Schoolhouse Rock

For those folks who were children in the 1970's and 80's, ABC Television's "Schoolhouse Rock!" was most likely a part of their education. The television series ran from 1973-85, and was then brought back from 1993-99, with both new and old material. Finally, new segments were released directly to video in 2009. Many versions of the videos are available online from numerous sources. 

We've been thinking about this show and its impact on generations of students since we heard about the death of Bob Dorough, who died on April 23rd at the age of 94. Dorough -- a jazz pianist and singer -- was approached by the father of a child who was struggling to learn multiplication, even though he had no trouble remembering songs. The initial song, "Three is a Magic Number" was the first one in the Schoolhouse Rock! series.

Not all the Schoolhouse Rock! videos were sung by Dorough, although he had a hand in almost all of them, either as writer or music director. And the series did not stick just to multiplication or even just to math. Grammar was one of the early topics tackled, and Dorough wrote (but did not do vocals) on "Conjunction Junction", which used trains to illustrate the role of conjunctions.

Music is a great way to learn, and Bob Dorough and his colleagues were able to reach children through a medium that got their attention and conveyed information that stuck with them. Dorough was a Grammy winner and was involved in all aspects of writing and recording music over a career that spanned more than 50 years. But the best way to appreciate his diverse and creative endeavors is to hear directly from him, as he explains his life and work, using song,  in a TED-X talk from 2017. Thanks, Bob. 

Improvisation: Music To Our Ears

Q. What do the following have in common?
• An entertaining Whose Line Is It Anyway? episode
• A successful meal despite the forgotten vegetable broth on the grocery list
• An effective response to a surprising question

A. Improvisation.

In a world that’s generally unscripted, and where the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, improvisation is an important skill. David Wechsler, who developed the popular Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), defined intelligence as, “the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.” To deal effectively with one’s environment is often, essentially, to improvise.

Improvisation has long been a subject of interest to Dr. Charles Limb, who is not only a neuroscientist but a jazz musician. In an interesting TED Talk, Dr. Limb discusses the research he conducted along with Dr. Allen Braun on what happens in an improvising brain. The subjects of their study were musicians who played the keyboard while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. In one condition, they played a given piece they had memorized. In the other condition, they improvised over the chord progressions from the song. When improvising, versus playing a memorized piece, fMRI data revealed:

• Increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (an area associated with decision-making and self-directed behavior)
•  Decreased activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex (an area involved in monitoring, judging, and correcting).

 

It seems that creativity is facilitated by one frontal lobe area turning on as another shuts off, so that ideas flow without being unduly inhibited or censored. Worry about judgement, whether from others or from ourselves, can be paralyzing, and it is worth noting that there is neurological support for giving ourselves permission to take some time to just brainstorm and create freely.

While it was David Wechsler who included creative adaptation as part of his definition of intelligence, and while we often use some of his tests here at The Yellin Center, we also acknowledge that the capacity to evaluate creativity is quite limited within any controlled assessment setting. Also, it should be noted that even some responses that may be marked wrong according to standardized scoring procedures may suggest more creativity than the kind of thinking that leads to the “right” answer. For example, one task has the child look at two rows of pictures and identify the two pictures, one from each row, that go together conceptually. A creative mind may be able to make links that are not the traditional ones but are clever nonetheless. The ability to find connections that may not be readily apparent on the surface has driven many important innovations over time, and sometimes you need to do some playing around to find them. After all, you can’t spell IMPROVE without IMPROV.

Photo credit: Nayuki via Flickr cc

Hip-Hop and Shakespeare: Best Friends? Yes, According to MC Lars

When you catch your teenager nodding in time to his headphones, don’t accuse him of shirking his English homework. If he’s listening to MC Lars, chances are he may be diligently contemplating themes in Moby Dick. Don’t believe us? Visit Lars’s homepage. The first thing you’ll notice is a cartoon drawing of Edgar Allan Poe (and his trusty raven, of course). MC Lars’s popularity, mostly outside of classrooms, is proof that intellect and hip-hop are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can go together as well as his well-crafted lyrics pair with his infectious beats.

