Why This Page ? I've always believed that music is one of the best mediums for Christian Education and the Rotation Model. But it's also the hardest to pull off. This page is about teaching WITH music, not teaching of music (or choir). This page contains a rationale for music workshops and resources to make it possible. This is not an exhaustive article...but just enough to get you going! <>< Neil MacQueen

Can you recall the ingredients of a Big Mac?
"Two all beef patties, special sauce.... " Do you still sing the ABC's to remember what comes after 'K' ? Through repeated rehearsal, rhythmic data is stored in the memory for later retrieval, even though that information might not be something you really care to remember. If merchandisers can do this, why can't educators use a rap, chant, poem, or song to teach about the Bible?

Learning through music is extremely effective because music drives deep into the brain, including some of our most primitive areas, connects widely among our various learning centers, and is easily stored and is easily recalled. Because of this, huge amounts of information, both intellectual and emotional, can be processed, stored and recalled by the brain when acquired through music.

Music has been shown to stimulate brain function. The brain is quick to focus on it. Music automatically touches three of the four modalities by which the brain processes information. It is auditory, kinesthetic/tactile (movement), and tactual (elicits emotion). When the lyrics are made available in the printed form, music also taps the visual modality. Rhyming and rhythmic input taps into other areas of the brain. Music is perhaps the best medium to store content with an "emotional charge" that can be brought back long after the lesson is over. Songs, poems, rhymes, and raps thus become effective vehicles for long term and cumulative learning. Because of its well known impact on one's sense of well-being and other feelings, it is a strong medium for spiritual formation and expression.

Music makes learning easier and is therefore a viable strategy for today's classroom. It can create an exciting environment full of emotion and rich language. It allows the listener to acquire and transfer information kinesthetically and concretely. It can impart valuable concepts to students which they can connect and apply to existing knowledge; and, can build self-esteem and create a sense of inclusion and collaboration. It also provides valuable opportunities to synthesize and combine learning in other subject areas and disciplines. The evidence is clear that we can achieve more success in learning through the strategic use of music. Music forms a natural bridge to literacy. It is a medium which children are built to enjoy.

Music is more than songs. It is both tonal and rhythmic. It's more than just instruments --or 'making harps like David's with rubber bands and cigar boxes. Music is creating it, listening to it, trying to memorize it, using it with skits and illustrations. Using music in Christian education doesn't mean 45 minutes of singing. It can mean mixing in music with other learning activities. Music Ed. is more than just 'church music.' It can be discussion about song lyrics from the radio. It's doesn't have to be a piano, a tambourine, and rhythm sticks. It can look like several kids at a time getting to write a song about their lesson and then play it on the classroom's set of drums, electronic keyboard and electric guitar. It can be listening to Christian rock on a computer's CD. It can be inviting some teens who play instruments to 'jam' for your group. It can be as simple as a "sung" grace, rather than a spoken one.

The dirth of music as a teaching medium...

As children get older, however, and grow more voice and body conscious, teaching with music tends to decline. Thus, we are left with "music education" (choirs and orchestras) for the few, rather than true use of music in education for the many. This is the result of narrow teaching methods, and performance oriented professionals, not a decline in the students interest in music or their brains' capacity to learn through music!

Throughout time, music has always been a way to establish one's identity or that of one's culture. Most religions have thus made effective use of music. Yet many congregations in today's Christian church have abandoned music as a teaching medium among teens and pre-teens, and some even among children. The reasons are many. Here are four:

1) Cost....Music skills often must be paid for as they are not as readily available to the church as Art & Craft skills.
2) Teens resistance to music other than 'their own,' and the church's slow acceptance of new styles of music.
3) Natural self-consciousness experienced at this time in their lives.
4) Lack of understanding of the importance of music as a teaching medium.
5) Relegation of music to a 'performance medium' (as in choirs and orchestras). Music for the few rather than for all.
6) Lack of quality teaching resources. Resources on using music in Christian Education are appalling in short supply.

Add to this list the 'long term effect' of kids growing up without music in their spiritual diet. You end up with malnourished adults who we now expect to teach with music!

In many congregations, we now have a clear case of "The hungry leading the hungry."

What to do?

