Graham's magic 'Chants'
Carolyn Graham, the creator of "jazz chants" for teaching English, fascinated the audience with her dynamic and entertaining presentation at the Oxford Kids' English Teacher Training Workshops Autumn 2006, held at The Yomiuri Shimbun's Tokyo head office on Nov. 25 and 26. She was one of the three presenters at the workshop for teachers of English to children.
Graham's singing was very impressive--not surprisingly, as she was a professional ragtime jazz singer while she was teaching English at New York University and Harvard University in the late 1960s. Of course her songs in the workshop were "jazz chants" aimed at helping teach English to children.
"Today, I'll tell you how we can create our own jazz chants. It's very easy. I'm going to show you step-by-step the formula for writing a jazz chant," she said at the beginning of her presentation.
"We're going to create a jazz chant with a simple three-word vocabulary. We're going to turn that into a grammar chant, meaning we're going to add language to make it more useful in our classroom. And then we're going to turn that grammar chant into a song."
Graham demonstrated how to create a new chant using vocabulary connected to three sports given to her by the audience--soccer, volleyball and golf. "When you write jazz chants, you don't need any fancy equipment. All you need is rhythm," she said. "It's wonderful for you to write your own because you know your students. You know their interests."
More than 300 audience members, mainly teachers of English to children, were actively involved in various activities led by three presenters for the two days. Before Graham's presentation, Craig Wright made a presentation on how to teach children phonics and Kaj Schwermer introduced some activities and game ideas to teach children English using the textbook Let's Go.