Working with songs: a guide to prepare activites for students

Here you have a series of  steps you can follow if you want to prepare an activity with a song.

1. First of all, you have to choose the song. Think about the level of difficulty so you shouldn't get things too complicated.
2. Look for the complete  lyrics so as to prepare activities.
3. Decide which activities you want to do. You have different options: work on the lyrics, analysing the text and/or working on the video of the song. In the next steps you have various possibilities to develop.
4. Types of activities on the lyrics: A) Listening :  fill in the gaps ( you can focus on certain words like nouns, verbs, etc  or  words related with a topic) with clues or without ; put the sentences or words in order ( preferably organize it by paragraphs) . B) Analysing the song: here you can make questions about meaning of words , finding words in the text, looking for certain tenses ( past, present or future), work on expressions or collocations, etc.
5. Working on the video: here you can make questions about things that happen in the video, such as actions, objects that appear in it, opinions on the song and the video itself...
6. It is very important that you give clear instructions about what has to be done and value the level of difficulty