1) Create a focused, regular learning CE experience (like a music workshop) that incorporates music as a medium.
2) Read whatever you can get your hands on (it may already be on your church shelf).
3) Train/Re-train several people in your congregation to acquire skills and ideas. Check with local resource centers and church musician associations for events.
4) Start early and don't let up. Singing children turn into singing teens.
5) Start a bookshelf box for music ideas, articles torn from magazines (or websites) and the like.
6) Start a list of all the instruments your children play at school or at home.
7) Sponsor yearly 'children's/teen musicals' but be careful not to make them simply choir-like events.
8) Incorporate new styles of worship music in your worship.
9) Brush up on, preview, and recommend Christian CDs. There are some great ones and all sorts of styles. Keep some handy to pass around. Play them as background during informal gathering times. Create some study around their lyrics. Loan them out. Give them as gifts.

A Lot of our Sunday Software-made CDs have music in them designed to enhance and teach the content.

Fluffy and God's Amazing Christmas Adventure CD includes a Music Game, and programs like our Abraham and Sarah CD present key concept through music videos, after which, student interact with and discuss the LYRICS.

1. Write and Display Lyrics on Chart Paper

a) Songs become related pieces of literature.
b) Children read the charts once songs are learned. By posting the chart/lyrics, they later continue to trigger song memory.
c) Teachers or students may point to the words and track them as the songs are sung aloud.

2. Make Class Picture Books of Songs

a) Each child is given a line of lyrics to illustrate. Pages are combined in sequence to form a class book. Class books become part of the room library.
b) Individual books can also be made and used to teach reading.

4. Pocket Charts

a) Write the lines of a song on a sentence strip. Have the students recreate the song in a pocket chart. This procedure develops sequencing and comprehension skills. Important if you're teaching a story sequence through song, which many 'campfire' songs and hymns do.

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6. Drama

a) Interpret the song in the form of skits, plays, puppet shows, etc.
b) Have students 'opera-tize' a bible story by coming up with simple songs (using familiar tunes) for each scene or important idea.

7. Listening

a) Play the song (instrumental version) during creative writing, free time, art, or cooperative learning to set the mood and atmosphere for the classroom.
b) Use the song as an "into" activity to introduce core and enriched literature books and themes. Students discuss the mood created by the music and make predictions about the type of story to be read.
c) Listening to various musical styles and noting the types of instrumentation used and have students note, comment, hold up signs about what the instrumentation is trying to convey (power of God, mystery, journey, compassion, etc.)

8. Creative Writing

a) Rewrite the song or adapt it.
b) Give students a copy of the song with various words missing.
Rewrite the lyrics with new vocabulary to strengthen word usage skills, i.e.; nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.

9. Illustrate Favorite Parts of Songs

a) Students write descriptions of their pictures.
b) Explain why they chose this part to illustrate.

10. Performances

a) Perform songs for other classes. Children enjoy singing and sharing songs with their peers.
b) Invite other classrooms in, or cruise the campus and go into other rooms to perform the songs.
c) Use the music as part, or all, of a program for parents, assemblies, P.T.A., and other such functions.

11. Movement/Dance

a) For improved reading skills, develop beat competency via clapping, tapping, marching, or dancing.
b) Play the song and allow free movement and creative dance.

12. Wall Stories

a) Write each stanza of the song on large sheets of paper. Individual students or groups illustrate a part. Display these on the classroom walls and you have a giant wall story, "song". When you take the pictures down, put them together as a class book

13. Transparency Story

a) Provide students with transparencies to illustrate stanzas from the song. The stanzas can be photocopied onto the transparency. Students then sequence these to match the song, and share their part on the overhead projector.

14. If You Can Sing a Song, Learning to Read Becomes Easier

a) All modes of presentation (individual lyric sheets, charts, sentence strips, transparencies, etc.) become valuable reading tools linking music to reading the Bible. Early readers can read better when words are set to music.

Integrated musical experiences provide excitement for learning and improve students' reading, writing, and thinking skills. They expand the instructional process and accommodate differences in learning styles. Most of all, music adds an irreplaceable element of fun to the classroom! ...adapted from Using Music to Teach, by Ron and Nancy Brown (a public school resource).