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Literature Review Final Paper

Jett McClaskey

Prof Dueker

SPCE 400

12/15/2022
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Literature Review: Teaching Students Math, One Song at a Time.

Arts and sciences have stayed separate when teaching students, and are even associated

with different sides of the brain. Many can agree that throughout their early education, teachers

would give out silly songs that correlated with the subject they were teaching at that time.

Whether that was a song about our presidents, or a song about prepositions; we have heard them

all. One subject that I have personally seen little music in would be the area of mathematics. As a

fellow music enthusiast, I have seen some great things start up in the classroom when music is

involved. I chose this topic because math was and IS STILL a subject that I struggle with. I can

still remember most of the fifty states and their capitals because of a song our teacher had us

memorize, and it makes me wonder what my attitude would be towards math if there would have

been more songs incorporated into my math lessons. I would love to do research on if students

truly do learn better from music, specifically when being taught mathematics. This will allow me

to connect better with my future students, as well as even be able to grasp math concepts better.

Search Methods and Procedures

When deciding what terms to use, I began looking through my research topic and the

main points I wanted to hit. The first three choices were the ones I was very excited about. I am

very passionate about integrating music into subjects and with math being the subject that is

hardest for me, I would love to learn more about how music can help students learn mathematics.

“Math and Music and Songs'' was the first one I looked up, and found multiple articles on how to

engage students to connect music to math. When looking up “lifeskills and math and music”, this

is where a lot of interesting articles popped up on how to teach this to students with disabilities. I

am very confident in the terms I looked up.

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When deciding on where to look for these articles, I knew I wanted to look at theses that

were written on this very topic, to see what results were found through other evaluations that

were conducted. Then I started searching for other research articles that condoned the use of

music in the classroom when teaching students different subjects. This is important to learn

about as a future educator.

I also began looking into news reports from all over the United States to see if there were

any relationships between their findings. There were multiple interviews conducted with

educators around the country about how they implemented different genres of music into their

teaching curriculum to facilitate learning in a more creative and engaging way. The concept of

UDL and Differentiated Instruction were also subjects that I began to look into as well, since

integrating other modes of learning goes hand-in-hand with those two strategies.

Results Evaluation

I found multiple articles and studies that were done based around this same hypothesis;

that students perform better in math when being taught with music. The first one that I wanted to

discuss in this evaluation paper was a peer-reviewed article that was published in 2013. Song,

Mary Margaret, and Daniel A are the authors of this article titled, “ Elementary Teachers

Integrate Music Activities into Regular Mathematics Lessons: Effects on Students’ Mathematical

Abilities' '. This article introduces the study of teachers integrating music into their regular lesson

when teaching mathematics. In this study, two teachers of first and third grade students were

chosen to participate. The teachers both created lesson plans and activities that involved music

when teaching math across a five week time span. This article fit my search because it gave a

real example of statistics that were found when this study was finished. I enjoyed reading this
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article and learning about how the teachers were able to integrate this into their classroom and

how well the students responded to it.

EdSource

An article, published by Carolyn Jones of edsource.org, published an article in 2018 highlighting

a teacher from Hayward Unified and her progress in the classroom while teaching math. It has

been proven that information sets easier when music is involved. The example that was given in

this article is how ‘toddlers learn their ABC’s and 123’s”. Jorgensen, the teacher that is being

interviewed for the article, stated how some of the songs are completely made up, and others are

pop and hip hop songs with the lyrics replaced with math vocabulary. The closing sentence of

the article said,

“Doing the chants helps me remember what we learned,” she said. “When you’re in a

test and you feel stressed, you just think of a chant and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember

that.’ And then it’s kind of fun.”

This closing statement really gives the reader an insight on how the student approved of the use

of music and chants in math. The student discusses prior to the ending of the article how she

wants to pursue math in college because of how much she has learned to love it from the use of

chants and music.

