Learning Through Song

Earlier today I was listening to music and singing along with the bands, rappers and other singers knowing every single word. I am constantly listening to music and if I don't know the words to a song I really like or can't figure them out I look them up on the internet and learn them. I usually listen to the song while reading the words and they just stick in my head and the lyrics become really easy to remember. Even songs I haven't heard in a couple months or even a couple years I can still remember the lyrics the second the song starts playing. This got me thinking that there are so many people that are just like me, constantly listening to music, singing along to the songs and remembering every word. Learning lyrics is such a simple task, but for some reason many people have such a hard time remembering multiplication facts, dates of wars or scientific theories. If learning school subjects can be as easy and fun as memorizing lyrics in our favorite song we would be a much more intelligent generation. Maybe if we started teaching using songs that kids can sing they would remember more facts, concepts, dates, names etc... I remember in elementary school we used to learn different things through song. Many people can recall the song about the 50 United States or even our alphabet is a song!! It is easy to learn the alphabet because it's a song and I know so many people that would be able to sing the song about the states even though they haven't sung it in years! In 8th grade we had the opportunity to make our own songs about the Constitution by changing the lyrics of a song of our choice. We chose the song Respect by Aretha Franklin and I still remember the song we made. I have also heard of schools, typically charter schools, that are bringing song and music into their classroom to teach their students because they have noticed how easy it is for students to remember lyrics to a song, even if the song is educational and teaching about a school subject. If we bring music and songs into more of our classrooms maybe students will not only learn things in a fun way, but will retain that information for years.