How to Teach Elementary Math to a Rhythm
Creative teachers and parents can incorporate music into math lessons to help children learn faster and improve their skills. The Children's Music Workshop reports that students who study music have fewer discipline problems, understand fractions better, receive higher scores in math on the SAT and have higher overall levels of math proficiency by high school than students who don't study music. Music teaches logical reasoning, comprehension, problem-solving and the use of symbols.
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Instructions
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Songs
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Singing helps children learn basic math skills. Learn basic songs for teaching elementary math skills. You can purchase CDs with specially designed songs and curriculum from bookstores or visit the Songs For Teaching website.
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Sing a song for the students and encourage them to sing along. Repeat until they can sing it by themselves. The repetition of the rhythm helps students memorize the words and concepts.
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Integrate the song into your math lesson. Teach the song at the beginning of the math session, proceed with the lesson and then conclude with the song again.
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Create songs as a class. For older students, pick a familiar tune and encourage them to write new lyrics based on math concepts. This integrates music, language and math into one lesson.
What Can You Learn From a Square
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Use the "What Can You Learn From A Square" lesson, developed by Malke Rosenfeld of Math In Your Feet, to teach directions, fractions and geometry. Movement is a form of rhythm and teaches muscle memory. When students have fun they don't realize they are learning.
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Draw a 2-by-2-foot square for each student on the floor using tape.
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Ask students to sit inside a square and trace the tape with their fingers. Call out different parts of the square --- depending upon the age of the students --- and have them touch each side and say the word as they do. For younger students, this could be front and back, left and right and diagonals. For older students, add parallels, equilateral sides and vertices.
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Tell the students to stand up and jump within the square according to your directions. Again, base the commands on the ages of the students. You can ask younger students to jump left and right, front and back, whereas older students can make 90 or 180 degree turns. Incorporate fractions by asking students to make a quarter or half turn.
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Tips & Warnings
Students who study music do better in school overall. Encourage your school to sustain musical education as a core subject.
Hold math assembly nights to encourage children and parents to learn math together.
References
- Ballard Academy of Music & Dance: Important Skills Your Child Learns By Studying Music
- Children's Music Workshop: Benefits of Music Education
- Coalition for Music Education: Music Overcomes the Maths Monster
- Teaching Ideas: Music and Maths
- The Map Is Not the Territory: What You Can Learn from a Square
Resources
- Photo Credit music book. manuscript. music score image by L. Shat from Fotolia.com singing girl image by Daria Miroshnikova from Fotolia.com
