The Best Children's Songs to Use in the ESL Classroom...And The Worst

When you teach ESL to children, singing is a huge part of each lesson. But after four, straight hours of "The Wheels on the Bus", you can sometimes feel a little like a figurine on the Disney theme-park ride, 'It's a Small World' or like a robot programmed on repeat. There are days when I'd rather walk off a cliff then direct yet another group of uncooperative three-year-olds in the "Walking, Walking" song. It's maddening, really.

It's for this reason that I've spent the last couple of hours googling "children's ESL songs", with the hope that I'd uncover some new jingles to add to my repertoire. But as I've discovered, while there are an awful lot of children's music being pawned off as 'Songs for the ESL Classroom', a good deal of them are completely unusable. Songs like "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean", which is a fun song, no doubt, but has no use for beginner English learners.

The point of incorporating songs into a lesson is to review particular vocabulary or an aspect of grammar and not just for entertainment's sake or to kill time. So traditional Scottish folk songs about lassies or bonnies should probably be saved for singing around the camp fire and left out of the ESL classroom entirely. So before you decide to teach the kiddies a song, ask yourself this: How is it useful?

That being said, the following are seven songs that I've found to work well...and three that didn't.

The Best Kids Songs to Teach in the ESL Classroom:

1. The Hokey Pokey (In/Out, Body Parts)

2. Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Body Parts)

3. The Walking Song (Actions)

4. The Rainbow Song (Colors)

5. The Colors of Our Clothes (Colors, Clothing)

6. The Hello/How Are You? Song (Greetings, Good Warm-Up)

7. One Little, Two Little, Three Little Fingers, (Counting on your Fingers)

Three Kids Songs that Should Never Be Used in the ESL Classroom:

1. The Farmer in the Dell (What in the world is a "Dell"?)

2. Ring Around the Rosie (I don't even know what the words mean)

3. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schimdt (This is a favorite of mine for camp settings...it's loud and easy to learn. But as a tool to teach English? Not so much).

For lyrics to these songs, visit: http://www.esl-kids.com/songs/songs.html