You Can Close Your Eyes

As I've explained already, periodically in music class I play an English song for my students to listen to. I tell them to think about what the song might mean or how it makes them feel and to write and draw. I'm trying to get them to write more than just "This song is pretty." or "I like this song." I keep asking them, but "why?" Some of them don't write anything, some of them write "because the title of the song is this", but some of them write some nice explanations--even if they have nothing to do with the song lyrics.

Last week I played James Taylor's You Can Close Your Eyes. They knew every word in the title except can. It still took awhile for them to figure out the meaning of the title word by word, but it's exciting to start getting to that point with them. I also make gestures for all the words in the song that we've learned in class. This helps them recognize the words (we use these gestures in English class too) and get's them excited. One student wrote that he didn't like the song because he didn't understand it. But many of them liked it. Here are some of my favorites.

"This song is very pretty, I want to listen to it forever."

"Every night the girl doesn't want to go to sleep. One night the father tells her: You can close your eyes."

"Makes me want to fly in the blue sky."

"This song is very pretty. I also think the singer sounds a little sad."

"It sounds like this song is being sung next to a big pond and the fish in the pond are listening and dancing."

"It's very pretty, it sounds like he's singing in a forest."

I love the comparison of eyes to clouds...

"Teacher, thank you for letting me listen to this song, it's very pretty."