In my professional experience, I've found that engaged students learn more.  Regardless of the quality or frequency of instruction provided to them, they learn more.  Unfortunately, schools and educational institutions spend much of their time re-teaching material students have little interest in without restructuring how the material is presented.  I understand that standards of learning hold many schools, administrators, and teachers hostage; however, bulking  academic material into remediation classes alongside students' regular class load doesn't increase the probability  of this material embedding in them. Even worse, re-teaching material in the same way fails to address students' many different learning styles, ensures their disengagement, and effectively increases the probability of behavioral problems as well as systemic academic dis-achievement.  Because it's the scarcest of all educational resources, we need to take the time to design and integrate learning systems that address whatever disconnection requires remediation in the first place. This series details music-centric strategies that teachers can use to fully engage and connect with their students.  In the last post, I discussed a Task that integrates music and online research.  Today, I introduce to you the Five Minute Freestyle. This task is fun, versatile, and extends beyond the school walls.

Learning Catalyst: Five Minute Freestyle

The Set-Up

This Task requires students to integrate relevant reference words cogently into a freestyle rap.  Most students are aware of the term freestyle in reference to hip hop music.  With that said, when setting up this Task it is still beneficial to play an appropriate and short video to provide an example for any student who may need additional reference.

The Task

To begin, play an instrumental hip hop track or beat.  After the instrumental has played for a short period, select 5 students to engage in this activity.  Utilizing the reference words that were generated beforehand,  each designated student will "rap" a freestyle verse along with the instrumental track.  Because the task is appropriately titled (Five Minute Freestyle), each student has 1 minute to freestyle his or her verse.

The Method

As the facilitator, your primary responsibility is to keep track of which student uses the most reference words.  If each participant uses all of the reference words, then the most coherent verse is the tie breaker.  Do not correct participants or help them along.  If they pause for too long, simply allow the next student to try.  At the end of each round, switch participants out; however, students who are noticeably engaged should be allowed to continue.

Analysis