Grade level: 4th to 5th; Type: Social Science
The idea for this project is to see if playing music during class helps students learn or if it distracts students from learning.
- Which type of music had the best results, if any?
- Did all the students improve?
- Did different students learn more or learn less according to which type of music they listened to?
- Did the music distract from learning?
- Would playing music during class be recommended or not?
- CDs of five different types of music (rap, country, hard/soft rock, movie msic and soothing ambient sounds)
- CD player
- A classroom of students
- Over a five day period, play one different cd per day during class.
- Spend half of the classroom time discussing or reading the topic for the day while the music plays in the background.
- Ask the students to participate in questions and answers for the remainder of the class, while the music continues to play.
- Observe the students' reactions during the reading part of the experiment and during the question and answer part of the class.
- Record all your observations by answering the questions in the “research questions” section.
Terms/Concepts: concentration, distraction
Music Science Fair Projects, by Julian Trubin (2003/2011) http://www.juliantrubin.com/topicprojects/musicprojects.html.
"Music Science Fair Ideas," Science Buddies (2002/2011) http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/Intro-Music-Science.shtml