Thursday, January 16, 2014

Backed by science and students.

I have a great job. I just found a great article that validates what I do as a music teacher...
"New research suggests that the complexity involved in practicing and performing music may help students’ cognitive development. Studies released last month at the Society for Neuroscience meeting here find that music training may increase the neural connections in regions of the brain associated with creativity, decision making, and complex memory, and they may improve a student’s ability to process conflicting information from many senses at once. Research also found that starting music education early can be even more helpful.
“It’s really hard to come up with an experience similar to that” as an education intervention, said Gottfried Schlaug, the director of the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Not only does it require attention and coordination of multiple senses, but it often triggers emotions, involves cooperation with other people, and provides immediate feedback to the student on progress, he said. Music, on its own, has also been shown to trigger the reward area of the brain, he noted.""
The article goes on to say that music can help students multi-task, focus, and grow creativity. This, along with evidence from The Harmony Project and research from Nina Kraus at Northwestern that show how music can close the achievement gap are motivators for me on a day that is less than successful. 
Yesterday I had the stomach flu and had to write sub plans for a non-music sub. Luckily, it didn't change too much what I was already intending to do for this lesson rotation. The down side is that I couldn't ask a non-music sub to assess recorder karate for me so third graders yesterday got a random lesson that won't be duplicated. The upside is that I had the 4th and 5th grade students write poetry that we will put into rondo form with an instrumental or movement piece we are already working on. 
5th grade is writing Cinquain, 4th Haiku, and one class of 3rd wrote Diamante.
After a successful 5th grade lesson before I got sick and positive notes from the sub, I was really surprised at the push back I had today with some of my 5th grade students. I didn't think the project was too hard because I've done the exact same lesson in years past. But this group really struggled. Many students asked why we were writing poetry. I told them that language, especially poetry, has rhythm and rhythm is an essential element of Music. So, Poetry is Music. Then we talked about imagery. Finally, I talked about how artists can create imagery with words, pictures and sounds. Then, at the end of class, I showed the Snowman and talked about how the artists who made this are creating images with drawing and sound and challenged them to listen to the auditory images. I wish I had put this detail into my sub notes. Originally, I just had her watch the snowman because I needed to find something musical and easy to fill the rest of the time. But the lesson that grew out of it is cool!

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