There are so many reasons why using music in the French classroom is just an awesome idea!

You expose students to new cultures and accents, improve their pronunciation and listening comprehension, expand their vocabulary, and so much more. And that doesn’t even count adding music in just to create a happy classroom vibe!

I love using music in the classroom and I enjoy trying to think of different, fun ways that I can use it without making it seem too forced.

When I first started incorporating songs into lessons (and making lesson plans based off of songs!), I had trouble finding many different activities that really made the songs fun.

For this reason, I decided to write this blog post all about my TOP 10 Best Song Activities for the French Classroom!

Just as an FYI before we start, these activities are obviously aside from the grammar and discussion activities that often go with songs. These are activities for students to interact and engage with the song lyrics.

Okay, let’s get started!

ACTIVITY #1        Fill in The Blanks

An oldie but a goodie! Leaving blank spaces for students to fill in the correct lyrics is a great way to challenge their listening and their spelling as well.

With this activity, try to space the blanks out so that you give students the best possible chance to hear and write the words. If there are too many in a short space it will be difficult for them to complete them all.

ACTIVITY #2        Order the Lyrics

This second option is one that I often use along with #1. If I have a class with different levels, I like to give students the option of a slightly easier activity than the fill-in-the-blanks.

For this, I choose a section of the lyrics and rearrange the lines in their entirety. I then put a space at the beginning of the lines so that students can put them back in order!

ACTIVITY #3        Find the Mistake

Another interesting activity with song lyrics is to put mistakes into the song that students need to identify and correct.

The first time the song is played, I tell students to focus on just underlining the mistakes that they hear. The second time, they can work to correct the mistakes.

*I bolded the errors in this example to show you the kind of things that students need to correct. I do not bold them when I give students the actual worksheet!

ACTIVITY #4        The Last Word

This fun activity is almost 100% listening-focused! I also love to make this into a team competition for extra engagement.

For this, I play the song and randomly stop it at different intervals. When the song is stopped, students need to write down the last word that they heard. I get them to decide in their teams (usually I make about 4-5 teams) what they think the last word was and then they have to give me a group answer.

At the end of the song, the team with the most correct words wins! Afterwards I play the song in its entirety for them so they can hear it in a less choppy version.

***THE BONUS (AND MOST AWESOME) VERSION***

Personally, this is my FAVOURITE version of this activity. I like to spice it up a bit by making it a fun combination of “hot potato” and the last word game.

What I do is I put the class into small groups and give each group a “potato” (ball).

Then I start the music, the students pass the ball around their group, and when the music stops the student who is holding the ball has to run to the board and write the last word correctly on it.

The first group to do this with the correct word (and spelling!) gets a point.

This is always such a hilarious activity! It gets students listening, moving around the class, and interacting in a fun way with their peers. I highly recommend it!

ACTIVITY #5        Design the Lyrics

This activity works best when you have a song that tells a story.

This makes it quite a bit easier to draw, although it’s possible to do without a story too!

After the students have listened to the song and completed one of the listening comprehension tasks listed above (or one of your own!), I divide students into small groups (2-3 people) and give each group a small section of the lyrics. The amount of lyrics given out will depend on the size of your class, but usually each group gets a few lines.

The task is for each group to draw a picture of what is happening in the lyrics that they are given.

First, they translate the lyrics and make sure that they fully understand what is happening in their part of the song. For the drawing, each person in the group should be able to contribute something. I like to have at least 2 papers / drawings per group!

After the groups have all completed their drawings, I put them up on the whiteboard / blackboard with the lyrics attached IN ORDER and we have a “viewing session” where the song is played in the background and students have the chance to walk along and read the lyrics + beautiful drawings that accompany them !

ACTIVITY #6        Write your own Lyrics

This activity is pretty much as it sounds. I let students either add their own stanza to the song or take out one and replace it with something of their own!

After they have completed their songs changes, we share as a class and see what cool lyrics people have come up with!

*This works particularly well with a song that has a lot of rhyming because it is easier for students to come up with lyrics!*

ACTIVITY #7        Circle the Lyrics

This next activity is a simple one to do while students are listening to the song. I write a bunch of words in a box that are both found and NOT FOUND in the song. Usually I do 15-20 that are in the song and 10-15 that aren’t (it is also easier if you put the words in the same order that they come up in the song).

As students listen to the song, they circle only the words that they DO hear.

At the end, we see how many words the students heard correctly! This is great focused listening practice and really gets the students to carefully listen to each word of the song.

ACTIVITY #8        Act It Out

This activity works best if you have a relatively outgoing class and a mix of songs!

Students are divided into small groups of 3-4 people and they choose an French song (I provide a list of suggestions in case they don’t have any in mind).

Once they have chosen a song, they work together to translate the lyrics so that they know exactly what the song says.

**I don’t ask them to do the whole song, usually 1-1.5 minutes**

Next, they plan how they are going to act out the song as it’s playing! For this, I give the students a lot of flexibility – they can draw pictures that they hold up, they can physically act it out, etc.

My goal is to get them interacting with the song and having fun in French. So as long as their ideas are appropriate and show that they are learning, I go with it!

ACTIVITY #9        Lyric Jumble

For the Lyric Jumble, you can do this either while a song is playing or as a separate activity post-listening!

While the song is playing: I hand out a worksheet with the full song lyrics and with some lines jumbled up.

**If you do this, make sure to give students space to either re-write the sentence or number the words.

After the song has finished: I include this on a worksheet as a separate activity. I put lyrics that have full sentences on the sheet and jumble them up for students to rearrange.

**If you choose this activity, try to make sure that there is a point to the sentences you are jumbling up! For example, I like to use this activity if we are doing the passé composé and I have a song with a lot of passé composé examples. In this case, I would use the lyric jumble to get students to practice word order and how to formulate the verb tense.

ACTIVITY #10        The Lyric Grab

The last activity on my Top 10 list is the Lyric Grab! This one requires a bit more prep, but it’s worth it!

The first thing is to choose a fun song that is upbeat. Next, write out a bunch of words that ARE found in the song and a bunch of words that AREN’T. You need quite a few words for this, approximately 30-40. Feel free to repeat key words as multiple teams will be trying to grab words.

Put each word on an individual piece of paper (laminate if you want to use them again!) and stick them all over your whiteboard / blackboard.

I personally laminate and use magnets on my words because I use them multiple times and it saves me a ton of work. (It’s also a fun and easy activity for a warm up!!)

Students are divided into small groups of approximately 5-6 people, and they work as a team to try and collect as many correct words as they can. *I try to make sure that I don’t have more than 4 teams if possible because it gets a bit too chaotic.

As the song plays, students can run up and grab the words that they hear. **ONE student at a time from each group!**

However, they need to be careful because if they grab an INCORRECT word, their team loses 3 points!

I score like this:

Correct word:  1 point

Incorrect word:  -3 points

After the song has finished, I read off the words (keep a master list!) and get students to guess whether or not they were in the song. Then I tell them if they were right. Their reactions to this are priceless! At the end, we see who has the most points and is the winning team.

And that’s all 10!

I hope that these gave you some fun ideas for how to use songs and inspired you to add more music to your French classroom! 🙂

Need some ideas for French songs? Check out my blog post that has 50 GREAT FRENCH SONGS you can download and recommend for your students! **Printable PDF download of all songs available to save or post!**