Advantage Arts Academy Arts Integration Director Cindy Jahnsen has more engaging lesson ideas than you can shake a stick at, but she chose sticks and the steady beat method to introduce to teachers at their monthly training meeting. The method uses a steady four-count or eight-count beat to turn any information into an easy to remember rhythmic phrase.

 “I wanted to show the teachers how they can incorporate it into their curriculum, because not all of them are music people, but they can keep that steady beat and feel how that cadence runs through the phrase,” she said. “It’s kind of fun, and I love how the teachers have just run with it.”

As an easy and versatile teaching tool, the steady beat method can be adapted to loud bucket drums or softly tapping fingers, but most teachers just stick with hands or drumsticks.

The steady beat method is off the beaten path for most schools, but it’s a big hit with teachers at Advantage Arts Academy, who follow an arts integration educational philosophy to bring music, drama and movement into nearly every lesson.

Kindergarten teacher Cassandra Bateman discovered that using the beat method makes learning and practicing sight words more fun and easier for her students. They love to tap their hands or percussion instruments as they spell their sight words or rehearse spelling rules in unison. She said it is easier to keep everyone on task because it’s so engaging.

“I love it because it kind of gives structure to their learning,” Bateman said. “And it makes them more engaged because they get to stay with you. They’re focused, and in order to be involved, they have to be focused.”

She began using the technique just a few months ago, but Bateman said it has already become the students’ favorite time of the day. They have responded so well, she is beginning to apply the method to math and science lessons, too.

“We do it multiple times a day,” Bateman said. “There’s times where we’ll just be sitting on the carpet and if something comes to my head, I’ll say, ‘let’s tap it out’ and then they’re just following along, repeating what I do.”

Upper grade teachers are also seeing measurable benefits, and are committed to stick with the program, as well. Fourth-grade teacher Jen Parks uses it to gamify lessons. As a review of prepositional phrases, the class tapped a steady beat as each student took four counts to think of an example of a prepositional phrase and share it with the class.

“It made them have to think faster, because they have to do it on beat,” Parks said. “They had to be ready and that helped them, I think, to put everything together, truly using all parts of their brain at the same time.”

Parks said the steady beat method engages kids who are auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners. “You’re getting the whole gamut of learning styles by doing it, and hopefully it sticks,” she said.

Her students wrote their own rhythmic definitions of math terms to a steady beat, which they can chant to themselves when they encounter them on an assignment or a test.

“I’m noticing they’re remembering because these beats kind of get stuck in their head,” she said. “And they’ve created the beats themselves, so they’re more likely to remember. It’s not something I just gave them.”

Jahnsen said the activity was a great example of partnering academics and music.

“I was really impressed with the vocabulary that they had in there and how well they were thinking about how it fit into the measures,” she said.

Jahnsen works with students each week and regularly collaborates with teachers to tie-in music, art and movement activities to their curriculum.

Advantage Arts Academy Charter School has 315 K-6 students enrolled. The school opened three years ago and is not yet up to full capacity, but some parents are already beating a path to the door.

Jennifer Myers drives her two daughters all the way from Eagle Mountain each day to attend the school, where she said her fifth-grader, Lily, has really blossomed.

“She is very artistic and she seems to really focus when she gets to do things with her hands and be more involved,” she said. She said Lily makes better connections and is better able to show what she’s learned when there’s an art project involved.

Lily’s writing and reading skills have improved and she recently took the initiative to write a story about her teacher’s pet, a fish named EGBDF, and have her friends act it out for the entire school. “It was just for fun,” Lily said.

Principal Kelly Simonsen said AAA teachers bring tons of experience and talent to their classrooms. Some teachers have advanced degrees in drama, others are accomplished singers or have extensive experience in the visual arts. Bateman is one of the Utah Jazz Dancers.

“I think we’ve got a great collection of artists and artists-at-heart who want to share that with the kids,” Simonsen said. “The arts, the dancing, the moving, the singing—it just speaks to everybody, no matter how old you are. It is easy for teachers to get caught up in the lesson plans and the grading papers and the not so fun parts. But in our trainings, we really try to encourage our teachers to have fun with it, to make their class a place they would want to be as a child.” λ