When MC Lars was sixteen and a self-described geeky white guy, he starred in his first hip hop performance. Back then, of course, he was known as Andrew Nielson, and his audience was made up not of dancing club go-ers but his teachers and classmates at an assembly at his high school. Nielson’s class had been assigned to write a parody of Macbeth, and, intrigued by the rhythmic witches’ chant, he wrote some lyrics and laid them over a self-made house beat. “Rapbeth” was the first hip-hop performance of Nielson’s career, though it was a while before MC Lars made it big. He had to graduate from Stanford first, where he majored in 19th century American literature but also spent hours in Stanford’s campus radio station poring over their hip-hop vinyl collection.

Lars’s tracks are catchy, often humorous, and always smart. They’re also family-friendly; though songs like “Hey There Ophelia” may leave younger kids unschooled in Hamlet scratching their heads, rest assured that his lyrics are never offensive. Lars has written about topics as diverse as the absurdity of airport security, the self-defeatism of some environmentalists, and the baffling nature of hipsters and of emo music. But as educators, we admit that we’re partial to his more scholarly tracks about things like manifest destiny, the metric system, Harper’s Ferry, and, of course, literature.

MC Lars loves showing audiences how hip-hop and literature really aren’t strange bedfellows. He’s done seminars on the topic and even gave a Tedx Talk at USC on the topic. Currently, he’s working on a book on the history of hip-hop culture. He’s also putting together a pilot for an educational hip-hop TV show for children, and does educational hip-hop outreach work (did you know there was such a thing?) with various historical organizations to raise awareness and preserve American literary history.

Eager for a taste? MC Lars shares lots of his videos freely; “Ahab,”  a hip-hop retelling of Moby Dick by Ahab himself is one of our favorites. (Some of our favorite lyrics include “The first one to spot him gets this gold doubloon / Now excuse me while I go be melancholy in my room,” and “He charged the boat, and it began to sink / I’m like, ‘How about that? Hubris really stinks.’”) And we love “Flow Like Poe”  off of his most recent album, The Edgar Allan Poe EP. Though MC Lars plays at venues and concerts around the world, this track premiered at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in 2012. 

So hip-hop-wary parents: Let your kids listen to MC Lars. He’s a living, breathing, rapping embodiment of the way passion and creativity can revolutionize education.

Pitch Painter App Introduces Kids to Musical Composition

Painting and playing music may seem, at best, to be loosely related to each other. They’re both forms of art, of course, but is there really more to it than that? Composer and so-called Godfather of Electronic Music Morton Subotnick thinks there is. Subotnick is a classically trained musician turned rogue. He catapulted into fame with his revolutionary album Silver Apples on the Moon in 1968 (now on CD) and has been pushing barriers, entertaining presidential families, and winning awards ever since. Most recently, he's developed an app that can introduce children to musical composition in a characteristically fresh, innovative way.

Morton Subotnick (source)

Pitch Painter is Subotnick’s latest effort to put electronic music-making tools in the hands of the young. Subotnick says the idea of recording, as opposed to live performance, has always appealed to him. He likes the idea of being like a painter, who gets to look at a piece and perfect it before sharing it, knowing that viewers will see is just what he wanted them to see. With electronic music, Subotnick had that ability. Now, with Pitch Painter, children between the ages of 3 and 5 can have it, too.

Pitch Painter is a simple app that allows children to experiment with sound and musical composition with a few taps of a finger. First, a child chooses from a variety of familiar and exotic musical instruments. Next, the child “paints” on the screen with a finger, perhaps sticking with just one instrument or maybe adding a few more. At any time, she can play back what she’s painted. A long, straight line down the middle of the screen will result in a single, mid-register note held for a long time. Upward swoops will lead to higher-pitched sounds. Single dots will be played as individual notes. Each instrument shows up on the canvas as a different color, so children can layer them, listen to the resulting piece, then go back and make changes.

The app, Subotnick confesses, won’t make symphonies. But it introduces young children to music in the same way that playing with building blocks introduces kids to engineering. Pitch Painter is available through the iTunes store for $3.99.

Musical Minds are Faster, Sharper Minds

The ability to play a musical instrument well can give musicians a wonderful outlet for self-expression. Research has also consistently linked playing music to improved academic outcomes. For example, we have previously blogged about how studying music can help children who have difficulty excluding extraneous noises while processing language and how it makes students better listeners, even into adulthood. Recently, another study from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland indicated that time spent playing musical instruments may also help people process information more quickly, and perhaps delay or prevent the onset of dementia or deterioration due to mental illness.

