Poll of the Day > Your thoughts on the New Alphabet Song?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7v0HqejXE

This isnt new.

Its the standard one used for non-English speaking countries. Mostly because some kids mishear L M N O P as ELEMENAPEE.

I automatically render the z as zed, and then my memory tags on the lines "ex why zed, sugar on your bread, if you don't like it, you have to go to bed". That'll be an English nursery rhyme and with this not being my native language, I'll have been 10 or 11 when I learned that. Early English lessons in late primary school, though I knew a few words by then.

Proper English lessons were throughout secondary school, but using a language is how you properly learn it. By now I'm effectively bilingual.

It breaks up the rhyming scheme, which is the whole point, the rhyming helps with memorization

RIP Elemenopy

We should use this one instead:

https://youtu.be/bgmdnxtz3Bo?t=32

I wont listen to it

A stupid solution in search of a problem. Show me one kid who grew up having trouble reading or writing because they thought "elemenopee" was a single letter.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

We should use this one instead:

https://youtu.be/bgmdnxtz3Bo?t=32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsnnFhNAij0

it goes like

dun du dun dun; dun du dun dun; dun du dun dun; dun du dun dun

wah ah ahhhhhhhhhh AAAAA (A)
wah ah aaaaaahhhhhhh AAAAA (B)

man101 posted...

A stupid solution in search of a problem. Show me one kid who grew up having trouble reading or writing because they thought "elemenopee" was a single letter.

It happens, but it's generally because their education has put too much emphasis on mindless recitation and not enough on contextualizing the letters and how they're used. An updated song may help prevent them from thinking "elemeno" is a letter with no other changes, but it won't make a meaningful difference to their literacy in most cases.

Mid tbh

adjl posted...

It happens, but it's generally because their education has put too much emphasis on mindless recitation and not enough on contextualizing the letters and how they're used. An updated song may help prevent them from thinking "elemeno" is a letter with no other changes, but it won't make a meaningful difference to their literacy in most cases.

Is that a serious concern if the song is presented with a visual of the letters being presented as individual letters?

Its still just twinkle twinkle little star, but using a more awkward meter for the back half?
I'm disappointed.

The ABCs already followed the melody to 'Twinkle Twinkle', so it sounds kinda awkward when they let letters take a whole 2-beats starting at V. Still, I get the rationale now that people have explained it. I think it's good to make a point of fully anunciating L, M, N, O and P instead of slurring them together like most people do. Although now I'm realizing that they're sung in eighth notes when 'Twinkle Twinkle' does not do so. Hmmm!!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

We should use this one instead:

https://youtu.be/bgmdnxtz3Bo?t=32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R0AmyhwIU

willythemailboy posted...

Is that a serious concern if the song is presented with a visual of the letters being presented as individual letters?

Depends how they're presented. If it's a video going along with the song (as is perhaps the more likely scenario when most of the recordings one might pull up these days are going to be youtube videos), displaying each letter as it's being sung would mean the LMNO block would flash by too quickly to help with recognizing the letters (it would identify them as separate, but that's about it). If it's got the whole alphabet on screen and just highlights or otherwise identifies each letter as it's being sung, sing-along-style, that keeps them separate, but risks presenting too much information all at once and still doesn't give the kid time to register each letter as they go by. In a classroom setting, if you've got a teacher physically pointing at the letters, LMNO going by so quickly makes accurate pointing hard and creates the risk that kids will misinterpret the pointer as just tapping the whole block for each note.

Ultimately, though, the main issue is that the alphabet song - whatever form it takes - should only be one piece of teaching kids the alphabet. Having a song to recite can help with rote memorization, but it needs to be paired with other context, including presenting the letters visually on their own.