Tap into the symphony of learning with us as we explore sound-based teaching techniques in the classroom. Author, Hayes Greenfield, brings over three decades of experience to the table as a jazz musician and film composer, sharing the magic of his Creative Sound Play learning system and offering a glimpse into his upcoming book, Creative Sound Play for Young Learners. Discover how intentional sound creation can enhance executive function skills in children, tapping into their ability for inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility while also making the learning experience a joyous and engaging one.
Step into a classroom where sound play is an art, and see how varying volumes and tones can dramatically shape the learning environment and group dynamics. We cover practical ways teachers can use sound for smooth transitions, managing classroom activities, and fostering a mindful atmosphere to boost concentration and well-being. More than just a teaching tool, sound can be a bridge to active listening, supporting social-emotional learning and cognitive development without uttering a single word.
Finally, we discuss how to weave music education techniques into everyday teaching, revealing how simple hand percussion instruments can unlock key skills in students. Listen as we delve into the creation of sound sculptures, where students express themselves through art, dance, and performance, bringing their learning to life. And for those keen on deepening their focus, we share insights into the benefits of alpha waves in maintaining attention—providing a resourceful guide for educators and parents looking to enrich their children's educational journey with the incredible power of sound.
Please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend to spread the good! If you find value to this podcast, consider becoming a supporter with a $3 subscription. Click on the link to join: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/support
To help this podcast reach others, rate and review on Apple Podcasts! Go to Library, choose The Brighter Side of Education:Research, Innovation and Resources, and scroll down to Reviews. It's just that easy. Thank you!
Tap into the symphony of learning with us as we explore sound-based teaching techniques in the classroom. Author, Hayes Greenfield, brings over three decades of experience to the table as a jazz musician and film composer, sharing the magic of his Creative Sound Play learning system and offering a glimpse into his upcoming book, Creative Sound Play for Young Learners. Discover how intentional sound creation can enhance executive function skills in children, tapping into their ability for inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility while also making the learning experience a joyous and engaging one.
Step into a classroom where sound play is an art, and see how varying volumes and tones can dramatically shape the learning environment and group dynamics. We cover practical ways teachers can use sound for smooth transitions, managing classroom activities, and fostering a mindful atmosphere to boost concentration and well-being. More than just a teaching tool, sound can be a bridge to active listening, supporting social-emotional learning and cognitive development without uttering a single word.
Finally, we discuss how to weave music education techniques into everyday teaching, revealing how simple hand percussion instruments can unlock key skills in students. Listen as we delve into the creation of sound sculptures, where students express themselves through art, dance, and performance, bringing their learning to life. And for those keen on deepening their focus, we share insights into the benefits of alpha waves in maintaining attention—providing a resourceful guide for educators and parents looking to enrich their children's educational journey with the incredible power of sound.
Please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend to spread the good! If you find value to this podcast, consider becoming a supporter with a $3 subscription. Click on the link to join: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/support
To help this podcast reach others, rate and review on Apple Podcasts! Go to Library, choose The Brighter Side of Education:Research, Innovation and Resources, and scroll down to Reviews. It's just that easy. Thank you!
Welcome to the Brighter Side of Education. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? Today's episode is all about the power of sound in learning. We'll explore sound-based teaching methods to support student executive functioning, development and social-emotional learning.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Sound plays an important role in how we acquire and retain information. A 2020 study titled the Effective Music Intervention on Attention in Children Experimental Evidence sought to understand the effectiveness of music as a means of assessing cognitive function improvement. Researchers focused on attention, which plays an important role in cognitive development, and examined the effect of a music intervention. The results indicated significant improvement in attention control and switching following the music intervention. Further evidence suggests music therapy helps regulate emotions, mood and behavior. This is because the amygdala registers the sensory input, processing tempo, rhythm and notes to determine the emotional response and stimulate behavior accordingly. Joining me today to discuss sound-based pedagogy is award-winning jazz musician and film composer Hayes Greenfield. Hayes is the founder and lead educator of Creative Soundplay, a sound-based generative learning system for pre-K. His new book, creative Soundplay for Young Learners, isative learning system for pre-K. His new book, creative Soundplay for Young Learners, is set to be released on June 6th. I'm so happy to have you here today, Hayes, welcome.
