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Building Reading and Writing Skills with Music
In this article, author Jeffrey Pflaum, an inner city elementary teacher, talks about a program he created and tested called Music Writing. I was drawn to this article because just the other day I was talking about using music as a means to help students learn. How many students can sing all the lyrics to multiple songs, but have trouble memorizing facts or dates? History is not my subject, but I can tell you all about the Louisiana Purchase because of an 8th grade Schoolhouse Rock musical I was in.
Pflaum explains that his Music Writing program helps develop creativity because he plays music and has his students visualize and think about the music. After about 10 minutes, he turns of the music and sends the students off to think and write about the music. Pflaum states, "The process allows adolescents to explore intra- and interpersonal communication and knowledge, including conflicts, negative emotions, problem-solving and decision-making, through the frameworks of an inner eye, voice and imaginary TV screen in the mind" (2012).
This seems like a nice way to help students explore their creativity. The music allows them to use different senses, which may be very beneficial for auditory learners.
I too use music in my math classroom. We have a couple songs for the order of operations and for graphing coordinate pairs. As juvenile as it sounds, students like the songs (even in middle school) and as you mentioned can remember the information. I am going to hopefully spend some time this summer researching more songs about a variety of topics in math.
ReplyDeleteI read this article at first, but I never blogged about it. However, knowing how much many kids enjoy music, I find this approach very interesting. It is especially interesting to me personally because I am pretty sure I am -100% on the musical intelligence scale! :) I have trouble remembering information when it is put to a song; I remember things better through pictures. I have had to train myself to use music in my classroom, as it has never been a strong point for me!
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