Six Beatles Day Activities

Do English teachers still use Beatles’ songs? When I started teaching it seemed to be the most obvious type of music to use. The lyrics felt easy and all the students knew the tunes. Today’s younger students might not know the Beatles’ music, and do they even know the Beatles? Recently I was experimenting for a podcast with my co-host Shaun Wilden where we looked at making a syllabus based on Beatles’ songs, and the lyrics were actually often trickier than you might expect. Regardless, June 25 is Global Beatles Day so if you think the Fab Four might still have something to offer your classes, here are six ideas.

Find a Beatles song that you think the students will like, and that has several rhyming words in it. Display the pairs of rhyming words all jumbled up. Students have to find the words that rhyme. Go over the answers and drill the pronunciation. Then give the students a copy of the song lyrics, with the rhyming words left out. They should try and put them back in. Finish by listening to the song.

Find two songs by the Beatles that you think the students will like. Create a worksheet or slide where you jumble lyrics from the songs together. Give the two titles of the songs. Can the students match the song lyrics correctly just from the titles? See below for an example. Once they’ve finished, play both songs for students to listen and check.

Penny Lane or Octopus Garden? Match the lyric to the song title.

___ I’d like to be under the sea

___ On the corner is a banker with a motorcar

___ Wet beneath the blue suburban skies

___ We would be warm, below the storm

___ Resting our head, on the seabed

___ Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout

Using the lyrics from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, display two series of nouns. Ask students to make as many interesting and creative compounds as possible. They compare in pairs. Then play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and ask students to identify the compound nouns that the Beatles made for the lyrics of this song.

Connect the words in A and B to make interesting compound nouns.

A tangerine marmalade kaleidoscope cellophane marshmallow newspaper plasticine

B porters pies flowers eyes taxis skies trees

The Beatles were arguably among the first boy bands that provoked intense fandom. You could use this to make a quiz about different boy bands of the past fifty or so years. Questions like ‘match the song/member/album/fact to the band’ would work. I don’t have room to put a whole quiz here, but here’s a list of boy bands you could work with:

Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Jonas Brothers, BTS, One Direction, Westlife, New Kids on the Block

Use a Beatles song as a prompt for some creative writing. Here are some examples of possible songs and prompts. First play the song and go over the lyrics. Then give the prompt.

Paperback Writer: Write a pitch for a novel you are desperately trying to get published.

Strawberry Fields Forever: Imagine you have been transported here. Write a description of what you see and what you do.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer: Write a news article about the arrest and trial of Maxwell.

Ticket to Ride: A stranger approaches you one day and presses a vintage train ticket into your hand. The date for the ticket is tomorrow. Write a travel diary entry of what happens when you go to the station and use the ticket. Where do you go?

Ok, yes this is probably the obvious thing to do. As I have recommended in a previous post, I would probably choose Yesterday to do with students. It’s pretty easy, and still recognizable. And fun to do!