Content-area learning is definetly enhanced with music. In any subject a long can make a topic come to life. Some of the greatest songs we learned as kids I still get asked to teach in my classroom. As a teacher it is our goal to encourage and engage each student with the use of one or all of the senses.
Simple songs can help anyone learn just about anything. How about using the hokey-pokey to teach left from right. Or the song about the 50 United States.... Just the other day I taught my kinder kiddos a song about manners. Another great source of songs.
http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/
Yes! Great ideas that I even use at the College level. It's amazing how years can pass and we can still remember words to a song!
ReplyDeleteI like how you showed how you use songs to help teach concepts. It keeps the students interacted, and also provides a good outlet for them. Songs and technology can help enhance any lesson in any subject.
ReplyDeleteThe simple melodies, rhyme, and meter make a definite imprint of our lives. One thing that concerns me though, is the changing of the words to old songs. As a person who has a little more life experience, I have noticed that “Barney”, “The Wiggles”, and others have changed the word to traditional elementary songs. This concerns me because it reduces the connection between generations, in other words the ability for grandma to sing the same songs with the grand children and it reduces the transfer of historical knowledge, cultural beliefs and ideas, and identities between generations.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right! There is a song for practically any concept now. It really helps the students because they love singing and those songs will stick in heads, eventually helping them learn a concept.
ReplyDeleteSchool house rock is an excellent teaching tool. I teach at a Middle School and the English teacher uses this in her classroom. I think it’s great, and the students are totally engaged. I teach typing to my students and have even come across typing songs for remembering the “home keys”. Also, I think a great example of this is the ABC song. Even today when I am trying to alphabetize something, if I get stuck, I always refer back to my abc song.:)
ReplyDeleteYes, completely agree with you. I taught my English Language Learners (ELL) kids the ABCs with the Macarena song. I still remember, they had so much fun. I used a lot of music when I was teaching ELLs. I used several songs to teach them their Math basic facts. The music also allowed me to help them develop their everyday language, because we would incorporate movement and this helped them by expanding their vocabulary by not only hearing words, but also by acting them out, like dancing and skiing and many other verbs.
ReplyDeleteI've been out of elementary school for over 25 years and yet I still remember most of the School House Rocks songs. Although I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed in myself because I never introduced my children to those songs and because like James stated, I was one of those parents that fell into the mainstream of cultural pop at the time which was Barney. But now as an educator in training, I definitely realize that teaching doesn’t have to be sensationalized by a big purple dinosaur to make it fun or engaging. It's fascinating how putting anything to music can enhance one's knowledge of a topic.
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