Hayes Greenfield:
Thank you very much, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here. It's wonderful to have the opportunity to share with you and your listeners with what I do.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
I'm excited to hear about it Now. As a musician and educator, you have worked with children on how sound affects them for over 30 years Now. To be clear, we're not talking about music, but purely sound, and so can you describe the sound-based pedagogy and how you use it in your creative sound play learning system and in your book?
Hayes Greenfield:
Okay. So in this context, what it really comes down to is providing teachers with the ability to use sound with their students, and what happens is teachers always think when they hear the word sound, they think music. People forget is that sound comes before anything. We call music. Right that first there is sound, and it could be anything. It could be a car horn, it can be a bird, it can be a dog barking, it could be a trumpet playing in the distance. It could be anything.
Hayes Greenfield:
Sound is ubiquitous, it's with us, it's part of nature, and sound is one of the things that children absolutely love and adore making and they plug into it. It's part of our DNA. Humans love it. Right, that's how we communicate, absolutely Right. We don't even need words to communicate. For example, when you get on the phone and you hear a loved one how they take a breath, you know intuitively exactly how they're feeling. Right, you don't even need a word. You can go. What's the matter? Just by the texture, the quality of the sound that you're hearing.
Hayes Greenfield:
And what I do is I plug into actively listening and actively working with sound and breaking sound down into three fundamental parts, which is pitch, whether it's high, like a bird, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, or low, like a lion's roar, roar right, whether it's loud, really loud or really quiet, and whether it's loud, really loud or really quiet, and whether it's long or short, like one clap. So pitch, volume and duration. And when teachers start to think about that and really begin to work with it and they start to say, well, what does it mean pitch? Well, you can count in different ways One, two, three, four, just by changing pitch.
Hayes Greenfield:
When you provide children with the opportunity to make a deliberate and intentional type sound, they're immediately plugging into their executive function skills. They're inhibitory control, because they're thinking first and they have to hear what you're doing first, so they can't speak first. And they have to hear what you're doing first, so they can't speak first. They have to listen. So when you develop your active listening skills, you're really developing your inhibitory control. The first attribute of executive function executive functions, excuse me, there's three major attributes. Then we have working memory, being able to take direction, being able to keep the different possibilities in mind at the same time, and then there's cognitive flexibility, or creativity, or thinking outside the box.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
So immediately, when you start to engage children with making intentional and deliberate sound, we are immediately plugging into those three attributes of executive function skills. And we know from the data of the great developmental neuroscientist Adele Diamond that her work showed over the last 35 years that when you enhance children's abilities with executive function skills, inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility, those children fall in love with learning, do better in school and go on to finish college. So it gets back to again making it accessible for teachers.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Right, Because the one thing that children love to do more than anything is focus and engage with making sounds so different kinds of sounds like stomping and clapping and razzing their lips, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Hayes Greenfield:
What happens with teachers? Now, you were a teacher, right yeah. What grades did you teach?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
First and second grade.
Hayes Greenfield:
So you must remember your students and loving to make sound.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
They love making sounds, for sure.
Hayes Greenfield:
So sound enables children to control. It's the one environment that they can take total control over. And so when I think of a teacher's job, they are giving opportunity and license to their students to do different things and with sound it becomes this incredible learning ecosystem. So, for example, I've had teachers who've had children with language delays and in the beginning, when their kids are trying to communicate, they're having such frustration not being able to make themselves heard because they have difficulty with the words. They often can be aggressive and frustrated and reach out and grab because they don't have the skills. And when a teacher comes and gives them license and opportunity to make funny sounds, like you know, there's a transition that I do. That's called a quick focus warmup. So it's called zap zap zap, zap, zap.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
So repeat after me Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap Zap zap, zap, zap, zap, Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap.
