Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Music to Their Ears

So, the third day of school is done, and I'm amazed at how well these kids are doing. I'm getting to know them and their quirks. I've got a group of girls that I know within 1 week I'm probably going to have to move them. Not thrilled about it. Oh well, the rest are good. We've had fun so far. I learned this technique at a workshop I had this summer and have implemented it with great success. It's a novel idea - Music. I use my Itunes with downloaded songs. I have them labeled in groups - Fluency, Motivation, and Celebration. The kids never know what I'm going to use, it's fun. For example I gave a pop quiz today over Science Safety rules and when I asked them to get out a sheet of paper and label it "Quiz" I was playing the Imperial Death March. It was great! Then when one of the students solved his own problem (with a little encouragement from his group) I played "2001: A Space Odyssey". At the end of the day to get them going and done with packing up, they have to be ready to go by the end of a song (2 minutes at least). Yesterday I played the TV theme to Batman, and today played the TV theme to Rawhide. When we did a math activity that should have only taken them 2 minutes, I played the William Tell Overture.

If anyone has any suggestions on possible songs (that are clean) let me know. I'm always looking for new ideas.

3 comments:

KC said...

This is a fantastic idea! I'll try and think of some good songs to suggest. I wish I'd had a teacher as creative as you are!

Anonymous said...

seriously, very cool. i think if you go get the "shine" cd that's pretty inspirational. that was the movie with geoffrey rush. jaws would kinda be funny if someone was in trouble...but that might be against the rules :)

MJP & SJP said...

Sounds like JDH has some new songs you could consider using in your lessons :)
-MJP

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