Using Music To Teach STEM And NGSS
Did you know that a bee makes 10,000 trips between flowers to make just one teaspoon of honey? I didn’t know this until my 5 and 6-year-old daughters taught the fact to me this week - as we ate toast with honey.
I asked them how they knew such a fact and they said “We learned it from Jeff & Paige’s song called Thank You Honeybee”. Well how cool is that? This is just one of many STEM facts that my daughters have acquired from Jeff & Paige.
Given how much my daughters’ learn and retain from music, I thought it would be great to tell our educators about Jeff & Paige. Their educational songs can be paired with your curriculum to help reinforce lessons or to reach students that do not learn as well from lectures or reading assignments.
Jeff & Paige teach kids about a broad range of topics from echolocation to energy conservation to entomology. Their catchy lyrics and fun costumes and antics really help kids grasp and retain tough scientific topics with ease.
We are lucky enough to have Jeff & Paige as role models in the Couragion app. They both earned a Master of Science in Environmental Education and illustrate how to combine a passion for music with a STEM career. By completing the Jeff & Paige Couragion Quest, kids learn firsthand about what it is like to write educational songs, create an album, run the business aspects of a band and secure and prepare for gigs.
You can check out Jeff & Paige’s website for their entire set of music. But here are just a few ideas of how to map their music to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS):
Third Grade Earth Systems Standard = earth events can occur quickly or slowly. Relevant Jeff & Paige Song = Tectonics.
Fourth Grade Energy Standard = energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment. Relevant Jeff & Paige Songs = 21st Century Energy Superheroes, Fossil Fuels and Sunbeam Energy.
Fifth Grade Organisms & Ecosystems Standard = plants get the materials they need for growth chiefly from air and water. Relevant Jeff & Paige Song = Tree Technology (Photosynthesis).
Middle School Human Impacts Standard = monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment. Relevant Jeff & Paige Songs = That’s Not the Way and Bear Without the Berry Blues.
Check out the link below for access to Jeff & Paige's music.
We’d love to hear the good and bad about your experience with using music to supplement lesson plans. Email me (laura at couragion.com) to continue the discussion.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1660021. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Sources
http://www.jeffandpaige.org/#/store-and-music/
http://www.nextgenscience.org/overview-topics