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Community Building in the Music Room


Students are naturally curious about other languages
Over the years of interacting with my students, I have noticed their natural curiosity whenever we discuss cultures, traditions, and languages. My students love learning new ways to say things. Their eyes light up when I introduce simple vocabulary in other languages: greetings, numbers, movement verbs, body parts, etc. My students get especially excited when I engage in an audible conversation in my native language: Russian. 

One of the most accessible ways to incorporate other languages in the music room is exploring various greetings. Hello and Goodbye songs are a staple in most elementary classrooms. As students become familiar with the songs, change “hello” to “hola”, ”ciao”, or “bonjour”. With a little creativity and good musicianship, any greeting song can be modified to include other languages. 
A peek into my classroom: “Hello, Everyone”
This week, my students and I reviewed an original greeting song we learned last music class, and explored substituting different greetings in place of “hello”. I  began by sharing a greeting in my native language, Russian: “Hello” in Russian is “Pree-viet”. First, I demonstrated how to say it without the music, and invited students to echo. Next, I demonstrated how it would fit into the music. In this case, “Pree-viet” has two syllables, just like “Hello”. We didn’t have to make rhythmic changes to use Russian. The rest was easy: I asked my students if they knew how to say “hello” in other languages. I was surprised how many greetings we knew as a school. We sang in Creole, Polish, Ukrainian, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew, Hawaiian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Turkish. 
Students’ intonation improves when singing in a foreign language
In addition to students’ enthusiasm, I have noticed that students’ intonation improves when we sing songs in foreign languages. As a Music Learning Theory practitioner, I am always comparing music learning and language acquisition. In this case, I believe students sing with better intonation because they do not understand the language, and thus, are not focused on the meaning of the words. Instead of “thinking language”, they are “thinking music”: their listening sense is heightened as they hear unfamiliar sound combinations.

Changing demographics: building a community of inclusion
As our town’s demographics continue to change to include families for whom English is not a native language, the need for cultural inclusion and exploration is greater than ever. Incorporating my students’ native language contributes toward their adjustment as individuals, and promotes acceptance by their peers. It’s a wonderful feeling-seeing my students’ smile as we sing in their native tongue.



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