Comentarios en: Philippines, Jazz Chants and competition in kids

Por: JaimeMartinez

JaimeMartinez — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 20:39:55 +0000

I agree with you that we can organise a debate in class about if competitions are good or not with children. I know that we try to create “healthy competitions” in class, because we think that are a way of challenging our students to learn and to work. But maybe, we can stand out the people who are really good and demotivate the people who are not good for this specific task, because when someone is the winner of a competition (and also if we do a “healthy” one), the rest of the participants are the losers, and some of our students can think that we aren’t recognizing their effort and what they did.
Even all that things, I think that competitions are good for children, but maybe we have to “make up” them not to find unexpected results.

Por: Raquel Fernández Fernández

Raquel Fernández Fernández — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:28:49 +0000

Thoughtful ideas and interesting insights into the world of jazz chants. I wasn’t aware of the importance of using this resource in the Philippines, thanks a million! I am sure all students try hard to learn, cooperate and try their best in the competition.
Concerning promoting competition in class, if competition is not healthy, should we banned sports? Is losing traumatic? Should we prevent students from feeling as losers? Hmmmm, maybe we can organise a debate on this in class.

Por: JaimeMartinez

JaimeMartinez — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 21:22:43 +0000

Hello Krzysztof, I’m glad you like my post.
I agree with you that the National English Jazz Chants Festival is a good initiative for children but also for parents, because, as you said, it is a possibility of learning something useful from the English development of their children. This reminds me to the Christmas Festival that we make in many Spanish schools that are a way of showing what children learn in English classes.

Por: Krzysztof Kujawa

Krzysztof Kujawa — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 21:58:41 +0000

Hello Jaime
I have to say I’m really impressed with the information you found about the Jazz Chants. Our class about Jazz Chants was something really shocking for me because of two aspects. Firstly I would never figure out that it would be so simple to make a song that would have so many didactic uses, and also because I would never say that someone like me could enjoy singing and producing simple songs as much as I did.
Speaking about “The National English Jazz Chant Festival” I consider it as a great initiative for the children as an opportunity to improve linguistically and also for some parents and teachers as a possibility to learn something really useful for the language development of their children. I strongly agree in the point that maybe it is not a good idea to make a traditional competition in anything related with pupils, maybe a good idea for those competitions would be not just winning or losing, the final idea of those projects could be something like “if you share and enjoy, you win”, this way there won’t be any distinction between children who are better in something and others that aren’t so good in it and we will motivate all of them to participate in those competitions.