I have written songs for teaching in the past, but after attending GLAD training, I am affirmed that this is a good thing to do, and helps students to learn material better. So I have gone to town with this, and I have written a lot of songs for math since the training. (Answer words for operations, partial quotients for division, use multiplication to solve division, estimation, rounding, subtraction with regrouping) One thing that I haven't done yet, is upload them to the GLAD site. It's on my to-do list, but I never seem to get to it.
I am a bit disappointed that they are not magic spells. Students still need to put some energy and effort out to learn the material even if it is packaged in the form of a song or a chant. Case on point: I wrote about estimation to the tune of Hallelujah, that you round the 2- digit divisor to the nearest ten to start with, (Estimation/Two-Digit/Divisor/Round to tens.... ) and I still see students who forget to try that and are stumped because they are trying to estimate with a divisor of 27, when they could more easily estimate with 30.
To be fair to me- many more students are better at estimation than when I first tried to teach them. I don't know if it's because of the songs or just practice, or having the expectation that this is part of the assignment.
No matter, I realized that writing songs and chants sustains me. When I have had a down day, frustrated over students' progress, wondering how else I can present a concept so that they can learn it better, I write a song or chant. I don't go on a search on the internet or the GLAD website. I am inclined to write it myself. I enjoy it. I am rejuvenated by it.
(The image here is a beautiful testament to music, and I think what I do is like a little fingernail of what it should be, but at least it's a little fingernail. )
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