Grammar to go with Avicii

By Karoline Lilleberg 

Håvard and I spent our practice period on a secondary school and teached in two different grades, A and E. On Tuesday the 26^th of January in E, I did the teaching scheme we prepared at school the week before our practice period. During our practice period, E became kind of my class, while Håvard did the teaching in A. In E it's 19 pupils. My impression of the two classes was that E had in comparison to A more pupils that were uncertain in the subject English. The class of A as a whole seemed stronger in the subject of English in general. 

It was in the beginning of a class in E, and I started with the plan for this lesson while Håvard handed out the song lyrics for Avicii’s Wake me up. First, we listened to the song while following in the lyrics carefully. After the song finished we handed out another sheet, looking like this

Feeling my way through the ____________

Guided by a beating heart

I can't tell _________ the journey will end

But I know where to start

They tell me I'm too ________ to understand

They say I'm caught up in a dream

Well life will pass me by if I don't ____up my eyes

Well that's fine by me

[2x]

So wake me up when it's all _______

When I'm _______ and I'm _______

All this time I was ________ myself

And I didn't know I was _______

The pupils were supposed to fill in the missing words while we listened to the song one more time. This was kind of a listening task, and that is something this class had never done before, not in secondary school at least. While the pupils was filling in the missing words, I noticed that several of them was working ahead of the song playing on the speakers. It seemed like they had heard the song before, and not just once. I mentioned choosing a song by Elvis Presley the next time for the pupils, which they did not like that much. I think several of them really liked that they managed the task so well, without me saying anything about the task being too easy. After finishing the filling in words task, they corrected each other’s texts.

Almost everyone filled in all the blank spaces, but there was quite a few careless mistakes. Some were missing one letter in a word for example, or just miss spelled the word completely. I think they really liked doing a task like this, where they are very familiar with the tools the teacher is using. I am sure some of them felt that they had to prove something, and almost did not notice that they were actually learning- and doing grammar. Like “I’ve listened to this song more than a hundred times, just look at my sheet, I know the lyrics in and out”.

My role for this class was mostly to be a supervisor, giving the orders and explaining the task. We didn’t have that much time to do this exercise, but if we did we could’ve achieved more and the pupils could’ve gained more knowledge.  

I find both pros and cons with choosing a song that is familiar and famous, but for a first timer like this, both for the class and me, I would still go for a song they’re most likely familiar with. If we had the time or if they are going to do a similar some other day, the difficulty could have been increased both in the choosing of songs and the amount of words missing. For Håvard’s class, we removed even more words and sentences, both because this was a class relatively stronger than A in the English subject and because of our experiences from our first try. It was maybe too easy for pupils at this age. Here is how it looked when we were to do it the other time after our experiences and thoughts from our first try.

Feeling ______ way through the ___________

Guided by a beating heart

I can't tell __________ the __________ will end

But I ______ where to start

________ tell me I'm too ___________ to understand

They say I'm caught up in a dream

Well _______ will pass me by if I don't __________  up my eyes

Well that's __________

Therefore, we removed even more words and several words in the same sentence too. This time it was more of blank spaces and incorrect words than in the other class. You can read Håvard’s post if you want to know more about how the scheme went. J