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Listen. What's that in the background? Is it rock, country or classical music? Did you know that certain types of music can help you focus?

March is Music in Our Schools Month, which was created to increase awareness of the importance of music in student's lives.

"Music has the potential to take a person from the Beta brainwave state to deeper Alpha, and then Theta brainwave states, depending on the music," explained Dr. Masha Godkin, a professor in the Department of Marriage and Family Sciences at Northcentral University.

"Music activates both the left and right brain at the same time, and the activation of both hemispheres can maximize learning and improve memory," says Dr. Masha Godkin

According to Godkin, it's good to stick with classical music. One reason this genre works well is that there are no lyrics to distract you. You can also branch out into meditation music, which is ideal for concentration as it is meant to relieve stress and relax your mind.

Music has a profound effect on our mood, blood pressure, and heart rate. For the best music to focus and study, choose tunes that keep you awake but won't cause you to start tapping your body to the beat.

Instead of relying on the radio or a random mix on Pandora or Spotify, it can help to create a playlist of the best study music for concentration. You can plan a set amount of uninterrupted music, which serves as a built-in timer for studying. When the music is up, you've earned a break.

Everyone's taste in music is different, but when it comes to creating the best study music playlist, here are some genres and tips to consider:

Go Classical
You may not want to go to a symphony concert, but the soothing sounds of classical orchestra music seem to increase mood and productivity, which makes it great for studying.

Consider Tempo
Music with 60-70 beats per minute like Beethoven's Fur Elise appears to help students study longer and retain more information.

Spa Music
Ambient sounds that you would expect to hear on a soundtrack during a spa treatment can help you relax.

Nature Sounds
Like ambient music, the sounds of babbling brooks, birds, wind and rain are very calming and make great background noise. You can even create your own mix with websites like Noisli.

Electronic Music
New Age and ambient EDM music are a good choice for those who don't like classical. Any music with little to no lyrics is best.

Sound Control
The volume of your study music is key. Don't drown out your own thoughts. Remember, it's supposed to be in the background.

We would love to know what's on your study playlist. Follow Northcentral University on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what music helps you get through school!

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Listen. What's that in the background? Is it rock, country or classical music? Did you know that certain types of music can help you focus?March is Music in Our Schools Month, which was created to increase awareness of the importance of music in student's lives.

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Find out whether music makes studying easier or distracts students from learning.

In an age where every student has an iPod or iTunes capability, the integration of music in the classroom has grown phenomenally. From personal study music to historical music from an era the class is learning about, music can either be a great motivator for learning or a huge distraction.

There have been many studies done over the years about the effect of music and learning. They all look at the same question though: does music make studying easier or does it distract you from learning?

According to the study "Effects of Background Music on Phonological Short-term Memory" by Salame and Baddeley, listening to lyrical music while studying creates a huge distraction. And that means people don't remember certain tasks and bits of knowledge they need the most for learning.

According to Current Psychology and the study of Salame and Baddeley, "Music as well as speech is highly structured, and one may therefore expect to find the same disruption with music as is apparent with speech." This means that distractions from bothersome surrounding discussions are equivalent to listening to music.

When asked about these effects, senior Daniel Shader at Empire High School in Tucson, Ariz., said, "Music definitely has an effect on the way you think and act ... But I think it does help me concentrate because then I can drown out the other [students]."

At Empire, American history teacher Katie Chester took time to discuss her thoughts of music in the classroom. Upon walking into her classroom for the interview, she was playing music from the '50s era that her 5th period American History class was learning about that day.

When asked about the effect of playing era-based music, Ms. Chester responded by saying: "For history, we do music of the time period to get a more emotional look at the era. Plus classical stuff helps [the class] calm down and focus."

The response from a student's perspective on historic teaching with music is much the same as Ms. Chester. Shader was a student in Ms. Chester's American History class his junior year and he said, "It was cool to kind of understand what that era was about."

Upon Ms. Chester's last remark, I then mentioned the constant use of iPods and other music devices used in class. In Ms. Chester's opinion, "Music and iPods are rewards for good behavior. They can definitely be a distraction though because the students become more focused on finding that perfect song and it takes away from the work. However, it does make a good motivator to work."

