English School update, Songs and Stories class

Last September I started English school here.  In September there was 1 Level 1 class.  In January I taught Level 1 again and 2 other teacher shared a Level 2 class.  Another teacher came in to help me with Level 1.  In April we started another Level 1 class and the other teacher, Tami, is really in charge of that but I've been there too.  In September we plan to have Levels 1, 2, and 3!

I just got finished with a special 6 week session of Songs and Stories class.
I wanted to offer something for the students who had finished Level 2 so they could keep practicing English between April and September.  I saw some facebook posts of a teacher in Bamako having fun and success using songs in teaching English, and I remembered enjoying some exercises with songs when I was in French class.  So I decided to go for it and I created "Songs + Stories" class. It is fun to make something up, to create the lessons from nothing, but it is a lot of work, too.
There were 15 students signed up but around 12 showed up for each class session.  They were just there for practice, not trying to earn a certificate, so maybe they had a little less motivation to be at each class.
I chose a different song and a story for each week.  Before the song I read a short biography of the musician and they answered comprehension questions.  The songs had blanks so they had to listen and try to fill in the blanks.  Sometimes there were conversation questions relating to the topic of the song.  We also had a story or article to look at each time with questions and activities relating to that.

Here are the songs and stories we learned from:
1. I just called to say I love you + interviewing and introducing partners
2. What a wonderful world + the Creation story
3. When I'm 64 + an article about old age
4. Three little birds + a funny cat story
5. Father and Son + the Prodigal Son story
6. Tom's Diner + Paul Bunyan

The final class had us listen to a recording and follow along with a story of Paul Bunyan.  The story talked about eating "hotcakes" so I made a big batch of pancakes and we ate them together to finish the class.