Eaglebrook School/Flickr

In the study, a small group of subjects was divided into groups based on how many hours of their lives they’d spent practicing a musical instrument; the high group, for example, reported spending more than 5,000 hours practicing, while the lowest group had spent less than 200 hours. Next, they were given a series of “conflict tasks” commonly used by psychologists. Conflict tasks typically present subjects with several stimuli at once but require them to respond to only one of them.

The results of the study showed that the more hours the subjects had logged practicing instruments, the faster they could accurately respond to conflicting stimuli. The authors postulate that musical brains might be faster brains. And that’s not all; subjects who had devoted more hours to music were also able to detect and correct their errors more readily.

Here at The Yellin Center, we've worked with countless students who find solace in music. We have advocated music lessons and band and orchestra participation almost without exception because of the numerous benefits—fine motor development, mental wellness, improvement in self-esteem, etc.—music can provide. This study gives us just one more reason to urge that parents feel good about making time in kids’ busy after school schedules for music.

Interestingly, the brain functions musicians seem to command so much more easily are the first to suffer from aging or from mental illnesses like depression. Perhaps playing a musical instrument could be a good preventative measure for those with higher risk for these maladies. The authors of the study urge that it is never too late to begin learning to play music, so even older adults should not be deterred. And for those with impossibly frantic schedules, or ten thumbs, or those who just too daunted to pick up a trumpet, simply listening to music has been shown to reduce stress and give one’s immune system a boost.

Memory Strategies: Use Music, Mnemonics, and YouTube to Improve Learning

A frequent issue mentioned by students who come to The Yellin Center for help with school is that they can’t remember information they studied when test time rolls around. They often suspect they have memory difficulties, but we frequently find that poor memory is not the problem. Even the strongest memories in the world can’t handle a limitless number of facts; these students are usually in need of better memory strategies. The more strategically they learn information, the easier it will be to “find” when taking exams.

Testing is particularly difficult for medical or law students, or even high school students in chemistry or history classes, because there is so much material to remember. We often recommend that students use mnemonics to help them recall lists of facts. For example, to remember the taxonomy for biology, if students can remember the sentence “King Philip Cuts Open Five Green Snakes,” they’ll have access to the first letter of each of the taxonomic levels in order (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).

Another way to recall information is to turn it into song lyrics to go with a catchy tune. We think this is a great idea, and we’re not the only ones. A recent news story tells of a young British doctor doing just that to help the staff at his hospital remember to use the asthma treatment guidelines when treating wheezing patients. When traditional reminders weren't working, Dr. Tapas Mukherjee made a YouTube video  in which he sang his new asthma-related lyrics to the tune of Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and crossed his fingers. Within two months, doctors at his hospital reported that they all knew the guidelines. More importantly, they performed much better on measures that tested their knowledge of specifics. For his efforts, Dr. Mukherjee won the British Thoracic Society Innovation in Education Award in 2012 and the National Health Service Expo/Network Casebook II Innovation Award this year.

There are plenty of other great examples of students using song to help get troublesome facts to stick. One is a video made by Canadian medical students. (Those unfamiliar with second-degree AV block, a disorder that causes irregular heartbeat, may find it a little tough to follow but will still get the idea). Another winner is “This is Why We Clot,” described on the page as “Drug Life’s hot new single about the use of anticoagulants.” To see a model of how this tactic could work with younger children, watch the silly “Place Value Song” from Teacher Tipster  below to see how Mr. Smith uses a song to help his youngsters learn how to grasp the concept of tens and ones.



The most memorable study song, of course, is the one a student invents himself. So next time your student has to learn a list of prepositions, recall a series of events, or perform a multi-step procedure, help him turn the information into a song. Teachers can try this out in the classroom by putting students in groups; finished songs can be recorded and played or performed live for the class. Turn studying into a rockin’ good time!

Seriously Fun Kids’ Events at Symphony Space

Consider your Saturdays covered. Most New Yorkers already know that Symphony Space, located on Broadway at 95th Street in Manhattan,  is a wonderful venue for the performing arts. But did you know that it also plays host to fun, enriching events for kids every single weekend?

