Lesson Six

After watching the videos on Math and Music, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

What stood out to me the most was the conclusion drawn based on the Mozart research. The students who listened to Mozart music for ten minutes before a test did 8% better on the test than students who sat in silence before the test. This led some people to believe that Mozart makes you smarter. Further research showed, however, that listening to almost anything that uplifts, calms, and brightens your mood before a test will help you give a peak performance. This could be a short story, or any fast paced, happy music.

I need to give serious consideration to whether it would be a good idea to incorporate this into my High School English class time. Would my students do better on their assessments if I gave them ten minutes at the beginning of the class period to calm their hearts and minds, rather than jumping right in to working on their examination? Would I get a better understanding of what they do and do not know if I made the assessment shorter so that it could fit into a 40 minute time span, rather than the full 50 minutes? Would this experiment be successful if I played one piece of music for the entire class, or should I let them choose what they wanted to listen to on their own with headphones? I am really curious about these questions. What do you think?