NPR

An article published on April 3, 2022 by Mia Estradaa, illustrates how a teacher from

Texas helped struggling students find their new passion for math by integrating music into their

math centers. The article even gives examples of the “rap” song that was used when teaching a

unit over counting coins. Here is an excerpt of the song;

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“ Now let's break this thing down. Let's start with the tenths. Like a dime to a dollar,

there's 1 out of 10. Then we move to the hundredths, one part out of many. One out of 100, we

call that a penny.”

The teacher behind the ideas, Mr. Mayfield, stated to Estrada that the the scores from their state

tests started to rise as they began implementing the fun songs that started to get stuck in students'

heads- in the best way. He also discussed how the productivity rate in the classroom grew higher

as well as the overall growth of students' knowledge in that specific content area. Students began

to love math class more than the other classes Mr. Mayfield taught during the school day, and

grades began to show that.

Discussion:

The results from my research were valid to my hypothesis. I knew from the beginning

that I would be able to find multiple resources from articles and evidence based practices

regarding incorporating music into the curriculum, more specifically when teaching math. I did

not find many gaps, most of my findings were very straight forward and depicted the positives

that were found when students were given little chants / songs to help them remember certain

math concepts. Math is a subject that many students struggle with overall, and numbers

sometimes don't “click” with students.

Reading the articles and listening to podcasts about the concept of integrating music with

all subjects (not just math) really opened my eyes. It truly was interesting to read the different

articles that I found and begin to form my own opinions and ideas around the topic. I was one of

those students who really struggled with math concepts, and always needed to stay after the class

was over to talk it over with my teachers. I remember in first grade we made up jingles for

English concepts and even science topics. My freshman year of highschool, we had to create a
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song about Martin Luther and the church. Although I have seen music be integrated into other

areas of learning, rarely do I ever see it be used when teaching math, which I found very

interesting as I reflect on my years as a student.

That being one of the main reasons I chose this topic to write about for this class. I fell in

love with using music in the classroom at a really young age and it always motivated me to learn

the content, aka memorize the song with the content in it. As I finished up doing research, I

found myself searching for songs online regarding mathematics and found quite a few that I will

be keeping in my teacher toolbox for years to come.

Implications:

The results of my findings will most definitely be influencing my future teaching. I now

feel very confident in the fact that music overall helps many students discover their preferred

method of learning, as well as increase their confidence in the content being taught. With my

population of students ranging from K-12, mild to severe, I know that every student does not

learn the exact same way. This is where UDL and Differentiated Instruction come into

consideration and integrating music is a great example of how to teach to the variety of different

learners in your classroom.

Overall, the research that was found impacted me tremendously, because it goes to show

that with the change of strategies used, comes the positive change of growth in our students.

Allowing them to be creative and have fun with content goes a long way compared to the boring

lecture style learning techniques that are not as practiced in classrooms. As a music-learner

myself, I will most definitely be implementing songs in all areas of content, but especially math

in my classroom. This topic is one that will be built upon for years to come as more educators

start to become curious with the correlation of music and math.

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Resources:

1. 7 Reasons Why Math and Music Make Such a Dynamic Duo in the Classroom.

(n.d.). MCCARTHY MATH ACADEMY.

https://www.mccarthymathacademy.com/blog/7-reasons-why-math-and-music-

make-such-a-dynamic-duo-in-the-classroom

2. Estrada, M. (2022, April 3). To get kids hooked on math, the teacher brings rap

music into the classroom. NPR.org.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/03/1090609741/to-get-kids-hooked-on-math-

teacher-brings-rap-music-into-the-classroom

3. Jones, C. (2018, March 9). Lullaby of algebra: How mixing music and math helps

engage students. EdSource. https://edsource.org/2018/lullaby-of-algebra-how-

mixing-music-and-math-helps-engage-students/594096

4. SUNY Open Access Repository (SOAR). (n.d.). https://soar.suny.edu