Music & Dance
Overview
Connecting information to music and dance can support Short-term and Long-term Memory by engaging auditory processes, Emotions, and physical activity. When students create their own songs and corresponding dance moves, they are using creative cognitive processes that encourage them to reflect on how to represent what they are learning.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how the Literacy Through Hip-Hop program engages students by using hip-hop rhythms to teach literacy skills. While learning to write hip-hop songs and recording them, the students also master concepts such as rhyming words, Vocabulary, and figurative language.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how Toca Dance Free allows learners to create instrumental songs and choreograph dance moves in a playful environment. Through this engaging and fun activity, learners can interpret content in new ways and support their Physical Well-being.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Multisensory Supports Strategies
Audiobooks allow students to hear fluent reading and to experience books above their reading skills.
Communication boards are displays of graphics (e.g., pictures, symbols, illustrations) and/or words where learners can gesture or point to the displays to extend their expressive language potential.
Dictation, also referred to as speech-to-text, an assistive communication technology that translates voice dictation to digital text, provides students with transcription difficulties the opportunity to participate in the writing process by allowing them to use their voice to generate and record ideas.
Dictionaries and thesauruses can serve as resources for students to expand their Vocabulary knowledge.
Adding gestures and motions to complement learning activates more cognitive processes for recall and understanding.
Full sentence manipulatives allow students to practice producing more complex Syntax and writing.
Providing physical representations of parts of a sentence activates learners' mental processes.
Short breaks that include mindfulness quiet the brain to allow for improved thinking and emotional regulation.
Brain breaks that include movement allow learners to refresh their thinking and focus on learning new information.
We take in information through all our senses.
Research shows physical activity improves focus and creativity.
Incorporating multiple senses with strategies like chewing gum, using a vibrating pen, and sitting on a ball chair supports focus and Attention.
Using earplugs or headphones can increase focus and comfort.
Providing tools so learners can choose to listen to a text supports individual strengths and needs.
Tossing a ball, beanbag, or other small object activates physical focus in support of mental focus.
Visual supports, like text magnification, colored overlays, and guided reading strips, help students focus and properly track as they read.
Web-based dictionaries and thesauruses can serve as visual and audio resources for students to expand their Vocabulary knowledge.
Research has shown that students write longer pieces with stronger quality when they use word processing software.
Word sorts are multisensory activities that help learners identify patterns and group words based on different categories.
