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Teaching Techniques for Musical-Rhythmic Learners

Musical-rhythmic learners are sensitive to tonal patterns, dance rhythms, musical notes and anything conveyed through patterns of movement or sound. Teaching with music, sound and rhythms instead of writing notes on the board and lecturing helps enrich the classroom experience for all students. Using musical-rhythmic techniques communicates the material through a different method and expands your students' comprehension.
  1. Rap Lessons

    • Teach your students a rap song where the lyrics are also the material. For example, make a historically significant event, such as the French Revolution, into a poem, with each stanza as a new verse. The strong beat of a rap song will help your rhythmic-musical learners commit the information to memory. Weaving a rhythmic order and repetitive beat through the material helps make dates and places less arbitrary and more connected than seeing the facts on paper.

    Sound Series

    • Teach your musical-rhythmic learners the sequence of a process through a series of connected sounds and tones. For example, teach a biology unit on cardiac functioning while playing a series of rhythmic, sequential sounds that mimic the swooshing of blood flowing through the ventricles and the clopping thump of a beating heart. Encourage the students to make these sounds themselves while drawing how blood flows on a heart diagram.

    Dance Beat

    • Dancing a lesson appeals to the musical-rhythmic learners' sensitivity to rhythm and patterned movement. The dance doesn't have to be complex or elegant, but must correlate to the subject matter and follow a predicable rhythm. For example, teach cloud patterns by having students sway their bodies and use different hand movements for atmospheric pressure. Associating information with a particular movement or dance step makes the connection tangible for musical-rhythmic learners.

    Musical Math

    • Assigning a numeric value to individual musical tones helps musical-rhythmic learners learn mathematical facts. For example, teach multiplication tables by assigning a musical tone to each of three sections in a multiplication problem, such as, "Two (tone 1) times three (tone 2) is six (tone 3)." Further engage your musical-rhythmic learners by giving each student a small, medium and large tin cup that they will hit with a mallet to create tones 1, 2 and 3 while reciting multiplication tables.

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