events, CAIL in Bologna (the cultural association responsible for FunSongs activities, courses and events in Italy) recently visited a large Scuola Media - Scuola Farini - in one of the poorer areas of the city, to perform the hilarious FunSongs Robin Hood Show. Working with ten and eleven year-old students is always a challenge as kids that age may not appreciate the FunSongs Method based on mime and action song as much as younger students. However FunSongs actors Emelie Loeb and Costa Latsos valiantly succeeded in teaching over 60 "tweenies" the action song Robin Hood's Band, a useful tool for presenting a range of themes, including medieval England world and language-wise, possessive adjectives. After the event, the school was given access to the package on the FunSongs website for follow-up work in class.

FunSongs Day in Vilnius

On Friday 23rd October LAKMA the Lithuanian Teacher's Association invited Charles Goodger to Vilnius Pedagigical University to hold a FunSongs Day for teachers of English to young learners. Assisted by Patrick van Rensburg who intends to launch FunSongs in China in 2010, Charles involved 42 teachers in an intense series of activities designed to underline the didactic power of action songs in EFL. All teachers participating received free downloads from the FunSongs website. Upcoming national and international English teacher conferences at which Charles Goodger and Emelie Loeb will be speaking are TESOL France in Paris this weekend, TESOL Italy in Rome on November 21 and the Children's Literature in Education conference in Hildesheim, Germany on 25-27 February 2010.