For those of us young (or old) enough to remember SchoolHouse Rock!, I ran across some of these great retro cartoon shorts that played in between popular cartoon shows on Saturday Morning's on ABC during the 70s and early 80s.The videos are simplistic, the music is almost "folkish", but singable and sticks with you - in fact, God help you if one gets stuck in your head - "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly" and "A Noun's a person place or thing" come to mind. The stories wrapped around the lesson are fun and educational.
It's really unfortunate that shorts like these no longer air on Saturday mornings. Teaching kids about word usage, numbers, and a little bit of American History through the use of a jiggle is a great thing. How many kids today at the age of five can tell you how a Bill, becomes a Law or Recite the Preamble to the Constitution? Not many, I'm sure.
If you haven't seen these before - do a search on SchoolHouse Rock in Youtube, and you'll get a laugh. And some of you, like I did, will recall the songs nearly perfectly by memory. At a minimum, you'll certainly get a laugh!
A short history of Schoolhouse Rock! can be found here.
As an English teacher, you have no idea how much I agree with you!! When I encounter 9th and 10th graders who can't tell me what a noun is, I begin to think things are a bit grim.
ReplyDelete(Granted -- I know this is because grammar is insanely dull to learn -- as kids have a tough time making it relevant to their lives as they know they can already speak the language. Frankly, no matter how many times a teacher teaches it, it often just does not stick for a lot of kids -- which is why most of us really learn grammar when we study a foreign language -- when it finally becomes relevant. I could go on and on about ed. theory, but I rather not bore you.)
I remember that Schoolhouse Rock made lots of those lessons "stick" for me. More Schoolhouse Rock, less advertising towards kids.
Heidi, its not boring at all, but rather fascinating. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteSchoolHouse Rock! was a fantastic piece of learning in between cartoon entertainment.
ReplyDeleteAnd we all stayed tuned, learned something, and loved it!
Thanks for reminding me of a piece of my Saturday morning youth.