Singing In The Classroom

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Singing in the Classroom In high school, the teacher of my Pedagogical Methods class would often say that “the only way to teach is with song.” The very singsong way she said this simple piece of advice has become quite ingrained in my mind. In my own personal experience as a student, I remember sitting through my World History Regent Exam, softly singing a song I had composed as a school assignment about the German Chancellor Otto van Bismarck. And now that I have taught several classes of my own, I see that she was absolutely right! Music is the panacea for every normally developing child's forgetfulness. If you want to teach a list for the students to know by heart, put it to a tune. If you want your class to have certain items on their desk, compose a song about it. I've had parents tell me that their children sing my songs in the shower! So why is the relationship between music and memory so strong? The answer lies in the temporal lobe of the brain, where sound is encoded and then sent to the hippocampus for long term storage. When basic declarative, or factual, knowledge is encoded in the brain, it will be better remembered if it is paired with something else, like a tune, for example. The power of association should not be mitigated. Naturally, there are other ways to use association, like appealing to the visual cortex of the brain through pictures, for example. However, a song can be taken home and never lost, misplaced, or sullied accidentally. A song cannot be thrown out or eaten by the dog. And if a child has forgotten the tune, any classmate can assist. Additionally, a song can be reviewed any time of the day or night, and is not dependent on light. Very little concentration is required, and even a tone-deaf child can manage to sing a
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