Jazz Chants: Let's Have the Rhythm

Teaching children really spends a lot of energy. That was what I thought before. And, that’s true. After applying TPR last time, then I tried to apply jazz chants on my EC 6 class. The topic is still about meeting favorite celebrity. On the meeting before, the day I did TPR with the students, I introduced some new vocabulary related to favorite celebrity: waving, smiling, walking, clapping, shaking, bowing. This time I made the vocabulary into jazz chants. What is jazz chant anyway?

According to http://www.esl.net/jazz_chants.html, Jazz Chants are Carolyn Graham's snappy, upbeat chants and poems that use jazz rhythms to illustrate the natural stress and intonation patterns of conversational American English. There are some variations in creating jazz chants. Jazz chants can be modified in rhythm, lyrics ( I adjusted to the level and students’ competence) and chants. What I did in my class was I used the vocabulary introduced previously and I created the rhythm by myself.

This is the lyric:

Walking
Smiling
Waving
Walking, smiling, waving 3 X (faster)
Yeah… yeah…yeah…

Clapping
Shaking
Bowing
Clapping, shaking, bowing 3 X (faster)
Yeah, yeah, yeah…

I met my idol
I met my idol
I’m thrilled, I’m thrilled
I’m soooo thrilled

I drilled the students with the jazz chants by clapping their hands. Later, I asked them to stand up and do the action in pairs. For the last verse, I planned to distribute pictures of celebrity in order they showed it to their friends, showing thrill that they met their idol. My plan was shattered since all students were not satisfied with the pictures distributed to them. They kept on changing the picture, grabbing their friends’ pictures, running here and there that it was hard for me to control and calm them down. At the end, I just ordered to sit down and continue the activity from the book. Well, I can say that part of the jazz chants worked but partially failed due to the pictures.

Shared by: Ms. Lala