If you haven’t listened to the video lesson yet, start here. If you’ve seen this, skip and move on to the instructions…

Write Your Own Song Lyrics Instructions

Here is my VERSE followed by our CHORUS for WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE”:

I wanted a sandwich

But I ran out of bread

The stores were all sold out

So I baked a loaf instead!

These days life sure is different

Who ever would have known?

But we can make a difference

If we all stay at home.

Click here to see full lyrics page:  We Can Make a Difference


Now it’s your turn! Using a pencil and paper…

Brainstorm ideas: what are some things that have been new or different while staying at home?

Choose 1 idea and expand upon it: Pick your most interesting idea and write down as many words and phrases that you can think of that are related to that idea.  If you can’t think of very many related words or phrases, try another one of your ideas instead!

Draw four lines, and create an extra underlined space at the end of your 2nd and 4th lines to show where your rhyming words need to go.

Choose 1 word and find rhymes: Pick one of the most important words or phrases to place in one of your rhyming spaces, then create a list of other words that rhyme. Go through the alphabet and add each letter to the start of your rhyme sound to see how many rhymes you can come up with. For example, if trying to find a rhyme for “ask” you can try “bask”, “cask”, “dask”, and so on. Don’t forget to try other sounds like “ch”, “sh”, and “th”. Say each rhyme-try out loud and listen to see how many real words you can find this way. If you can’t find very many rhymes, try again with another starting word!

Choose the rhyme that makes the most sense: Go through all your rhymes and see what words could be used in your verse in a way that makes sense. Thinking of opposites can be useful (if you love running but can’t do that much right now, maybe you could rhyme “run” with “not fun“.) Remember, your rhyme has to be the last sound at the end of lines 2 and 4. If none of the rhymes fit with your story, go back and try again with a different word.

Fill out the rest of lines 2 and 4: make sure the rhyme words you have chosen make sense as the last word of each phrase. Speak it out loud to make sure it sounds right.

Complete your story with lines 1 and 3: These lines don’t need to rhyme, so they’re a good place to add other important details that didn’t fit while we were trying to make lines 2 and 4 rhyme.

Test your lyrics: sing through your verse a few times to make sure that it fits the rhythm of the song. If it feels like you’re trying to squeeze in too many words, try to find a more simple way to say what you mean. These are short verses, so there isn’t room for a lot of detail… but you can always do a second verse if you have more to say!

Sing along with me to test out your verse!

Here are the lyrics you hear in the recording – just add in your own verse where the blank lines are…  We Can Make a Difference

 

Post your lyrics in a reply on Teams: Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of the lyrics-writing post to find the reply button so we can keep all our verses together. If your teacher is using a different system of communication you can email your lyrics to me at elise.heard@burnabyschools.ca

Have fun!