Enhancing the learning experience with song

Music is a universal language that we all understand and love. It has power to move our emotions, affect mood and enhance cognitive abilities. In this post we are going to explore the impact of enhancing the learning experience with song.

Research has shown that even before we are born, music has an effect. In fact, pregnant mothers are encouraged to sing or talk to their unborn babies. The voice is such a powerful instrument. I find it affects both the singer and the listener. What educational potential the voice has! I would also hasten to encourage the positive use of the voice to impact your children/students. Scolding or being derogatory never achieves anything positive!

Teaching using a melody

I thought of song in learning as I was trying to teach my team about coins and their names. Due to changes in our Zimbabwean economy, we no longer use coins. And when we migrated to Canada they obviously used a different currency.

So in a Math book there were questions of how many dimes were in a dollar, and I thought just aiming to get the answer correct would be doing a disfavor to my kids. Here was an opportunity to learn life. We actually went to the bank as a trip and had someone tell us (the teacher also needed to learn!). When we got back home I tried to go back through what we had learned. The results were not reproducible 😒; they would properly name the dime (10¢) and nickel (5¢) in one round, then call it loonie (CA$1)and toonie (CA$2) in the next round! Ha, it wasn’t sticking.

I don’t know if it’s natural in mothers/parents but you just come up with tunes from nowhere sometimes when dealing with the little ones. I then thought of enhancing the kids’ learning experience through song…ten cents dime, ten cents dime 😁 and that was one coin down. Teaching using a melody came to my rescue! Still work in progress, one coin at a time, but we will get there.

Why we love music

Music has a strong correlation with emotion. Without even thinking about it or being intentional, your mood can be changed. That is partly why we love music. Music bypasses the frontal lobe of the brain and goes into the limbic system. The frontal lobe is responsible for higher cognitive functions such as language, memory, reasoning, social interaction and so on. The limbic system, also called the emotional brain, ‘lights’ up when we hear music. Dopamine, a feel-good hormone, is believed to play a part in the ‘chills’ that we feel when we hear our favorite tunes.

The powerful effects of music can be experienced with the connection to memory. There is a theory that links music to improved learning called the Mozart effect. Can listening to a certain type of music (classic, for example) help with intelligence? Well, I don’t know, I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating. But have you ever been in a place where a song was played, and you just heard it? Much later, you may start humming the tune or have the words buzz in your head? Yes, that’s how powerful music is, without your permission it may just take over! Nobody can stop reggae 😁

I don’t want to use the word ‘impossible’ but I cannot find a close substitute to make my point. It’s impossible to learn without music. Like, who learnt their ABCs without a melody accompanying the exercise? I may forget some things but I still remember songs I learnt decades ago as a toddler/kindergartner. We learnt body parts and how to spell words in songs and games! Of course, sometimes we got the spellings wrong as we were singing and not paying attention. I only heard we were spelling q-u-a-r-r-e-l-l-i-n-g much later. That game sure had a cool melody 🙂.

Conclusion

Ancient Israel learnt large portions of scripture through song. It’s only today that we read the Psalms; they were originally songs actually. With music being such a powerful tool, it is indispensable in creating a lasting learning experience. The flip side is equally sobering, it is just as easy to get in the wrong stuff through the same media. So be careful little ears what you hear/listen to!