About Listen to the Butterfly

Listen to the Butterfly, the website, is the culmination of more than five years of practice in the classroom of a learning strategy that has proven to be entertaining, effective, and, most of all, educational. The strategy was designed to make use of the fact that students just can't seem to give up their technology while in class. Because of this, we decided to take advantage of their use of mobile technology to entertain themselves. The aspect we chose, of course, is audio, because students can't listen to enough music.

We realized that songs are one of the keys to learning and that clearly articulated lyrics and music actually encourage students to put away their devices and tune in to practice their reading, literary, and listening skills. As a matter of fact, listening comprehension time was one of the most productive times of any educational unit we taught because all the student had to do was focus for about four minutes and answer ten questions correctly.

The listening comprehension quizzes were given at the beginning or the end of lessons and units and also during a unit to keep the momentum going. One advantage of the strategy is that students can leave class and replay the song in order to make more lasting connections to the material that is being studied. Another advantage is that auditory learners had their "day in court" on a regular basis, and this contributed to a well-run classroom. Also, connections to poetry are easily made with lyrical listening comprehension.

We chose to use ten questions for easy grade calculation, but quizzes may be modified to accommodate class types such as regular, honors, AP, and so on. Lyrical listening comprehension was regarded highly by the students and served as a platform for them to analyze more complex material while listening to or watching it, as in the case of political debates, oral presentations, and newscasts. The great thing about the quizzes is the swiftness with which students put away their devices just to listen, answer, discuss and connect.

Finally, when we employed the strategy, we maintained control of the music through the use of speakers that were part of our class computers. We encourage you to give this strategy a try. We are confident that it will add life to your already creative instruction!

How it works.

Maintain silence before initiating the audio (YouTube).
Pass out quizzes face down on each desk.
Play the song.
Allow students to write notes.
At the end of the song, students will turn the quiz over and answer the questions.
(We permitted one minute more than the duration of the song to complete the quizzes.)
Collect quizzes if for credit, or permit students to switch papers and give answers.
Discussion.

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