Hayes Greenfield:
Right Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap. Okay Now. So you just started laughing in the very beginning because it's funny, and it's funny and it's fun and it's wow, it's kind of a little crazy.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
It was silly yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
Right, it's silly. So you're right there developing your social, emotional learning, plugging into that. So all of a sudden I'm giving it to you, I'm the leader. So if I'm the leader, I'm feeling good about myself. It's raising my self-esteem. And if you're a good follower which you were, you were wonderful, you're part of the ensemble and you're doing it with your fellow classmates and you're all having fun. All of a sudden it's working, this whole mechanism, right it's?
Hayes Greenfield:
this community, then, but on a personal level, for students who have language delays. For them, it becomes an opportunity to realize that they can communicate with each other without having to understand the words. And these kids start communicating, making funny sounds, because the teacher is giving them opportunity and license and says it's cool, it's okay. So here's a simple thought about how kids with language delays can focus better and communicate. They're like coming up with their own sounds, they're developing their executive function skills.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Just figuring it out and going oh wow, I can do that Right. So then how does it play into the social-emotional learning?
Hayes Greenfield:
It's the play-based, it's the play quality, it's the fact that the kids are doing this together, so they're engaged with a group, with each other as peers, as a community. Together they're able to reflect as to what's going on. Then what's really interesting is that I'll go into a space and I'll just say let's just take 30 seconds, close our eyes because we can hear more and just listen to the sounds around you. And what that does for students is it's mindfulness, right, it's inhibitory control, it's developing your active listening skills so that you're really becoming attuned to what your environment is about. So as children begin to listen and they hear the different sounds, and then all of a sudden that loud sound can take over and dominate, and then, as it gets smaller, as it gets quieter, all of a sudden the other sounds come back. So children talk about this, because it becomes a wonderful opportunity to engage.
Hayes Greenfield:
What did we hear? So if you have a kid who's really loud, you can say to that child I bet you can't make that same sound really quiet. They'll love a challenge and they'll go oh Right. And then you say, make it medium loud, then make it loud again, make it really quiet. And what you're doing is you're providing that child with the opportunity to develop the technique and the ability to say it at different levels Right. And they get a chance to really see and understand that what they do and how they are matters to the community.
Hayes Greenfield:
I have teachers who say three-year-old kids are coming into the classroom and saying it's too loud in here, can we quiet down? Old kids are coming into the classroom and saying it's too loud in here, Can we quiet down? And what they're saying is that it's too loud, I'm having trouble concentrating, I can't learn, because they want to learn, they love school, and it's like three-year-olds having the mindfulness to be able to come into a room, assess, reflect and then decipher it and say it's too loud, right. It's an amazing level of consciousness.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Definitely. Is that a way, then, that teachers can use those three primary elements of sound to change behavior without having any sort of confrontation or a problem? So you can take something and you'd say, okay, I'm going to use that sound to my advantage and I'm going to have them change it a little bit. And is that why you say then, simple variations are important? So do you want to talk about those simple variations and how teachers can use those three primary elements of sounds in creative sound play?
Hayes Greenfield:
Yes, it's all of that and it's when teachers begin to become aware of that, because sound works with everything. It works with any curriculum. It's nonverbal, so you don't have to have words. So, like in my example of saying, can you make it different levels? I was working with words, but here's what a teacher did. This woman, jennifer, became very familiar with sound. So she had a kid who was doing a jigsaw puzzle, couldn't get the last piece in and was getting more and more frustrated. He was slapping he's really slamming his hand down on the desk, making a really loud sound, and she, knowing about sound, instead of being punitive and saying anything, she slammed her hand down on the table next to his.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Oh.
Hayes Greenfield:
And then he did it again and she did it and she got softer, and then he got softer, and then another teacher who was involved with throwing a clap and all of a sudden they started having this dialogue just Through sound. Just through sound, just being aware of volume, Right. So all she was doing was thinking I'm going to get to him doing what he's doing, I'm not even going to talk to him and got his attention and it's amazing. This is where I mean we're all asleep to sound, because we're sound asleep.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Right.
