Posted by Sharon Pesenti on December 19, 2006 at 21:41:40:
I work in an elementary school in Nassau County (Long Island), New York. This year we began a program called Patriotic Friday. Each Friday morning we sing a patriotic song during the morning announcements. Each elementary class gets a turn. I choose 5 or 6 children to lead the song over the loud speaker. We have 5 songs on our song sheets. Grand Old Flag, America the Beautiful, America, God Bless America and of course, The Star Spangled Banner. We are not ready to sing the Anthem because most of the students do not know the words.
I hope to have the Anthem ready by the Spring. In order to get them ready, we practice with the song sheets, then I have the students play a memory game. I give them strips of laminated papers with phrases from the song. They have to put the words on the board with fun tac, in the correct order. When this is completed, we sing it through. Then I remove some of the phrases and we sing it again. We do this until there are no words left and they have to sing it from memory. I'm sure other teachers are doing this; bur I just felt I should share this with you. It is a shame that more students ( and adults) do not know their National Anthem.