How to Teach "O Canada" to Students

Have you ever explicitly taught your students "O Canada"?  Why or why not?

Some schools have students listen to a recording of it every day. Sometimes that's an instrumental, sometimes it has vocals. It could be English, French, or bilingual. A school I worked at only played an instrumental version.  The intercom system was old, and they could only use a CD copy of music, not a computer download or YouTube video. Some of the primary classes would learn to sing it, but in French since it was a French Immersion school. The lyrics are not exactly Intro to French level. By the junior years, it was a struggle to get students to remain quiet and listen. Surprise?

Some schools do have students sing along with a recording. Many teachers assume that if a student is listening to it every day, eventually they'll pick up on the lyrics. How many funny meme are out there of misheard song lyrics? And what about students that are new to the school and never sang it before? Or are English Language Learners? 

But how to teach "O Canada"?

I think its important to set aside some time to explicitly teach "O Canada" to every grade. It doesn't have to be a big unit, maybe just a couple classes. Refresh their understanding of the lyrics, and how the lyrics connect with the melody. The interesting thing with "O Canada" is that it started as a French song and this is why some of the English lyrics don't seem to match the melody very well. The translation is also not exact, and that could be another interesting lesson, especially if you have French Immersion students. Core French students could take a look at the French lyrics and translate them too.

Melodically, "O Canada" is not the easiest song to sing. You'll hear many versions of the song with different endings--some go high, some go low, and some don't know where they're going. The range is a bit much for many students (including myself!). It's not in C Major, so playing on Boomwhackers or handbells presents a challenge, and it's not in D or G Major, so it's harder on the recorder. Chromatic xylophones that have a 10 pitch range (C to high E) range will work (you'll have to go low at the end). 

Creating rhythmic or chordal ostinatos could be a good activity for students. They are more likely to sing along if there is something else going on instrumentally. I had a grade 4/5 class that had C and G Boomwhackers, handbells and tone bars and we worked as a class to decide where to add them.

A great time of year to do these activities is near the start of school, before any bad habits set in. I created a collaborative jigsaw poster to use as a whole class activity. Bonus--it can be displayed on a bulletin board as  visual aid when students are singing "O Canada" daily. 

There are two sizes of posters.  Large is 30" x 37.5" and small is 25" x 31.25".  Each of these come with 25 pieces. Students can colour their piece, and then work as a whole class to assemble. The small size has the puzzle piece AND a full background image on one page. This extra image will give faster students something to colour if they're waiting, or to save for later.

Each of the sizes comes in 4 "O Canada" designs and also the full background design:

• music only
• music plus English lyrics
• music plus French lyrics
• music plus bilingual lyrics

As well, there is a PDF of extras--lyric sheets, the full background of leaves, a coloured version for inspiration, and each of the 4 music versions as a single sheet. Oh, and for even more of a bonus, there are 8 pages of individual leaves and 1 page of all 8 leaf designs together!

There's several ways you can approach this, depending on your students' knowledge of the songs, and their ability to read notation. If they have strong, or growing notation reading skills, using the music only version will provide them with an interesting challenge. You can encourage their detective skills with comments like "Where in the music do we find treble clefs?" and "Which way to the flags go?" Then, once assembled, have them cut up the lyric sheet into syllables and glue where they belong under the music. Or, if their notation skills are still in infancy, choose one of the versions with lyrics.

You can print the large size posters as 4 per sheet and have students in groups race to complete their puzzles. This will yield posters that are about 13.5" x 17".

You can even print the letter size images and have partners cut them up into their own puzzle shapes and challenge each other.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to use the jigsaw puzzles! If your classes complete this activity, I'd love to see photos! And as always, don't forget to leave a review on TPT if you enjoyed the resource. You can earn TPT credits to spend anywhere on TPT!