Hayes Greenfield:
So when we wake up to sound and we start to think about it and silence because silence is very important all of a sudden it provides other things to work with in variation, like what you were talking about. I gave an example going one, two, three, four. So teachers in pre-K they count their kids all the time. So when they start to count their kids like that, one, two and kids get in line the kids love it.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Ah, because it's not monotone, right.
Hayes Greenfield:
Yes, it's like all of a sudden everything opens up Pitch, volume and duration. You start thinking about pitch volume, duration How's this working? So that's just pitch, volume and duration how long or how short, duration, how long or how short so that's a whole other thing. But what happens is you have that transition right and all of a sudden you do it a bunch of times and the kids are doing it, and then you say, well, how about, instead of going one, two, we go one two, three. You change it up. All of a sudden it's another level. So transition times are incredible jewels. They are the way into working with sound Transitions. Are these incredible, fantastic repetitive times that happen throughout the day that teachers say?
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
are you crazy? So much wasted time with transitions?
Hayes Greenfield:
It's like 20% of the time of the day. It's huge. Yes, it's huge, and transitions can be short as five seconds and as five minutes, because as soon as you get your kids focused and engaged, you're done with the transition. You're moving the kids from the carpet to the chairs. Right Transition is just that moment where everything gets focused and engaged Get their attention and bam, we're on to the next thing.
Hayes Greenfield:
Right, this opportunity for children so that you can repeat the same sound activity and repetition for children is so important because it makes them feel safe and calm, because they know what to expect. Part of the problems, why transitions are so difficult for children is that they're doing something that they're really engaged and then they don't know where they're going to go afterwards and it kind of freaks them out. But if you have a transition that all of a sudden engages and focuses them with fun and joy, which making sound does, as long as you're trying to make the sound, you're focusing your executive function skills.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
So it doesn't matter if it came out right or not, as long as you're focusing and you're trying.
Hayes Greenfield:
Yes, and that's the beauty. That's where grit is developed right, and sometimes the mistakes become the best sound.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
I had this workshop with like 25 teachers and we had five different tables. There were five teachers at the table and we were counting. We were moving around the tables and everybody was counting together At one table. This one woman went first really quickly and said the number and all of a sudden got all uptight because she jumped the gun. But she went. Oh my God, I made a mistake and it was beautiful because what it really was and I stopped and I stopped everybody was.
Hayes Greenfield:
You heard five voices and at this table we only heard one voice and it was such a relief to hear just what one voice sounded like as opposed to five voices together, so that all of a sudden that said well, wait a second. If I'm doing this in groups and I want to do this, here's a variation. We're talking about a variation, right? So maybe we have a variation where six kids say something and one kid says something, or three kids, so that you can hear the difference and all of a sudden, so sound it's like, becomes so rich with infinite possibilities. And talk about texture. You know, like when you go to buy clothes, when I go to buy clothes, the first thing I do, I feel the texture oh yeah, absolutely right.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
So you.
Hayes Greenfield:
Absolutely Right. So you know two different ways of clapping your hands Just cupping it Flat, clap, cupping Flat, clap, right exactly, and then you have like an applause clap which is gives you the most dynamics bravo, bravo. And then here's when we just you know, we're like very polite, I didn't really like what they played yeah, yeah, just a little tapping, yeah.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
So the kids in elementary school, I think, would love it. It kind of perks them up like, oh, that's a little bit different, that's a little fun, right. So those variations get their attention. And you have a lot of transition activities in your book that's going to be coming out on June 6th, and on your website you also have videos that help teachers. Do you have one for transitions that you would recommend teachers try? Sure.
Hayes Greenfield:
I would say one of the ones that are just really immediate, really simple.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
Really simple. Just do this One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four and just wait and as your kids really jump in and they'll start they'll hear it in the beginning, they'll hear you doing that and try to do it the same way.
