To all our colleagues in education: many thanks for your interest! This page has some background for teachers and administrators, suggestions for using GriffinEd’s music in the classroom, and so on. First, here are…
Five Things Educators Should Know About Griffin Education Solutions:
- This website is an ongoing project designed to support student mastery of the K-8 content standards described in the NGSS and Common Core, as well as some local standards for California and other states. Different songs are age-appropriate for different grades; and we have data showing that it really does support student achievement.
- Besides our online library of teaching songs, GriffinEd also offers standards-based live shows of music and storytelling; songwriting workshops and residencies for kids and adults; and staff training for elementary schools where we share strategies for effective arts integration. Our services are are mostly payment-optional to schools, libraries, and other places of learning. If you have a budget to pay for what we do, that’s great: let’s discuss and we’ll give you an invoice; but if you do not have a budget for our services we can usually make that work. FYI GriffinEd is a 501(c)3 educational nonprofit and gets most of its funding from tax-deductible donations, grants, and CD sales at non-school events. Our tax ID # is 45-5513411.
- GriffinEd is not about teaching music, though we believe very strongly in the importance of arts education. Rather, our work is about using music as an easy, effective, proven tool for the teaching and learning of the core subjects, with an emphasis on STEM instruction.
- Because we know your instructional time is limited and precious, we strive to take very little of it. You can even use GriffinEd’s music while you’re transitioning from one classroom activity to another or as background music for appropriate tasks, in which case it will effectively take zero instructional time from your day.
- Tim Griffin (our executive director and the guy you usually talk to at GriffinEd) is a real, fully credentialed teacher, not some rainbows-and-unicorns idealist. He taught elementary school (all grades K-5, Title-1, mostly English Second Language, with full and partial inclusion for mild to moderate special needs) in LAUSD for eighteen years. Tim and his team share their work with you not because of some awesome-sounding theory, but because we know it works in real classrooms with real students and real limitations on time and funding.
Okay, now the good part:
Four Ideas for Using GriffinEd’s Music in Your Classroom
You can use OUR music any way you like, but here are some suggestions:
- When you’re getting ready to start a new theme/unit/topic (pardon the jargon) with your class, browse the Music section of this site for something that will support it; you can use the check boxes on our Music page to help you find what you’re looking for. If you don’t see anything that applies to your topic, please contact Tim: maybe he can suggest a song, refer you to someone else’s work, or even write a song for you! Don’t be shy about this: your input really is a vital tool for improving our service, so you are doing us a favor when you ask for a song.
- When you open your theme unit, share the song you have chosen as part of the opening activities. Print the lyrics for your students. In Tim’s class each student had a music section in their binder, but maybe you’ll want your kids to put the lyrics in their section for math, history, etc. For very young learners you might just make one large copy on chart paper and stick it up on the wall, but when Tim was teaching kindergarten his students did in fact use a three-ring binder for their work and they loved it. While you’re printing things, you should probably print for your own reference a copy of the relevant standards included in the notes for the song. Stick that in your lesson plan book: sooner or later an anxious parent or administrator will ask you why you’re “doing music” during a science or math lesson. When that happens, tell them you’re not “doing music,” you’re “doing teaching!” and show them the standards you are addressing. You might also mention that the NGSS and Common Core repeatedly call for more integration of music and other arts into the teaching of core subjects.
- As your theme unit develops (probably anywhere from 2-6 weeks, depending on your curriculum and instructional style), get out the lyrics once or twice each week and take a few minutes to sing together. A song can also be a good transitional activity while the kids are coming back in from recess, collecting homework, cleaning their desks, etc. Don’t make the kids “study” the song (they’ve got enough to study already), but give it enough repetition so it sticks. Our research shows that five times should do it. Don’t feel that you must plan or teach a “lesson” about the song (you have enough planning to do already); just answer any questions the kids ask about the vocabulary, etc. If your students have internet access, maybe encourage them to look up some of the references in the song. Note that some songs include ideas for related lessons or projects in the notes; you can use those but they are optional.
- Later in the year, when you’re looking for something productive to do with those last ten minutes of the day, get out a few songs from earlier units (they kept the lyrics in their binders, yes?) and sing together. It’s a quick, fun, painless way to review some of the old vocabulary and concepts.
Depending on where you teach, you may encounter some skepticism. So here are…
Three Things You Can Tell People …
When they ask why you’re “doing music” during science, math, or other core instructional time:
- We’re not doing music, we’re doing (science, math, etc.) and using music as a study tool. Here are the (science, math, etc.) standards the students are learning from this song.
- There are scores of published, peer-reviewed studies (Galef, Gardner, Crowther, etc.) with solid data showing that not only does including the arts in our instruction help with behavior, motivation, attendance, comprehension, reasoning skills, and graduation rates, but also that it significantly raises standardized test scores in non-arts subjects. Simply put, the arts make our kids smarter in every measurable way.
- Besides the standards addressed in the songs themselves, the NGSS and Common Core specifically call for greater inclusion of music and other arts into the teaching of math, science, etc. Most of our current teaching materials do nothing to address this, so I am offering something that does.
Still reading? Good, because now I’m going to talk about…
Two Ways Educators Can Help
- If you like my work and find it useful, please tell your colleagues about it. If your school or district maintains a directory of approved or suggested web sites, please ask that GriffinEd.org be included. Send a link to this page so they can read about it! A referral from a colleague is waaaaay more effective than any paid advertising.
- GriffinEd’s website and music are a continuing work in progress. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, please tell us what you want! You want a song about earthworms? Better documentation of something? Please be as specific as you can and we will do our best. I cannot emphasize this enough: your input is our most important tool for developing our work.
… And One More Thing
Tim’s live shows and songwriting workshops are also a lot of fun and, like this web site, are directed toward supporting your instruction. If you would like Tim to come to your school, library, museum, or other place of learning, please check out the pages for shows and workshops to learn how to make that happen.