10 Greatest Billboard Hits

Here is one more idea for interesting language teaching. Today, we're dealing with music, reading, listening, singing and competition.

I made this Power Point Presentation for a class that deals with culture of English speaking countries. I chose 10 songs that were number 1 on January 1st on the Billboard Top 100 in the previous century (every ten years, starting from this year) and made a quiz on that topic. This activity is great for checking reading comprehension in a different way than usual.

What you should do is the following: 

Divide your students into groups and give each group a handout with a song and its short description. They should read it and make notes and try to remember as much as possible. Then they should make new groups in which there will be one student from each initial group, so that in each new group, every student knows something about one song. They should briefly present their songs to each other and then play the game.

You should then explain the rules for the quiz:

There are 20 questions about the songs. For some questions they can get 1 point, whereas for another ones 2 points if they decide to do them - these are the so called "challenges" (they have to sing, or guess the lyrics or put the lyrics into the correct order etc.) It doesn't matter which group starts first, since they will take alternate turns and each will get to answer 10 questions. 

Then start the quiz. One person from each group should be the speaker and only the answers from this person should be accepted, although they have some time to deliberate among themselves in the group. (This will reduce the yelling and all the fuss that can happen in this kind of activities). When a group chooses the number of the question, just click on it and it will appear on the slide. Another click will show the correct answer and to go back to the slide with numbers just click on the button with a reversed play sign.

At the end count the points (you can note down the points on the blackboard or however you like) and declare who has won.

And of course, have fun!