Hayes Greenfield:
So it's medium, loud, really quiet, and then medium again in terms of volume, Medium volume, loud volume, quiet volume, and then medium, and do it a couple times and watch how quickly your kids jump in, especially when they want to get loud, and then, as you get quiet, see how quickly they get quiet and try to surprise them. So as you do this, all of a sudden they'll just jump in. Now you know this is very much geared for pre-K and when you start dealing with your older kids, because of their level of sophistication it's quicker. Then you have many more opportunities to start to really get into more complex variations. You can have like a whole nonverbal communication that has this whole emotional content and it's being responsive.
Hayes Greenfield:
I do a course on the National Head Start Association's website called the Academy and I do live coaching sessions, which I do from my website as well. So, in terms of my website, I have a quick start guide which has a few videos of the basic outline for all different kinds, like they're transitions that work for, like when you're trying to keep the kids in line when you're walking down the hall you got to take a right and then go another long haul down the cafeteria and you want to keep the kids from bouncing off the walls.
Hayes Greenfield:
Yes, just in line, there's a transition for that lines are always rough they are, but as soon as you start working with sound, it will change your attitude. It will because you, you become the facilitator Once your kids start grabbing onto it. They take agency right. They want to lead it. Yes, they want to decide on how they want to make it complicated.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
Like. Here's an example so I'm teaching this teacher who's a teacher coach and she takes it back to her teachers and one of her teachers just absolutely adored it. And they're doing things with the days of the month and she was saying that, you know, usually at the end of this, because it's so rote, the kids are like really bored. But because this teacher was then infusing sound and pitch, volume and duration into it with all of the stuff whether it's going Monday, tuesday, right, or however, she was doing it at the end of the month, they wanted to keep doing it another way. So these kids end up, they're out in the playground. There's this one cup that spins around right. One kid's in the cup. The other kid is outside the cup and he's counting and he's probably doing what I would have done when I was in my 10. And I want to get in the cup.
Hayes Greenfield:
So the little boy's in the cup says whoa, whoa. That's not enough time. So the teacher comes up to him and says so to the little boy who's counting. So how might you count differently? Little boy thinks, and all of a sudden he goes back to his classroom. So he's working, using his working memory, he's using inhibitory control, because this all comes back. Remember, we're building executive function skills and social emotional learning and mindfulness. So the little boy comes back he says hmm, I'm gonna count one, two, three. So he's using pitch and duration going long, low, short, high.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
And all of a sudden, the kid in the cup is cool and he's happy. Yeah, he's done counting, and they switch. So now the little boy who's in the cup decides well, he wants to count differently, so he's going to figure out another way. Oh, so all of a sudden there is six kids lined up yeah, trying to outdo each other counting-wise in different ways. And I don't think they're even paying attention to the cup and this is all about math.
Hayes Greenfield:
Yes, so they're counting, which is math, doing it with they're doing it social, emotional learning, because they're in the most beautiful competitive way of seeing, of spurring each other on how they can count differently, how they can expand their working memory, their cognitive flexibility, all of their stuff just based on counting. And this is children driven.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Right, and you're boosting these active listening skills. And you have some practical exercises that teachers can use as well. So is there another exercise that maybe teachers can use to help boost active listening skills in the classroom?
Hayes Greenfield:
Well, that's very much about listening. That's very much about taking moments to listen. That can be like listening to what the sound is in the hall and listening to all the different rooms. You should listen in all different physical places. Every room has its own sound and it's called room tone. Every location has its own room tone.
Hayes Greenfield:
So, for example, your regular room, which is a classroom, is fairly dry right, which is you can hear the teachers speak. Well, there's no echo, there's no bounce off the walls, unlike the gym, which is very big square space, which is very hard to hear what somebody's saying because there's so much echo in the room and that makes it very loud. So what is the difference between those? The physicality of the wave becomes different. The room helps to do that. When it's outside, it's another sound. The hallway has a different sound and children are so perceptive to all this. All we're doing is allowing them, encouraging them to listen more, and they love this stuff. It's like it's so analog. You know, we forget in this digital world how to just bring it down to being analog. And that's what we're discovering right, these kids who are on, who plugged into their iPads and everything else. They need human things. It's too digital, they're not able to really interact with each other, and listen to each other.
