麻豆传媒入口

How many times have you had to ask a student to remove their headphones this week? It鈥檚 a request that I make daily in my classroom, and though I鈥檝e learned to be less frustrated by students isolating themselves with a wall of sound, I never really understood why that鈥檚 so pervasive.

The other day I stopped to really consider this problem. Why are so many of our young people walking around with their ears stopped up, blocking out much of the world around them and missing valuable moments in the classroom by not being fully present? I decided to ask them, and the vast majority of the answers I received were variations on the same theme: 鈥淢usic makes me happy.鈥�

I鈥檓 not sure why it took me so long to think of tapping into the power of music in my classroom鈥攎usic聽is obviously not new. In fact, a 2001 book called claimed that it goes back more than 250,000 years, though the oldest excavated instruments are around 40,000 years old. While the origins and purposes of music still fascinate and mystify researchers, teachers know for sure that it is engaging to students.

Here are some ways聽I鈥檝e found to use music in my classroom to spark joy, create community, and make learning more engaging.

3 Ways to Tap Into the Power of聽Music

1. Create playlists for different occasions in class: I discovered this idea on Twitter recently聽and decided to have my students create a playlist of songs they鈥檇 like to play to wake up after quiet activities or when they鈥檙e feeling a little sleepy.

I didn鈥檛 realize the full impact of implementing this idea until I had a full class of 11th graders singing the chorus to 鈥淪weet Caroline鈥� by Neil Diamond. What I had intended as a way to infuse my classroom with a little more fun turned into a moment of joy and community building.

Now, I鈥檓 building, with the help of student suggestions, playlists of songs to listen to while students are writing, doing choice reading, and entering and exiting the room. I can enhance the mood of my students with just a click of the mouse.

2. Use music to help students remember important facts: I noticed the Spanish teachers at our high school using music to help students learn and remember the alphabet and the days of the week, and those of us of a certain age learned the preamble to the Constitution and many grammatical rules from watching聽Schoolhouse Rock! on Saturday mornings. Why not have students make up songs to remember other facts and ideas they need to internalize?

I decided to experiment. Instead of our traditional vocabulary activities, I divided up a list of literary devices and gave groups of students a few words each to create a song for. Using karaoke tracks of popular tunes as backing tracks, students had a surprising amount of fun making up songs to help them remember the function and effect of each of the terms. The performances were epic:聽Imagine students singing, 鈥淚s this the real life; is this hyperbole? Exaggerating for the effect that you want me to see!鈥� to the tune of Queen鈥檚 鈥淏ohemian Rhapsody鈥� and 鈥淒on鈥檛 stop litotes! Use double negatives and you won鈥檛 be sorry!鈥� to Journey鈥檚 鈥淒on鈥檛 Stop Believing.鈥�

3. Use students鈥� music preferences to connect to your subject matter: In my English classroom, I use music lyrics to introduce poetry analysis. When students first enter my class, they are often apprehensive about their ability to understand and talk about poetry, and music lyrics are a familiar and compact medium for discussing many of the aspects of analysis.

We start with a short, simple song such as Pink Floyd鈥檚 鈥淲ish You Were Here,鈥� and after digging into the multiple layers of meaning in the lyrics, I assign students a 鈥淢usic as Poetry鈥� project. They select a song鈥攐ne that鈥檚 appropriate to share in class. Then they print out the lyrics and annotate them for tone shifts, patterns, structure, and any other literary devices they can find. Next they write up a theme statement for the song, and an explanation of how the literary devices they found in the song contribute to that聽theme.

Students present their songs to the class along with their analyses. The students get practice noticing literary devices that pop up in the real world, and I get exposed to some wonderful songs I鈥檝e never heard before. Students have introduced me to artists such as Kasey Musgraves, Billie聽Eilish, and Kendrick Lamar, and along the way, I鈥檝e come to know my students a little better through their musical tastes鈥攁 win-win in my book.

I don鈥檛 have songs playing constantly in my classroom鈥攖here are times when silence is more effective, such as with certain writing and reading tasks, and every teacher needs to determine this balance for themselves. But it cannot be denied that music exerts a powerful pull on our students, a pull that can be harnessed聽to create a more effective learning environment.