Music's Effectiveness

Music impacts our mood, feelings, and energy levels. This can provide us with deeper insight into critical thinking and decision making.

Music can be used to help us to remember key concepts and is a great way to reach more learning styles.

Music helps us to make connections across different subjects, as well as look at situations from multiple perspectives including different cultural perspectives.

Music helps to give students the opportunity to share their experiences based on their interpretation of the song. This also creates a space where students want to share their experiences, what they are thinking, and why.

How does music complement Social Emotional Learning?

  • It can be used as an emotional stimulus.
  • It can be used to create an aesthetic experience or create a vibe.
  • It can be used for relaxation and to stimulate imagination.
  • It can be used as a form of self-expression.
  • It can be used as a form of a group experience.

Music stimulates multiple parts of the brain.

It activates three different centers of the brain at the same time: language, hearing, and rhythmic motor control. Music can affect a child’s approach to learning by increasing enthusiasm for and engagement in learning new skills.

Music improves retention.

A lot of people retain and remember information better when using music. There has been research that shows that young children who had experienced music-enriched curriculum had increased academic achievement. And different music activities such as rhyming words, rhythmic patterns, steady beat, etc. have a dramatic effect on a child’s reading ability and literacy. A great example of this is the ABC song. This song still helps many adults to remember the alphabet, and may even be hard for people to recite the alphabet without singing the song.

Music teaches emotional regulation.

Music experiences and interactions with peers provide children, who may have difficulty initiating an interaction with another child, the motivation and context for practice of this skill.

Music helps people connect with others.

Music is a universal language. Music can be used as a connector between people as a cultural bridge. Music promotes diversity and unites individuals through their love of music.

“I know how powerful music can be in the learning environment, but how do I use it in my classroom?”

Different ways music can be incorporated

So many people think that they are not able to incorporate music into their classroom because they are not musically inclined. This is definitely not true, as there are many other ways you can use music without having to play or sing yourself. Many activities also do not require you to play music well in order to gain the emotional experience from it.

  • Playing instruments – as a group or individually
  • Singing or vocal – as a group or individually
  • Listening to other artists – live or recorded
  • Creating songs – instrumental or lyrically
  • Watching music videos
  • Creating music videos

Rock Digi lessons each contain a lyric music video where students are able to visually see the lyrics of the song as they are being sung. This creates a better understanding of the lyrics as well as creating a mood for the topic about to be discussed. Lessons also give students the opportunity to share their interpretation of the song, create their own music video, create new verses of the songs, and much more.

Different ways to use music in the classroom:

  • Start off the day/class
  • Setting tone or mood
  • Getting students moving
  • Brain breaks
  • Background music – focus
  • Learning listening skills
  • Learning self-control
  • Memorizing facts
  • Reflection
  • Deeper thinking
All of the music used in Rock Digi, as well as more songs that have been used by Rock In Prevention in the past can be found on the following platforms.
Spotify – Pat McManus
Apple Music – Pat McManus
Amazon Music – Pat McManus
YouTube – Rock In Prevention Pat McManus
And many more!