Hayes Greenfield:
And an active listening school could be like zub-a-dub-up.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Zub-a-dub-up Beep, beep, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Hayes Greenfield:
Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Okay, so I'm leading here. Now let's have more of a conversation. Zabubu, Zabarara, Blah.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Zabarara Zililila, blah, blah, blah, mm-hmm Uh well, Right, but you see where we?
Hayes Greenfield:
you were just willing to take this risk.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah, okay, this is a beautiful.
Hayes Greenfield:
You asked a very interesting question. How do we help each other actively listen more? And for any teacher who's listening to this, as silly as and benign as this may sound, this was an interaction with two people who've never met each other. I've never met Lisa before and we just had a non-verbal conversation where we were listening to each other and we got higher, we got lower, we kind of went, hmm and there was question there. This is so important. Sound knows no language barrier. Yeah, that's very true. Sound knows no language barrier, and silence is about creating tension.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
I was just about to ask you about silence. I'm so glad you brought it up.
Hayes Greenfield:
Silence emphasizes. You know that commercial EF Hutton. When EF Hutton peeps, everybody listens. It's quiet, right. It gives pause to breath, it's relief from a lot of sound. If you're really jamming with a lot of sound, it's crazy. Like you're in a restaurant, it's Friday night and they're turning the loud music on and you're talking to your friend. You get outside, you get in your car, you go oh God, it's such relief, right. And then it can become deafening. So you have to make sound.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Again, I like how you describe deafening because it's too quiet. Yeah, so what's the importance, then, of using silence and sound in the classroom?
Hayes Greenfield:
Well, children love to play silence.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
The silent game they love to play it.
Hayes Greenfield:
For example, I'm a serious jazz musician and I've received awards with my jazz music and blah, blah, blah. I've been a film composer and a whole other thing, and I can tell you that what we're talking about has nothing to do with music. As an authority on both sound and music and so I was doing this gig I had a live interactive for many years a children's jazz show called Jazzimataz, which is available from my website. It won five awards. It's traditional children's tunes, all jazzed up. Richie Haven sings on it. I don't know if any of your listeners know who Richie is. He was a folk singer. He opened Woodstock.
Hayes Greenfield:
But I used to do this live interactive jazz show and I would get the party noisemakers that you can buy when you have like a party, you know, like little squeeze horns and the shakers. So I would do those and I would have little hammers that make a squeak, squeak. Oh yeah, and I would invite because in New York, one Sunday a month, kids would come with their parents and I had this poet who was part of the Beat Generation. Her name is Hedy Jones, and so Hedy came up to read a poem because she was there with her grandson. So I had all these kids up on the stage bashing these instruments and Hedy couldn't read because there was no silence, there was no space. And she looked at me. She says I can't do this, there's no space. Right? I looked at all the kids. I said listen, when you make a sound, when you play a sound, then you have to play silence. So they all played silence. So everybody went they'd make a sound and then they'd have to play silence. And all of a sudden I had like 12 kids up on the bandstand doing this and there was all this space for Hedy to do her poem because there was all this silence. So that was all 30 seconds of describing it to these kids. Nice, they loved it. They loved making sound, they loved making silence, they loved participating. They loved the challenge.
Hayes Greenfield:
Playing sounds is about providing opportunity. Yes, like I said in the beginning. And sound, sound. If you think about sound, you spend a moment. You say well, wait a second. This guy sounds really crazy to me. Check out Hayes Greenfield. Go on hayesgreenfieldcom. Check out Creative Soundplay. Check out Music for a Green Planet. Check out this guy. He's nuts, jazz and Mataz. Just check him out. There's a method to all of this madness out, that there's a method to all of this madness, and it's all extremely thoughtful, and a book puts it in a very specific way. It opens with a quick start guide, which is about the first four months of how you get into sound, and there's ways that you can do it really easily. You can do counting exercises if you want, or you can do just like what I did in the very beginning with the zap, zap zap bleep, blap, blap, blap.
