How Music Affects the Tone of the Classroom

How music affects the tone of the classroom

How do you feel when you walk into a store after a long day, you are extremely tired and your favorite song is on the sound system? Whatever the song is, it brings emotions up in you, or it gives you an energy boost.

Now, take that moment, and bring it into the classroom on a Monday afternoon, after lunch. The day has been long, and your whole class is ready to go home, but there is still so much math to be done. Normally, we slug through the rest of the day. But, what if, you take 3:30 (the length of a standard song) to get up and move around for a short time.

From birth to six years is a crucial time of learning, especially in learning how to put sounds together into words. Therefore, integrating music into many different things in the classroom can help children develop language. When you give children the opportunity to listen to music at an early age, it can help them be able to produce words and articulate things earlier.

There are many ideas for adding music into your classroom on www.responsiveclassroom.com such as music in the morning activities like before your circle time to help children get excess energy out before sitting to recite the alphabet and colors, songs to reinforce content, like the color songs, and music in transition, like singing a song about walking from the play room to the lunch room, which helps children stay focused on what they are supposed to be doing. This website also says that music should not just be singing, but you should allow children to make their own music. You can do this by giving the children different items like a bottle with beads in it, and allowing them to figure out what different sounds they can make with different items.

Micheal Griffin states in his research at mdgriffin63.wordpress.com that experimenting with music in the background as a teacher is great for two main reasons. One, it could improve behavior and the atmosphere and two, it could improve the quality and/or quantity of work done. As teachers, we know that it would be amazing to get more work done in our classroom and it would be helpful if the students could focus more clearly and have good behavior for our time together. For instance, you have a child who has meltdowns frequently in class. Sometimes life can be overwhelming, even for children. If you have a music area in your room that can be used as a center throughout the day, I may just give that child the alone time they need to regroup and help prevent them from meltdowns altogether, therefore helping improve behavior, which in turn helps the atmosphere of the class as a whole.

For some, music helps them keep their focus and stay on task. Even now writing this paper, I am listening to music. I seem to type faster and can recall things better rather than when I try to do things in a still and quiet atmosphere. Micheal Griffin’s studies reveal this is because music in the background blocks off distractions, it makes time go by faster, helps creativity, and makes studying enjoyable. If you can play music in the background in class, and everyone is mellow and calm, able to concentrate without the stress of a test and the strong void of everyone being quiet, it may help reduce test anxiety therefore meaning that children complete their tests quicker and more thoroughly answer questions because they are not stressed out. I recall being in lower elementary and having a teacher who loved Christmas music. She would play it all day long and it seemed to help with the way our class behaved and how I personally tested and studied during that time of the year compared to the rest of the year.