Rhythm in Motion: developing English skills through music and creative movement

In August 2015 a group of seven students and staff from Liverpool Hope University in the UK visited the SOS Children’s Village just outside Galle town in Southern Sri Lanka, to partake in a two week residential program ‘Global Hope’, teaching English to children between four and fifteen. Below is lecturer Dr Rachel Sweeney’s account of their experiences at the SOS Village, reflecting on a range of somatic educational tools as applied to the pedagogic focus of teaching English through movement and music, and focusing broadly on the education values of somatics as placed within an interdisciplinary embodied approach. The paper will follow the pedagogic approach to teaching English through creative play, where the emphasis is on inclusivity and individual agency, allowing for more receptive learning through familiarity with lessons often centred around rhythmic exercises that emphasise repetition through call and response alongside gestural movement and song. These learning practices follow a constructivist approach to pedagogy where the physical embodiment of the image or word allows children to take ownership over their learning, while engaging widely with each other as also the young student teachers. In presenting an extended case study of the above creative arts programs that are designed to prioritise kinaesthetic learning methods whilst implementing English speaking and writing skills, this paper will also engage with a wider political overview of the Centre’s mission aims, which respond to the vast spectrum of southern Sri Lanka’s social and economic problems.