In this activity, students begin with a stress pattern and have to find phrases that fit it. The lesson plan uses a song from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. The song is My Favorite Things and it works so well because it has been written in triple time. In other words, it is a waltz: it conforms to a consistent one-two-three-one-two-three pattern. Throughout the lyrics, all strong syllables fall on the ‘one’ while weak syllables fall on the ‘two‘ or ‘three‘ (‘Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.’)
- Language level: Intermediate (B1) +
- Learner type: Young learners; Teens; Adults
- Time: 30 minutes
- Activity: Vocabulary game
- Topic: Rhythm in English songs
- Language: Pronunciation; Stress patterns
- Materials: Images; Song
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Lesson plan outline
For this activity, you will need 5 images. Use an image search engine to find pictures to represent the following:
- Raindrops on roses
- Whiskers on kittens
- Bright copper kettles
- Warm woollen mittens
- Brown paper packages tied up with strings
- Write the following stress pattern on the board: O o o O o
- Quarter past seven
- Mary and Joseph
- Where are you going?
- What are you doing?
- Everyone thinks so
- Isn’t she lovely?
- Monday and Tuesday
- Tell students that you are going to show them 4 images. For each image, they should write down what they see (they can do this in pairs if they like). Importantly, the phrases that they write should consist of 5 syllables and conform to the above stress pattern (OooOo).
- Show the images one by one. Give students enough time to think of a phrase. Once everyone has an answer, invite students to share and compare what they wrote.
- Tell students that there is one more image. In describing it, they will have to produce a phrase that follows the following stress pattern: O o o O o o O o o O
- Show image and let students write their phrases as before. Compare answers.
- Tell students that you are going to give them the answers. Play the first verse of My Favorite Things two or three times.
- Ask students to write down the words that they hear and ask everyone to sing the verse.
Drill a few phrases that demonstrate the sound of the stress pattern. For example:
Note: This activity works well if students have access to bilingual dictionaries. This will allow them to find unfamiliar words that are key to the activity (whiskers, kettle, mittens, etc.)
(i.e. ‘Brown paper packages tied up with strings’)
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things
Follow up
Ask students to write their own personal ‘Favorite Things’ verses. This can be as free or as restricted as you want to make it. For example, you could ask students to keep the exact same stress pattern as before (see box below). Alternatively, let students be free with what they write.
O o o O o and
O o o O o
O o o O o and
O o o O o
O o o O o o O o o O
These are a few of my favorite things
This might be a good opportunity to practise or clarify the use of –ing forms as nouns (gerunds) as teacher Gina André demonstrates on her blog.
What a brilliant idea:) I love that song so I’m gonna use this activity as soon as possible but i’m not sure whether my voice is as clear as yours ;) I will do my best. Thank you, Jamie.
Of course it is Hanna! Good Luck
Jamie :-)
Hi Jamie,
Sound of Music is one of my most favourite films and I watched your lesson plan with great interest. I am hoping to apply this in one of my classes. It’s a very good way to make students come up with ideas for putting words together to catch a special rhythm.
Best of luck! gita
Good luck Gita.
Let me/us know how you get on.
Jamie :-)
Hi! I’ve been doing lessons based on that song before Christams for some years. I like your ideas and I’ll definitely use tham as a lead-in. My favourite version of that song is Peter Cincotti’s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-MutyN0tfk) I can share the PDF copy of my lesson if you want. Thx for your resourceful website. Marcin
Excellent version Marcin. It really hammers the stress patterns that this activity examines. Thank you very much for sharing it.
Jamie :-)
Thank you Jamie for sharing this fantastic and challenging activity!
My students really enjoyed it and now they are writing their own verses taking into account the order of adjectives . This is also a great activity to work on that matter ;)
Hello Cova
Excellent idea – a good focus suggestion.
Thank you for sharing
Jamie
Really enjoyed this Jamie! Great idea! Can I steal it and give you credit in a CELTA pron session?
Of course you can Catherine – it would be an honour!
Jamie :-)
Hi Jamie!!!!
what an excellent idea :)
I really enjoyed your lesson and I’m looking forward to doing it in class… only I’ll try to find a french version.. I’m a french teacher…..:) would you know if this song exists in french too?
anyway.. thank you soooo much for your sharing it with us :)
buy..
Hello Despina
Thank you for your comment. Not sure if there is a French version unfortunately, although I did find these lyrics:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/julie+andrews/fra:my+favorite+things_20267373.html
Perhaps you could use a different song – a French waltz with lyrics???
Jamie :-)
Hi Jamie :)
I was inspired from your lesson and I’ve chosen a french song “Je ne veux pas travailler” of Edith Piaf (you may know her..- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f0CWVJkjKg&feature=related) and I decided to work with the rhythm of the refrain… Let’s see how it goes. Thanks again for your help..
Unfortunately the french version of your song doesn’t adapt well to the music .. and I didn’t find a waltz with french lyrics suitable for the level of my students…
the idea is to work with the rhythm, don’t you think?
bye
Good song Despina
Don’t forget that English might work better for this type of activity than French. Music can serve to demonstrate the syllable-timed nature of English and there is an element of that in the ‘favourite things’ lesson plan.
Good luck
Jamie :-)
Hi Jamie,
You´re really inspirational, I´m impressed with your website and your ideas, I’m going to try some of them with my kids classes and see how they work.I’ll let you know.
Shane (Spain)
Thank you Shane
You are a gentleman for saying so. Hope the activities work. I’m always curious to know how they work for others. If you feel brave, film yourself. You can’t beat being a fly on the wall!
Jamie :)
Lovely activity, great song. And fantastic video with the teacher working on sentence stress. As a teacher, I have never found these activities easy to teach, at least in secondary schools, which is where I work. Thanks.
Great to hear that it was helpful Santi
Thanks for the comment
Jamie :-)
Excellent idea! thanks for sharing! Enormously useful!!
Thanks Carla :-)
I enjoyed it so much! This is what the art of teaching is about!
Thank you Lucrecia
Jamie :)
Hi Jamie! Thank you for your exellent idea. Our favorite things are here http://margaritapodcasting.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-favorite-thing.html
Great class! I have used it with my ESL students here in Medellìn-Colombia and they have enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for sharing this wonderful activity. Juan
You are welcome Juan!
Thank you very much for your nice comment
Jamie :)