Relaxing Classroom Music And The Benefits

Would you like a simple way to improve your student’s classroom experience? And give them a way to help them relax and possibly improve their grades? There’s actually a simple method to make that happen. And the great thing is that even you may benefit from this as well. What’s the key to all this? By simply playing relaxing classroom music whenever you can. Let’s take a second and go into detail about why using music in the class will help your students succeed more.

 

Why You Should Use Relaxing Classroom Music

 

Block Out Distracting Ambient Noises

When it comes to distractions, it really doesn’t take much to break a person’s focus. And this is especially so for younger students. Even the sounds of people walking through the hallway, the gentle laughter of students, or just a pencil dropping, are enough to wreck any person’s concentration. That’s why it can go a long way to play some relaxing and easygoing music in the background, especially during quiet moments of focus, like during a writing task or test.

 

Help Students Become Relaxed Yet Alert

According to Cornett (2007), relaxing music can help keep a student’s heart rate down, and their stress level low. This combination can yield a state of “relaxed alertness ” in students, which is an optimal state for learning in class. All you need to do is play some “baroque” style music, which consists of composers such as Bach and Mozart. Just this alone may give you great results.

Plus, the lack of lyrics in this type of instrumental music helps improve focus. That’s because there are no distracting lyrics, which allows the music to do a better job of improving concentration. This is definitely a win-win situation.

 

Relaxing Classroom Music Improves Overall Calmness

Calm and relaxed class

Remember that music won’t just affect a few of your students, it will do something to nearly all of them. And if you’re lucky, it’ll have a positive outcome for those who may be easily distracted, are a bit too social, or just struggle to stay focused on any one task. Basically, there’s likely to be a net gain from using relaxing classroom music, which will show the most results over time.

And keep in mind that students imitate each other. If one impressionable student sees another using the music to enhance his focus and concentration, it’ll be more likely that others will follow suit.

 

Helps Students Learn Better

Music can do much more than just improve emotions and concentration. The brain will naturally make connections between any material being studied and the music in the background. It’s kind of like hearing a song from your teenage years, and remembering you used to listen to it with certain friends back in the day. Your brain formed a natural connection between two different events. And the same thing can essentially happen in a classroom setting as well (Jensen 2000).

 

Generate Creative Thinking In Students

An easy way to improve the creativity of your students is by adding happy music to the mix (Ritter SM, Ferguson S 2017). Similar to relaxing music, it can have an impact on divergent style thinking. And what this means is your students will start thinking more out-of-the-box, try unconventional approaches, and won’t feel so restricted in their thinking and methodology. Why is this important? Because it all means they will be far more adaptable in life.

If they can harness the ability to quickly come up with new and novel solutions when the tried-and-true has failed them (which has happened to all of us), then this ability will help them get through far more situations more effectively than before.

 

Enhance Language And Speech Abilities

If you’re willing to branch out a little further, the right music incorporation can also improve a younger student’s communication ability (Hallam, 2010). But rather than just restricting music to within class, you instead encourage students to pick up an instrument to play at home, which will lead to the previously mentioned communication skills benefit.

Additionally, you can encourage students to also come in and play a song, bring in your own instrument to play, or anything else you can think of to inspire them musically.

 

Relaxing Classroom Music Can Help Students Succeed

As you can see, there are many good reasons to add music to your classroom setting. From relaxation, to better focus, to even improved communication skills (when students actually learn to create music). So there’s no reason not to give this simple method a shot. Going further, if you’d like another way to help your students succeed, you can’t go wrong with improving their typing skills. You can help your students gain a skill they’ll use for a lifetime with the amazing tools found at KeyboardingOnline.