Sing is one of  The Carpenters most loved songs. It is known to millions of children through its performances on the children’s show Sesame Street. In fact the song was originally written for Sesame Street by Joe Raposo, and Karen and Richard Carpenter liked it so much they made their own version, which has become the definitive version which we all know so well.

The symbolsong technique is an alternative to the gap-fill activity that often accompanies a song. At first the students have no idea what the symbols mean, but slowly you will hear gasps of delight as some students start to guess the words.

The students are firstly given a handout of the symbol sheet which represents the song, and after trying to decipher as much as they can, they then listen to the song and compare with their ideas. The full lyrics can be shown to the students for further comparison before they listen a second time.

Sing symbolsong: please click here for the freely downloadable pdf sheets. For obvious reasons the actual song cannot be included here but there are many sites where it can be obtained (it is highly recommended that the Carpenters version is used).

Please find a snapshot of the symbolsong below.