Hayes Greenfield:
You can just do a clapping exercise with your students, it doesn't have to be in time. One, two, three, four. One one, two, three, four. One, two, three.
Hayes Greenfield:
And for those teachers who have trouble counting, who think, oh, I have no rhythm believe me, you have a heartbeat and there's a whole part in the chapter of how you can use words in your head potato and all I'm going is one potato, two potatoes. Then, if you want to make it shorter, it's like pota, pota, one pota, two pota, three pota, four pota, five pota. Right, so you can change the potato. You can change any syllables, just do a shorter syllable.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yep.
Hayes Greenfield:
One potato, two potato. Right One potato, one potato, one potato. There's no wrong way. There's no. You figure out what works for you and your students will love it. All Right, and if you were doing that and counting in your head and yourself, so you're not counting out loud and just clapping Right, yeah. However, you want to do it.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
All of a sudden, your kids are going to be listening and be challenged and try to figure it out.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
So you don't need anything. You can bring in musical instruments, but you don't need anything. You've got your body, you've got your voice and that's what you can start with.
Hayes Greenfield:
Okay, well, that's the first three months. Yes, nothing else, just your body, just your voices and your limbs, which is also very important to pat your body, oh, and this is pat your arms, and that's very important for special needs, because you have a physical sense or perception of where your body begins and ends.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Mm-hmm.
Hayes Greenfield:
Right. So what I'm saying it's all thoughtful and it takes into consideration so many aspects of this, because special needs plays into it. Actually, a lot of this stuff came out of my work with special needs high school students.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Oh, okay.
Hayes Greenfield:
So this is very much related.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
What kind of techniques can teachers use then for special needs kids?
Hayes Greenfield:
Well, all the same stuff. It's just the level of sophistication. You know, like this one guy was told that he was a mimic, he had autism, he was told that he was a mimic. So he would, you know, give you anything back. Yeah, we had what are called flutophones, which are these recorders that aren't shrill and they're softer sounding. So we were doing a call and response kind of like what I was doing with you in terms of giving it back to you in yeah, right, you gave me everything I gave you. So that was a call and response, right. So I was doing it with him and I said come on, antoine, I gave him one boop.
Hayes Greenfield:
And he'd go one boop, I'd go boop and he'd go boop and I said I could boop and I said now you lead. He said oh, so he went boop and I went boop and he stopped and he coughed his head and I said come on, do it again. He said no, no, I can't. I said come on. We went through this whole thing for another five minutes and finally he went boop boop and I went boop, boop and whoa, and then it was like really his't a mimic.
Hayes Greenfield:
And he got up and gave me the most incredible hug and it's like you know, you never know. You never know what a child, whether they're special needs or a little kid or any of it, you never know what they're thinking. Right, you don't, we don't, you know. And for you, teachers, as you start to really gain your own comfortability and and mastering, and your, your, your kids are gaining their mastery in the second part of the year, so the third, we do incorporate hand percussion instruments so that you have many more textures nice hand drums, shakers, bells, cow, you know, cowbell, hand cymbals, sandpaper.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Sandpaper, yeah, wood glockenspiel, there's so many.
Hayes Greenfield:
However many little glockenspiels, yeah, whatever sounds that you want to have. We're dealing with pitch, volume and duration. So, for example, you might line up all of the instruments and have everybody play one, hit one sound and pass it to the next person Right, fun. Everybody play one, hit one sound and pass it to the next person, right, fine? So think about what's happening there. That's inhibitory control, it's working memory, because they're following direction. It's cognitive flexibility, it's social-emotional learning, because they're doing it together, they're waiting for each turn and go around the room. So you might want to put different instruments next to each other so that they don't all sound the same, and you might go one way, clockwise, like. I was doing this with a bunch of teachers recently. We did it going clockwise and it just didn't sound right and we said, well, let's play it the other way, let's go backwards, and all of a sudden, this loop, just by going another direction, had so much more color to it, so much more texture, because the order of the instruments was different.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Yeah.
