When my students are writing, I often play some music. For many, some sort of noise is preferable to deafening silence as they are trying to get "black on white" (get ink down onto the blank paper).
In room 12 (my classroom) the CD I usually choose is Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. There is a couple of classical CD's I occasionally crank up, as well as some pan pipe music from the Andes Mountains (Sukay).
What do your students like to listen to when they write? (My kids would definitely appreciate a greater variety...) I would love to have some suggestions...
I like the idea of using an icon-- Miles Davis. This is a name students "should" know. This year I'm going to add more musical media to my classroom. My efforts begin with adding a "music" column to my resource planning grid, alongside other media and genres. One project I'm working on inspired by "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" includes the song "Blackbird." I've downloaded 13 different artists singing the same song. Incredible variations. Just this morning I was following the #BLC10 conference on twitter: http://novemberlearning.com/blc/
ReplyDeleteMitch Resnick, http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/ , was sited , "BLC10 #blc10 Mitch Resnick, The importance of remixing on creativity, building on the work of others... Sharing"
I started a collection of world music while teaching social studies, and today I will start moving that music to my iPod thanks to your inspirational post.
Of course, I'll let the students recommend music too, because that is what happens in a learning community, and I think some of the days they will be listening to and learning about Armstrong, Holiday, Handel, Greek, Pavarotti, Ellington, Elvis, Gaye...because this is what we do as educators.
I like to listen to Miles too. Sometimes I change up the music to get different effects -- from Miles to Mozart, for example. Also, for my Creative Media class, I like to set up a Pandora "station" for the class. Everyone picks a song or artist and we add them all together. We play this when students are deep into their projects and the music can grease the wheels rather than just distract them.
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