Changing Behaviors through Music

One thing I have observed is that music can change the behaviors in my room. Music can be quite motivating, however, it can also be overstimulating for students who already have little control over their behavior. This was an aspect that I had not fully thought about when I began my investigation. I knew there was research that showed music could be motivating resulting in increased engagement (Fonseca-Mora, 2011), but I did not anticipate that I would also need a method to decrease engagement. This week, the students were engaged in an activity that was too motivating. We started by listening to the song/rhythm, "Peanut Butter & Jelly" After listening, I reviewed the rhythm pattern and modeled for the students how to clap their hands and slap their knees to the beat. The students were engaged in this activity, attempting to follow the rhythm and reading the story with me. Once we finished the story, I tried to get students settled to complete a vocabulary activity, however, this proved difficult. One student wanted to hear the song again and turned the CD player back on. This caused the other students to begin singing again. At first, I thought this seemed like a positive response but then I realized that nobody was able to complete the assigned task with the music going on in the background, and I began to observe more off task behaviors as well. At this point, I turned off the PB&J song and turned on a relaxation CD. After a few moments, students began to calm down and about half of them turned back to the task of completing the vocabulary activity. The remaining students began rereading books in the reading center. As I observed my group, I realized their behavior was related to additional resarch by Fonseca and Mora (2011) indicating that relaxing background music can reduce agressive behavior. In futre lessons, I will be more intentional about including a combination of energizing music to encourage engagement and relaxing music to help students decelerate their behavior.