The Benefits of using Music in the Classroom - A review

Over the last weeks, we have deeply discussed the use of movies in the EFL classroom. Today, we will review the reasons why music is such a powerful tool in the learning process. The following video presents a summary of the benefits obtained when including music in your classes. As Boyd (1995) has suggested, music will not only help your students to remember content or vocabulary more easily, but it will also make them feel more relaxed and ready to learn!

Check out the next video based on Boyd's article:






References:
Boyd, Chris. (1995). Music and Learning: Integrating Music in the Classroom. Retrieved from: http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/Arts%20in%20Education/brewer.htm

Movies to Teach an Specific Content

Students love movies!! We already saw that movies can work as a source of inspiration and they can encourage your students to read. Today, we will explore another way to use movies in your EFL classroom: Movies to teach an specific content in your lessons.

There are several movies that you can share with your students at the moment of studying an specific content, like Math, Astronomy, Biology, Arts, Music or Literature. As an English teacher you are not going to teach English only, but several other topics too!! An English teacher can work together with his colleagues that teach other subjects and share a common topic to teach with them in you English classes!! For example, if the Science teacher is teaching Astronomy at the moment, you can teach Astronomy in your English classes too. Studying a common topic from different perspectives and with different approaches can provide an enriching learning experience for your students, 

As a clear example of a subject that can be taught in English we have History. Throughout their time in school, your students will learn everything about an endless amount of historical events or periods that were important for the development of their country or for the rest of the world. In your English classes, you can take one of those historical events and teach it with a different approach using a movie! Be careful though, because not all movies are a 100% faithful to real events in History. Thus, you should always provide your students with accurate information after or before watching the movie you choose. 

In the following photo album you can see a series of movies that can be used at the time of studying an specific historical event or an important figure in History.

Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com