The power of Rap

In my first year of teaching I had a meeting with my mentor who asked me what activities I'd done for the various kinds of learners in my classroom. I knew very well that I'd done more talking activities than anything else, and admitted as much, but had a list of other things I'd done as well, and was feeling pretty proud of myself until she said "what about the musical learners?" I reluctantly agreed to make this a target, and planned a lesson on Political Parties where kids would have to research a party and put their policies into song. I did not expect this to go down well. It went down fantastically.

Since then I've whipped out the old musical lesson every now and then, and while of course some kids hate it, most love it. I thought I'd share my favourite two with you.

PSHE Lesson Objective: to recognise the symptoms of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. 

You go into the club
But you've got pubic lice!
You're itching and a-scratching,
it really aint nice!
The girls aint going to want you
when there's bugs crawling in your junk
Get ready for a life of single
might as well just become a monk!

Citizenship Lesson Objective: to consider the impact of the use of landfills on the environment, and explain how the UN's Rio Earth Summit addressed this concern.


(this one should be done to the tune (is it a tune? to the beat?) of the second verse of the Fresh Prince of Belair)

In South East London, born and raised,
In (school's name) was where I spent most of my days.
Learning bout the world, Miss Jones is so cool,
Doing Citizenship inside of the school.
I heard a couple of countries were up to no good,
Starting dumping rubbish in their neighbourhood!
Now there's global warming, and the world got scared
And all because we weren't prepared.

I whistled for the UN and when they got near
They designed LA21 and we all lost our fear! 

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