Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners

6.18 My music class
Level
***
Language focus
Narrative, simple present, present continuous
Skills focus
Writing
Thinking focus
Creating
Teaching approach
Promote creativity – accept errors
Interaction
Pairwork, suitable for large classes
Preparation
You will need a recording of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain
King’ from Peer Gynt by Grieg. On the board, write the
sentence stems from Box 129.
Procedure
1 Tell the children that you are going to play some music. This music
describes the adventures of Peer Gynt (a little boy), a giant Mountain
King, and the king’s trolls. You may need to explain the meaning of trolls
(ogres or monsters).
2 Tell the children to imagine the Hall of the Mountain King. Ask them
Will he be a kind king or an angry king?
3 Draw their attention to the sentence stems on the board. Then play
the music (which is five minutes in length). While the music is
playing, the children are using the sentence stems to write sentences
about what is happening in the story.
4 The children read their sentences to their partner.
Note: Narratives are often written in the past tense, but in this case, the
children are writing ‘in the present’ as the music suggests the action of the
story.
Follow-up
• Ask the children to write and illustrate the Peer Gynt narrative. In this
activity, they could change their simple present / present continuous tense
sentences into a past tense narrative, and even include some dialogue.
• Other music which is suitable for this kind of activity includes:
The William Tell Overture by Rossini
The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky
Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens
Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev
• For other narratives, see Activities 2.16, 3.5, 3.13, 3.14, 3.18, 4.10, 5.1.
Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
146

---