Hey! I know that tune!

I've put together a stand alone research lesson for some of my students, because of two big problems I often face:

• Students will be given a task/topic, and they will just go to a source and take notes of what they read.
• Students will come up with a topic, but will be overwhelmed and will not know where to begin!

My activity gets students to come up with research questions, make assumptions, then they will do their research...and it's all based on songs!

I start off by having students brainstorm what sort of questions they should answer to understand their song, (at this point, they don't know what song they have been assigned - so you can start this as a group activity). Then they get the song title and artist and have a few minutes to come up with more questions and assumptions. Then they get given the lyrics, and finally they get given a photo of the artist(s). Only after they have looked at all these, are they allowed to go online to answer their questions.
The lesson will end with students sharing out what they learnt, and then we will listen to a clip from the five songs!

TheSongs:

• Jeffrey Lewis - Sad Screaming Old Man
• Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell - The Shadow Waltz
• Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar - Typewriter
• The Spook School - Speak When You’re Spoken To
• Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Pon Pon Pon

(I basically picked songs I like...BUT also I thought this was an interesting mix. Three have English lyrics, one has Hindi, (with some English) and one in Japanese (with some English). Some are original songs, some are songs made famous by films, (one is in a film from the 70s, then made famous through being in a Wes Anderson film)....Also there are lots of other little extra facts they might find out - for example 'Pon Pon Pon' is the onomatopoeia for clapping, but it also sounds like the Japanese word for bread, so at one point in the video, the artist is clapping, and bread is flying from her hands!

• Here is the presentation
• Here are the Photos
• Here are the Lyrics
• Here is the Research Sheet

Playing only a clip from a youtube video.

​In Google Slides you can click on 'Format' then 'Video Options'. This allows you to select where you want your video to start and end (to you can just show a clip).

Feel free to use / adapt with songs you like. Also could be useful for a language acquisition class!