First of all, I treat teaching the memorization of a song as a marathon and not a sprint. I structure my singing of songs for the year in such a way that the learning comes naturally over the course of the year. I also usually don't spend a singing time learning a song. I will put it into my plan throughout the year and gradually teach the message and they will naturally learn the rest. The tips on this page can be used this way, or they can be used if you would rather do the teach all at once, or in a month, method. (I just found I have way better retention if I sing more songs and wrap them in through the year where they fit the message.) To start with my go to method to teach the melody is to sing it with a recorded version 2-3 times before I actually want to use it in Singing time. I do this in the transition time between Sacrament Meeting and Primary as they are coming in. Flip charts and the recording and after 2-3 times they are pretty familiar with "how" it sounds and they have a start on the words. I put "learning" a song into 3 categories: 1. A song that you sing OCCASIONALLY because it enhances your singing time. A specific example of this is Saturday. It is a super good song when I'm teaching about The Sabbath Day, but not one I would normally use. In this case we would simply sing it for that singing time to reinforce the message of the day. 2. A song that I want them to become FAMILIAR WITH and through time they would eventually memorize it. By time I mean perhaps a year or two. This year it was Follow His Light. I actually thought I wanted to do it all this year, but other songs came up and I'm content to work on it over the course of a couple of years. 3. A song that we are preparing to sing somewhere ie Sacrament meeting, Ward Christmas party. Also, I feel like each year there should be some new songs that are taught specifically to MEMORIZATION IN A YEAR. A specific example of this would be Come Follow Me this year. Even if we hadn't used it in the program. So with those clarifications here goes some of the things that I do - many of these are teacher tricks that I use in my day job :) For all categories: I submit the songs that we are singing the following week into the Ward Bulletin. So this past Sunday were songs for next Sunday. That way the children can be listening to them over the week and perhaps families can use them in their Gospel studies. Songs That We Occasionally Use - Eventually they will get more words memorized
Songs That I Want Them To Become Familiar With - no time deadline So my best example for this, is one of our songs this year - I Will Build An Ark. This is a song that is a great song for many different lessons, the children like it, and the chorus is great for the youngest ones. It is also one that would be GREAT during the Old Testament. Here are some of the things we will do this year when we sing it - meaning we will be doing all of these things on separate days, maybe do 2 of them on the same day:
Songs We Want To Teach To Memorization - with a time deadline
Teaching The Meaning
Now with all of this being said, there have been good times and there have been not so good times. For instance we were going to sing like a cowboy, but realized that it was super hard with the song I had paired it with. So we just sang with gusto instead! Anywho this are pretty much my go to things. Most don't really need props so I can do them planned, or unplanned, and switch it up at a moment's notice.
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Here are my tried and true tips/tricks based upon my past experience, CFM, Preach My Gospel, and also using my teaching strategies/philosophies that I also use in my day job.
Most are simple directed listening (Focused Attention) based for easy memorization and then also focusing in on topics for internalization of the Gospel messages. Lot's of my different ideas on a few pages :) Archives
March 2021
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