Welcome to my collection of resources, experiences, and advice for launching and growing a quality two-way immersion bilingual program. I am deeply committed to bilingualism and biliteracy for every child and firmly believe that this approach is key for preparing traditionally underserved English Language Learners for short and long term academic, cognitive, and sociocultural success. My personal mission as an educator is to do everything I can to close the achievement gap and to provide every student with an excellent college prep education--particularly ELLs. If you're looking to launch something similar, or simply want ideas and resources for your bilingual classroom, I want to help in any way I can!

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Music & Language Development

Music is an incredibly important part of first and second language development, especially for children.  Let's face it--whether an early elementary teacher is "musical" or not, his or her children adore listening to, singing, and moving to songs.  This means we need to get over any inhibitions we might have about weaving music and movement throughout our teaching and just do it!  Music engages children mentally and physically, attunes their ears not only to music itself but also to the musicality of lyrics, builds their oral vocabularies, helps boost their memory, and simply brings joy into the classroom!  Singing is especially important for young children still building oral language and early literacy skills in their first language as well as those learning a second language.  Here are some favorite songs/albums/artists that I and/or my colleagues have used in the classroom with great success (and fun!).  You can also find most of the following music for song and album download on Amazon and iTunes:



SPANISH




ENGLISH
English songs for children are much easier to find and, for most teachers who grew up in the U.S, are much more well-known.  For that reason, my list won't be as extensive as that for Spanish, but I'll still share some favorites!

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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 1, 2015 at 7:07 PM

    I would add "Little Pim" for Spanish and "Rachel and The Treeschoolers" for English.

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  2. AnonymousJune 5, 2015 at 9:03 PM

    As well as "Music Together", "Signing Time", "Mother Goose Club", "Super Simple Learning", "Potty Time" (Rachel Coleman), "Baby Signing Time" and "Name Your Tune" for English.

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