Running the gamut from dance performances, music, theater, storytelling, movies, and more, the Just Kidding series is sure to be a hit with the kids in your life. Upcoming events include a concert by musical historians the Deedle Deedle Dees, a Muppet double feature movie screening, a performance by Morgan the Clown, and dancing and singing to the eclectic music of Aaron Nigel Smith. Want to share these fun events with your kids? Interested parties can purchase tickets to individual events or buy a subscription for deep discount on unlimited Saturday events from the Just Kidding webpage.

For young bookworms and aspiring writers, the Thalia Kids’ Book Club  is another Symphony Space offering that’s sure to please. The next club event, on April 7th, is a performance of author Pseudonymous Bosch’s delightful choose-your-own-adventure-like Write This Book: A Do It Yourself Mystery, performed by the Story Pirates. Club events are co-presented with the Bank Street Bookstore, and each includes a creative writing project, a discussion of the book with the audience, and a book signing. Often, actors perform segments of the book as well.

Be sure to visit the Symphony Space website  so you don’t miss a thing!

Photo: Symphony Space

Schoolhouse Rock! Turns Forty

“It’s great to learn, 'cause knowledge is power!”

Sound familiar? That’s a line from the introductory song to Schoolhouse Rock!, an educational cartoon series beloved by millions of students. Believe it or not, this year Schoolhouse Rock! celebrates its fortieth anniversary!

The sixty Schoolhouse Rock! videos cover topics as varied as math, grammar, science, American history, economics, and geology. In approximately three minutes, each pairs informative lyrics with a catchy beat to help students with tasks like differentiating between parts of speech, reciting the multiples of three, or understanding how a bill becomes a law. Despite their age, the videos are still used in some classrooms. Teachers find that students enjoy the fun, goofy videos, and they’re often able to recall important information more easily when it comes in the form of song lyrics.

Yes, Schoolhouse Rock! is dated, but that’s part of its charm. So invite your kids along for the ride as you unpack your adjectives, visit Conjunction Junction, and bring Interplanet Janet (from the days when Pluto was still a planet!), Mr. Morton, and Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla to your celebration of this rockin’ anniversary!

Image via Wikipedia

Musical Math

Flashcards and drills don’t feel like much fun to kids who are struggling to grasp academic facts. Tim Bedley, a veteran elementary school teacher, sought to combat this problem when he came up with the idea for his band Rockin’ the Standards, a talented trio who somehow manage to walk the line between being instructive and entertaining. Their surprisingly appealing math album contains tracks like “Parallel or Perpendicular?,” “The Place Value Rap,” and “The 6’s Song,” tunes designed to help students remember basic mathematical principles and skip counting (enormously helpful for multiplication) in a way that sticks. Both the song lyrics and album are available for download. In addition, Tim's own website contains helpful resources for teachers, including videos on teaching techniques for a variety of subjects.

The band has also released a language arts CD, featuring songs like “Plural Y and F,” and “Parts of Speech.” Trust us, it sounds dorky, but parents and teachers should not be surprised to find themselves singing snatches of Rockin’ the Standards’ songs even when there are no kids in sight.

Watch a video of Rockin' The Standards below:

Music Lessons Can Bring Lifelong Learning Benefits

Music lessons are a part of childhood for many young people, but it is not uncommon for youngsters to stick with their lessons for only a few years. Scientists at Northwestern University have looked at the impact of these early lessons on adults and have found that even a few years of lessons can have a positive impact on the brain years later.

The study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, looked at 45 adults who were matched for age and IQ. One group had no music instruction, another between one and five years, and a third group had between six and eleven years of lessons. Those who had at least some music lessons generally began their studies around age nine. The researchers measured electrical signals from the auditory brainstem of each of the subjects and found that those who had even short term music instruction showed improved processing of sounds. They also noted that the more recently the music lessons stopped, the more significant the improved processing.

“Thus, musical training as children makes better listeners later in life,” said Dr. Nina Kraus, Director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern, in an announcement released by the university. “Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain,” she said, “the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.”

Photo: Till Westermayer / Creative Commons

Math Lit: Probability, Measurement, and Graphing

Math and story books may seem as though they belong to completely different disciplines, but they can work together to teach mathematical concepts that some students find difficult. The stories and pictures are engaging for kids, helping them to stay focused on the principles at hand. Also, the stories provide children with a familiar, more concrete platform for understanding concepts that are both foreign and abstract. Below are some great titles which can make the tricky concepts of probability, measurement, and graphing easier to swallow. Parents and teachers may want to use these books as introductions to new material, or as a way to reinforce concepts that have already been taught using more traditional methods.

