“A real gold mine–it’s chockablock with lesson plans and activities all based on songs.”
TeachingEnglish / British Council

What’s here?

Like many teachers of the English language (ELL, ESL, EFL), I like to enrich my lessons with popular songs. On this site, you’ll find:

• A list of hundreds of classroom-friendly songs, organized by theme, along with links to recommended YouTube videos
• Song-based activities
• Lesson plan ideas
• A Grammar + Songs page with worksheets and songs to pair with specific grammar topics
• Stories behind the songs, written at the beginning to low-intermediate levels.

I’ve become a big fan of creating thematic lessons by starting with a pop song, adding some spin-off activities, and then rounding off the lesson with a related reading—either the story behind the song (there are many on this site) or a news story from the True Stories reading series. I know that some of you who visit this site also use True Stories, so I’ve included some suggestions for stories that work particularly well with specific songs.

What’s new?

• Updates on Facebook: This site has a companion Facebook page, where I’ll post notifications of newly added content.
• Updates on the Recently Added Page: Many of you are now following this blog on WordPress, which means you will get a notification for every post. You might get clusters of individual notifications because new material is usually posted on several different pages. The quickest way to see what’s new is to check the Recently Added page.