From a student view, iPods in class are just a means of either drowning out other students or a source of fun. For Shader, "I only listen to [music] when I'm bored."

Works Cited

Pring, Linda, and Jane Walker. "The effects of unvocalized music on short-term memory." Current Psychology. 13.2 (1994): n. pag. Web. 2 Feb 2011.
About the author: Shelby Archuleta is a very sleepy senior.

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Music in the Classroom: Distraction or Study Tool?

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Find out whether music makes studying easier or distracts students from learning. In an age where every student has an iPod or iTunes capability, the integration of music in the classroom has grown phenomenally. From personal study music to historical music from an era the class is learning about, music can either be a great motivator for learning or a huge distraction.

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There is a wealth of psychology research that can help teachers to improve how they work with students, but academic studies of this kind aren't always easy to access or translate into the realities of classroom practice. This series seeks to redress that by taking a selection of studies and making sense of the important information for teachers, as we all seek to answer the question: how can we help our students do better at school? This time, we consider growth mindset.
Many students do their homework and revision while listening to music. Many of them will swear that listening to their favourite songs makes them study better. But does music help or hinder learning? And does it matter what type of music you listen to while revising?

Researchers from the applied psychology department of Cardiff Metropolitan University led a study to answer this question. The authors, Nick Perham and Harriet Currie, assigned students into one of four groups: the first revised in silence, the second revised while listening to music with lyrics they liked (which included songs from One Direction and Katy Perry), the third group revised to music with lyrics they did not like (which comprised of very heavy metal bands), and the fourth group revised listening to music without lyrics.

The participants then took a test on the passages they had been revising, rating how distracting their environment had been, as well as writing down their predictions for how well they thought they had done.

What are the main findings?

1. Students who revised in quiet environments performed more than 60% better in an exam than their peers who revised while listening to music that had lyrics.

2. Students who revised while listening to music without lyrics did better than those who had revised to music with lyrics.

3. It made no difference if students revised listening to songs they liked or disliked. Both led to a reduction in their test performance.

4. Students who revised in silence rated their environment as less distracting and accurately predicted that this would lead to better performances in subsequent tests.

Related research

There are some benefits to listening to music while performing certain tasks. It can be quite motivating and it can improve mood (listening to your favourite song tends to make people smile, for example). But it does not help people learn new or complex material.

The misconception that music does help us learn stems from a series of studies linked to the " Mozart effect ", which found that people performed better on a series of cognitive tasks after listening to 10 minutes of Mozart. Participants in these studies appeared to be getting smarter and performing better in tests.

However, further research has since revealed this is not the case. While listening to music before a task can make someone feel better, listening to it while trying to learn something new tends not to help. This is because music - especially tunes with lyrics - can take up processing space. This conflicts with the material you are trying to learn, effectively creating a bottleneck in your memory, as there is less space to process what you are revising.

What does this mean for the classroom?

It is important that students are made aware of the pitfalls of listening to music when revising. Perham and Currie's study found that students rated the quiet environment as less distracting and better for them, yet many students continue to listen to music during their homework. Why? Perhaps they're doing so out of habit, or they confuse what improves their mood with what leads to good revision, or it alleviates boredom. Perhaps it's simply because everyone else is doing it.

Students need to know how to revise well. There may well be a time and place to listen to music during the course of their revision, but not when they are learning new and complex material. After all, silence is golden.

Bradley Busch is a registered psychologist, director at InnerDrive and author of Release Your Inner Drive. Follow @Inner_Drive on Twitter, and get advice on improving memory and a visual summary of this research on his website
Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach, like us on Facebook, and join the Guardian Teacher Network the latest articles direct to your inbox Looking for a teaching job? Or perhaps you need to recruit school staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs, the education specialist

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Drowned in sound: how listening to music hinders learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a wealth of psychology research that can help teachers to improve how they work with students, but academic studies of this kind aren't always easy to access or translate into the realities of classroom practice.