Most people have an intuitive sense that songs help encode information. After all, you can probably remember the words to songs that you have not heard since childhood. Advertisers have been associating brands with tunes and phrases for years for this reason. There is not a great deal of research on the efficacy of using songs to teach science, but there is no shortage of wider research from neuroscience, psychology and sociology suggesting that it could be very effective. This is intended to be a brief run down of that research.

6 ways to use SciTunes in Lessons

Most students enjoy it when their teacher does something a little different to break up the lesson and our music videos are great for this, but they are designed to be much more than a bit of fun or an attention grabber. Here are six ways that the SciTunes music videos and accompanying worksheets can be used in the classroom to enhance learning, making the most of a song-based approach.

science educationJonny BerlinerFebruary 21, 2020SciTunes, science education, school science, classroom tipsComment

Introducing SciTunes: Educational music videos for school science

This week I launched the first of five new music videos directly related to the secondary physics curriculum. As the others are released over the next few weeks, the Sci Song Guy blogs will be devoted to using songs for revision and in the classroom. The songs, which will cover particle theory, electricity, radioactivity, forces, and waves have been funded by the Stephen Hawking Foundation as part of their mission to improve science education and increase participation.

science educationJonny BerlinerNovember 7, 2019science songs, science education, school science, scienceComment

My top 4 tips for effective science teaching / engagement

Every year, the Association of Science Education (ASE) hosts one of the largest science education conferences in Europe. Last week, I went to get my fix of the latest research and practice, seeing too many talks to relate them all but for my first blog of the year I will write about the top four things I took away from it. Naturally, the talks I went to reflected my interests: using evidence based interventions, using arts and discussion based interventions to foster engagement and deep learning, and to communicate science in a way that addresses inequality. As a result, this may give a somewhat narrow view of the conference but pleasingly, these topics were all fairly high on the agenda so here they are..

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