Probability

Most children are fascinated by the concept of probability once they become aware of it, though statistics is not typically taught until the very end of high school. The understanding that many events are not completely random represents a big milestone in a child’s development, and as children learn to play simple games involving coin tosses, spinners, cards, and dice, probability becomes an important principle in their lives.

To help kids move beyond the kind of probability they’ve learned by tossing coins, children’s literature comes to the rescue with a variety of fun and informative storybooks. For teaching simple statistics, The Reading Teacher* recommends A Very Improbable Story by Edward Einhorn, It’s Probably Penny by Loreen Leedy, and Caldecott Medal winner Jumanji by Chris van Allsburg. Odds are good kids will love learning with these stories!

Measurement

Using a measuring tape or ruler seems pretty basic, but for some children it can be a real challenge, particularly when inches are subdivided into fractions. The concept of length can be difficult for kids to wrap their heads around, in part because many of them don’t have a lot of experience measuring things themselves.

More practice is obviously called for, but parents and teachers may want to consider reaching for storybooks to teach children the fundamentals behind measurement. For teaching linear measurement, a recent article in The Reading Teacher* recommends Inch by Inch, written by legendary children’s author Leo Lionni, The Fattest, Tallest, Biggest Snowman Ever by Bettina Ling, Much Bigger Than Martin by Stephen Kellogg, and The Inch-High Samurai by Ralph F. McCarthy among others. Books like Mr. Archimedes’ Bath by Pamela Allen help explain other types of measurement.

Literature may lend meaning to measurement that kids didn’t see there before, and the selections above are a few examples that really measure up!

Graphing

A book about Rene Descartes, the French philosopher and mathematician who gave us the Cartesion system of coordinates, hardly seems destined to be a child’s favorite. Yet The Fly on the Ceiling by Julie Glass is clever and engaging enough to keep kids entertained while they learn about the theory behind graphing on a coordinate plane.

The Reading Teacher* recommends several other titles for teaching students about graphing through storybooks, among them Fair is Fair by Jennifer Dussling (bar graphs) and TigerMath: Learning to Graph from a Baby Tiger by Ann Whitehead Nagda (various types of graphs).


*Bintz, W. P. et al. Using Literature to Teach Measurement. (2011). The Reading Teacher, 65(1), 58-70

Teachers College Opens Academic Festival to the Community

On April 21st, Teachers College will host its fourth annual Academic Festival. This year’s offerings will center around the theme “Rewiring the Learning Landscape.” Various panels will explore technology and its effect on education and the world at large. Topics will include online communities, social media and adolescence, teaching financial literacy, and virtual access to art.

Though most of the day will focus on lectures and panels more appropriate for adults, there are opportunities for kids to have fun, too. For those with young children, WeBop is sure to please both you and your little one. Come learn about this early childhood jazz education program, designed for kids ages 8 months to 5 years. Families can learn about instruments used in jazz and explore the musical genre, as well as express themselves together through dance! (Watch the video below for more about WeBop.)

Kids ages 6 and up are also welcome to enjoy a cooking demonstration and food sampling hosted by nutritionist Pam Koch.

Visit the festival webpage for detailed information about the agenda and other useful information.

Benefits of Music Training

More interesting findings from the Learning and the Brain Conference we attended last week in Washington, D.C., this time on how music training improves skills in children with language based learning differences.

Bharath Chandrasekaren and Nina Kraus of Northwestern University presented research that looked at a number of studies that documented that children with a variety of language based learning disorders have difficulties with noise exclusion -- the ability to exclude extraneous noises while processing language. Whether this common problem is a symptom or a cause of underlying language issues, such children face additional difficulties when they are trying to process language in a noisy classroom or similar environment.

The presenters then looked at the documented findings that musicians have demonstrated a number of skills that enable them to have strong speech perception even in noisy environments. For example, musicians can hear their own instrument even in the midst of an orchestra playing. There are also social benefits to being able to pick up on conversation and cues in the context of a busy playground or event. Although the study authors stress that more research is needed, they propose that students who struggle with noise exclusion ability may improve when given musical training, since "musical experience benefits all the underlying skills necessary for successful learning in background noise."

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/ / CC BY 2.0