Using Music to Teach Social Studies

Using Music to Teach Social Studies

Because I recently changed my major to history teaching, I feel that this site really could help me out in the future in teaching kids of all ages.  This has everything from the 50 capitals and their states to learning about our government...in song form!  Any of these things can be easily found on YouTube or made into an MP3 for students to use as study tools.  I remember for my biology class, we were taught the DNA song to help us remember what DNA was made up of and we were welcome to sing to ourselves during the test to do better.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember how the words went without having lyrics in front of me.  I do remember it was to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".  For the video, click here to watch it.  Yes, it's very cheesy but trust me, this saved my life when it came to the test questions about DNA.

Using "Music Writing" to Trigger Creativity, Awareness and Motivation

Using "Music Writing" to Trigger Creativity, Awareness and Motivation

I would have given anything to have been able to do this in my classes during my childhood!  This would open the doors so many creative writers and children will be able to not only open up their musical interests but also be able use creative writing for any song they listen to.  Music doesn't have to be used either, in the first example, the children counted back from 50 to 1 and once they were done, they were told to write about what they saw.  I can see this being done with pictures of places or even colors.  The students could even use their own music to come up with whatever they felt but I think it would be best to keep the music the controlled piece.  This would be perfect since almost everyone has Zune or iTunes so this can easily be done in the classroom and I feel that I might be using that technique sometime in the near future.