Hayes Greenfield:
And then the last part of the year is devoted to making sound sculptures, oh, which is taking everything that we've learned for the year and making pieces that have a beginning, middle and end. You know can be culminating events. Okay, they can include narration, they can include dance. If some kids are more kinesthetic and want to move around and have an interaction, you can include kids' artworks with a concept for a child to make a painting or a collage, or use all different kinds of materials that have an implication to what kind of sound they want it to be, so as that even unfolds over time, their students, their friends play it and it works at a beautiful culminating event for parents and families. Wow. So it's a whole system, a whole thoughtful method that's laid out in the book.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
It's got a macro view of the school year, a micro view, and a real granular practice schedule at the end of like, if you want to and really it's all depends on the teachers- Right, you have some creative sound techniques that parents can use at home, and we're heading into summer, so what kind of activities can parents use to have their child listen to them, especially when they're in summer? They're like I'm free.
Hayes Greenfield:
Well, I would start with listening and talking about different types of sound.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Okay.
Hayes Greenfield:
And making aware of different types of sounds. You can do clapping exercises. You can do all of the sound activities that are there. You can have nonverbal communication right.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Right.
Hayes Greenfield:
Try having a whole conversation without using any words. You could do words phonemically. Yeah, use phonics right, do things with pitch and volume and duration. Ooh buh, puh, buh, puh, beep bop, beep, bop. You can take all the words that you're reading with your kids and animate them and ask them how they want to sound them out. Yes, that's good. You learn better when you're playing. Yeah, and I can say this as a musician I can practice this stuff till the cows come home, but I never learn it and it never really becomes part of my consciousness until I'm on the bandstand playing.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Because now you have to show your mastery in front of others, so that performance is a different, heightened level.
Hayes Greenfield:
It is. So, in the same token, now it's for you to have the license and the opportunity to think how do you want your child to experience this, how do you want them to communicate with you? Can you say, hey, let's have an argument. Now, let's not have an argument? What are the emotional ranges that we get all worked up? Or how do we calm down? What do we want to listen to? Let's listen to some music.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Let's listen to some alpha waves. Yeah, I love the alpha waves. I always use them in my class. We were talking about that a little bit earlier and this was introduced to me quite a while ago. But I would very quietly place in the background in the classroom to help the children focus. I use it myself when I'm working. It helps me focus my attention. And it's not music, it's not anything I'm even understanding that I'm listening to no words, no particular rhythm, it's just there.
Hayes Greenfield:
And what you're talking about is tuning in as opposed to tuning out. We spend so much energy tuning out. When we tune in, it's like effortless and listening and tuning in and being part of our environment, which is how we prepare, which gets down to why this is important in pre-K, because it's really preparing children ultimately for school, absolutely.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Thank you so much, hayes, for joining me today to discuss how sound can be intentionally used to help students.
Hayes Greenfield:
Lisa, I have to say this has been such a wonderful opportunity for me and it's given me insight and you've been a wonderful host and just thank you so much for the opportunity.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
To learn more about Creative Soundplay, visit www. creativesoundplay. com or reach out to Hayes Greenfield through his website at www. hayesgreenfield. com.
Hayes Greenfield:
You know it's probably the best email to email me. Is it hayes csp@ gmail. com, or I'm finally setting up info at creativesoundplay. com. And, by the way, you know, if you're interested in taking the course, I have certificates.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
Nice, that's good to know. All right, so go to the website, take the course and get certified.
Hayes Greenfield:
Yeah.
Dr. Lisa Hassler:
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa@ drlisarhassler. com, or visit my website at www. drlisarhassler. com and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.
