Music Matters

Growing up around music in the classroom and amazing parents who actually create it, I am no stranger to the unbelievable power of song, rhythm, and rhyme.  Learning through music is extremely effective because it is so brain compatible . . . cue BUZZ WORD.  No really . . . I’m not just tossing professional words your way.  Using music to teach concepts, skills, and standards makes sense on SO many levels.

Just think about this for a moment.  Music stimulates and unifies cognitive function.  It also effortlessly touches three of the four modalities – auditory, kinesthetic, and tactual.  Now, when you provide the music in printed form, music taps into the visual modality as well.  By simply incorporating a skills-based song into our lesson plans as we introduce and review concepts, we have the potential to reach ALL of our students!

I’ll finish my “soapbox-ish” dissertation by leaving you with a few facts to ponder . . .

• Music extends the time the human brain spends in the learning zone.
• Music imprints an instructional message in the human brain faster than any other learning strategy.
• Music is the perfect catalyst for rehearsing information, which eventually leads to long-term memory storage.

On that note, if you are interested in taking a look-see at some wonderful music-based resources, check out the links below.