Review: Primary Music Box

Primary Music Box

Traditional songs and activities for younger learners is the subtitle of Primary Music Box and it gives an accurate description of what you will find inside. The book is a collection of photocopiable worksheets complete with comprehensive Teacher’s Notes that provide plenty of activities to use to accompany the audio CD.

The book is organised into three sections by age and level (from 6 to 12 years and from beginner to elementary). Each section includes twelve songs that most teachers who have grown up in an English speaking country will be familiar with. Some are more traditional than others, but there are plenty of action songs (“The wheels on the bus”, “If you’re happy and you know it”) and amusing lyrics (“I found a peanut”, “On top of spaghetti”). Many of the songs remind me of my own school days when we spent many a Friday afternoon just singing songs, as a class or in a round. There is a small section on how to exploit songs in the classroom at the beginning of the book, including rounds, using props and adding new verses.

Each song has two worksheets to accompany it which can be used in sequence or individually. A language focus is provided to give the teacher ideas on when to use each song or what specific language points to cover afterwards.

The activities themselves consist of a variety of tasks such as matching, numbering, colouring, cutting and sticking, joining the dots, puzzles, sentence completion and classifying. There are usually two worksheets for each song. The first is more concerned with the song itself, while the second is more of a follow up activity.

As the songs are organised into levels, you may have to adapt some of the activities to suit your class. For example, if you decide to use “The twelve days of Christmas” with an elementary class you will probably have to provide some extra pre-teaching and scaffolding to aid comprehension. However, most of the lesson plans that are provided are easily adaptable.

Traditional songs can be a great source of language, although often they use unusual, out-dated or complex vocabulary and expressions. I would therefore suggest that teachers using these songs should not focus too much on the lyrics, but isolate some of the more useful words. The songs can be used to practise pronunciation and intonation, as well as to add a fun element to the lesson. I would like to have seen some less-traditional or modernized songs in the book, as young learners of today are more interested in listening to pop songs than nursery rhymes.

The book is a useful resource to have in your library. On those days when you need an extra activity, or something a bit more fun, you can dip into the book and find a song complete with a full lesson plan that you can quickly photocopy and use. Even if you don’t want to do a song, there are plenty of worksheets that could be used to supplement your course book without actually having to either listen to the song or complete the activities as set out in the Teacher’s Notes. Primary Music Box is ideal for novice teachers or those with little time to plan and is a generally useful resource for any school that teaches young learners.