One little musical interlude...

‘If music be the food of learning, play on...’

During my NQT year and school placements I have been experimenting with music and sound in my lessons, although feel that this is an area I would love to give more attention to, and read about! Today, I borrowed some musical instruments from the music department to help bottom set Y10 understand the atmosphere of an Emily Bronte poem: ‘Spellbound’.

They had to plan where the cow bells, shakers and (eek!) drums would be appropriate in order to build up different moods to the poem. The result, from fourteen lethargic fifteen year olds on a Thursday morning, was promising. They loved playing with the instruments and began dictating to each other, and deciding as a class, how to complete the most successful soundscape. It was noisy, at times shambolic, and chaotic, but shouldn’t poetry and creative writing be manic and exploratory? I certainly saw the value when it came to their understanding of the poem, as the whole class were giving some fantastic ideas and personal responses to the poem.

Other ways I have seen or used music in lessons:

• Calming a class. My calming music of choice is Debussy’s Claire de Lune. Students are not permitted to talk over the music, and many students claim they learn better with background music. Many demands have been made for popular songs, but I am adamant that when students need to be calmed or concentrate, anything with lyrics is a big no no.
• As a reward. Some students will work much more quickly when they have an incentive to work towards. Twenty minutes detailed work = twenty minutes of work with the radio. Make sure there are ground rules, and make sure having the radio on doesn’t raise the volume of conversation, rather than limit it.
• Theme music. An interesting starter, that encourages students to guess the theme of the lesson based on the music they hear as they enter. I saw this used expertly in one school, where the teacher would always play a music clip before the lesson, even if there was a highly tenuous link between the song and the lesson.
• As a creative writing prompt. It can be an exciting change for students to focus their creativity through their ears in an English lesson. Many creative writing prompts are visual so having an auditory prompt instead challenges and stretches students’ imagination, leading to diverse results.
• Music as poetry. My wonderful top set literature class were getting disillusioned studying poetry they didn’t relate to. I set them a homework task to analyse the lyrics of their favourite song. They were enthusiastic, detailed and fantastic responses, although I did find out most of them have TERRIBLE taste in music (No Beatles? No Boyzone? No Joni Mitchell?)

Working with Y10 today has reminded me how much fun it is to use music in my lessons, although my poor teaching neighbour may not agree! In addition, many of the students in my class were from diverse cultural backgrounds and music can transcend that barrier, and allow everyone to participate. In the fabulously expressed words of Billy Joel:

 ‘I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.’

P.S. I want this book…