EDU270: Lesson 6

·  Music. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Music. After watching the video, answer the following questions:

1. Describe the Mozart effect. Can listening to music make a person smarter, explain.

The Mozart Effect includes claims from researchers at UC-Irvine who studied college students on testing days. One group of students listened to Mozart ten minutes before the test, and the other group of students sat in silence for ten minutes before a test. The students who listened to Mozart ended up testing 8% higher than those who sat in silence.

The claims for the Mozart Effect are, of course, conditional. This quality of testing only helps for the first fifteen minutes after ten minutes of listening to classical music. Additionally, the Mozart selections need to be happier and faster in selection for the Effect to work.

Contrary to the claims of marketing and products, having a baby listen to Mozart will not turn him or her into a Little Einstein, and listening to Mozart does not automatically make a person smarter; the video warns against believing second hand research that sounds too good to be true. Instead, the video claims that children who are proficient in music have better language and math skills, have better vision, and better movement related to spacial reasoning. The “jury is still out” on whether music makes and develops these skills, or whether children who already have these inclinations are naturally drawn to music to develop these skills further.

2. What impact does music have on learning?

While the Mozart Effect might disappointingly have dubious claims, music can positively affect the learning environment. While researchers are still trying to decide whether brain skills lead to music or music to brain skills, it’s still important to allow children under the age of 20 to develop their music proficiency thus helping their math skills, their vision, and their movement. Interestingly, listening to music affects both the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobe –and very few tasks activate both sides of the brain.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Music.

3. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.

I did not know that the Mozart Effect was only effective for fifteen minutes after listening or that it specifically spoke to a happy, fast Mozart music. I’ve been using what I thought was the Mozart Effect in my classroom playing classical music of all kinds, more specifically quieter, slower classical music because I thought the happy, fast stuff interrupted their thoughts too much. Whoops.

4. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

I believe I’ll still continue to play slower, quieter classical music in my classroom. Even if I know it isn’t strictly the Mozart Effect, I’ve had positive feedback from students who come in and say that they feel more relaxed doing work in my room when they hear that “good” music.

·  Math. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Math. After watching the video, answer the following question:

The DVD highlights ways to help young children gain a basic math foundation at home. Describe how you, as a teacher, can do this same thing in the classroom.

Because I teach English at a higher level, the lessons involving math won’t seem so much like math, particularly because of the subject area compartmentalization in higher learning courses. That being said, I understand that there are different kinds of learners, and because English is a subjective subject, some students have a hard time with the abstract concepts. To that end, I’ll often structure note-taking lessons to three things to remember about this author, or five themes in this story. When I relate the abstract concepts of English to numbers, the students who are more objective, math-proficient students can do better at remembering –and later, recalling—that information.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Math.

1. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.

I did not know that math skills were stored in three different parts of the brain, two of which were different forms of gyruses. Interestingly the frontal gyrus is where the memory is stored in relation to mathematical concepts. I had no idea that memory is related to math, though in retrospect it makes sense.

2. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

Now knowing how crucial memory is with math, I’m going to incorporate more lessons involving breaking down abstract concepts to numbers –and claiming years when books came out doesn’t quite qualify. I can focus more on “three” types of diseases afflicting those on the Mayflower, and which “two” types of poisons did Roger Chillingworth use to kill Arthur Dimmesdale. What were the numbers of girls in The Crucible who started the Salem Witch Trials, and which number of American Revolutionaries wrote The Federalist Papers?

After watching the videos on Math and Music, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

Both of these lessons impacts me as a teacher in understanding how complex life lessons can be. Fortunately, I feel like we are leaving an age when instructors are only proficient in their own subject matter and ignorant to how all of the subjects relate. These lessons in music and math help me as a teacher understand how two of my students' required subject areas can relate to my subject (also required for them). Better, often math-focused students are students who claim they don't like English because of its subjectivity. They claim that "numbers are simple" or that "numbers don't lie" or "numbers are clear", all phrases that distance them from the humanness of being a student of English, a student of human behavior, of story, of relating emotion to action and consequence. At least in understanding how a music and math student relates to the world, I can find ways to incorporate lessons into my English curriculum that these students can relate more to and thus understand English as a subject matter that isn't as abstract and confusing as they may have previously assumed.