Displaying Lyrics

When I first moved to Memphis and became an elementary music teacher, one of the first things we were told to do was to create a visual for the lyrics of each song. During workshops I saw the creative handiwork of the presenters as they put so much care creating their visuals. The importance of visuals is not lost to me. The purpose is to increase reading fluency and comprehension in addition to connecting the visual words to the aural experience. A visual is a very effective way to represent the text in a classroom where there is no technology.

Fortunately, I have a teaching station in my classroom. My computer is hooked up to a television and the image on the computer projects to the television. Instead of using a visual, now I use Microsoft Office PowerPoint. No only is it a visual and aural representation of the words, students often ask to advance the PowerPoint. This reinforces the student's ability to read and follow the text. The only advice I give them is to press the advance button (right arrow or space bar) before the students finish the last sentence so they can be ready for the next slide. Teachers with SmartBoards can do this even more success.

In addition, a colored background, clip art, pictures, sounds, and moving graphics can add a lot to the overall appearance of a slide show. For example, if a song has the name of an unusual animal, a picture of that animal can be used to show students what they are singing about. In addition, pictures can tremendously assist students learn words when they are singing in a foreign language.

When I use the teacher station, I encourage students to sit on two oversized carpets on the classroom floor. This method of teaching will quickly show the teacher which students have vision problems.

Above are parts of the PowerPoint I created for "Rockin' Robin." I had to print the page, scan it, save it as a jpg file and upload it to the site. The graphic does so much more than simply reading it from a visual which would only have a few graphics or from a book.