One of the first ways we learn to communicate is through songs. At Rhymes with Reason, an educational technology company founded in 2017 by Austin Martin, the goal is to help turn that learning process into a method that can help expand vocabulary and improve reading levels.
Rhymes with Reason is a program that offers an engaging solution to improving vocabulary through the use of popular music, which works across all economic and racial levels.
The creator of Rhymes with Reason talks about his vision and what he hopes to achieve with the service.
Lyric learning for children
The first song I remember learning was the alphabet song. It was simple, melodic, and helped me remember the lyrics. It was also much easier to learn a song than to remember the lyrics individually. It's been over 30 years and I still remember the alphabet song as well as I remember other songs that played on the radio or my mother's vinyl records when I was younger.
For Martin, founder and CEO of Rhymes with reasonTraditional learning methods did not appeal to him, but music did.
“I didn’t like traditional studies. I didn’t see how they were relevant to my life and the things I cared about,” Martin says. “But I’ve been obsessed with lyrics, obsessed with music, particularly hip hop, my whole life. I would print out lyrics when I came home from school, research every reference, every double entendre and everything I could think of. That made me a good student, particularly in English and language arts, humanities and related subjects. Over time, I became very good at school and a lot of that was due to that investment I made independently with music, lyrics and my favorite art.”
From this early adoption of musical learning came the beginnings of a system that today helps thousands of students learn vocabulary and reading skills.
Why music?
In one way or another, music plays a big part in our lives. We remember a lot of things simply by associating moments with music. From early memories that become clearer based on what we hear, to sing-along songs and mood-boosting music, to tunes from a generation that defined who we were at a certain time. Martin recognizes how music influences us all and uses it to help us better understand the English language.
“Some of our most important memories as human beings are tied to songs. Like the song you listened to when you moved on to college,” Martin says. “It’s a little bit after elementary school, but maybe a song you listened to when you won your first basketball game in high school, right? We remember these things because there are emotions attached to those memories. There are things that are near and dear to us that are attached to songs. We use that and ask ourselves how to tie it to learning and things you need to remember, things you need to retain to excel in school.”
But how are the songs selected to be part of this learning experience?
“The way the selection process works is we build a search engine,” Martin explains. “We have a database of lyrics that we licensed and we build a search function where we load words into it. We might want to get 50 words from seventh-grade biology. We’ll load that list of words into our database and it will show us all the times those words have been used in popular songs. We can filter them using different categories. Then there’s selection on our part in terms of what’s appropriate, what’s the correct use of that word. Because some artists might just use a word and not use it correctly. Then we write exercises around those examples.”
Using that database, Rhymes with Reason can search through thousands of modern songs to select those that accurately represent the vocabulary words educators are looking to teach their students. With an added human aspect, the selection process not only provides examples of a particular word, but also the correct usage of the word. And through this process, You can make a resume To improve students' understanding of the English language.
The platform offers more than 3,000 vocabulary words, 4,000 learning exercises and 2,200 quiz questions.
Looking to the future
Music is a universal medium that impacts people globally, so it makes sense that Rhymes with Reason would focus on expanding in that direction.
“We are trying out some things that are better positioned to work with what we would call emergent bilingual learners,” Martin says. “We are also looking to expand to all major urban cities in the United States. That is where our priority is in terms of scaling. With our company, we have strategic partners that help, as well as schools that often help and support our program. We want to make our program available to as many schools as possible.” technology-program-helps-students-build-literacy-through-popular-music/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” data-url=”https://rhymeswithreason.com/news/cavaliers-launch-rhymes-with-reason-program-at-clevelands-e-prep-cliffs-new-educational-technology-program-helps-students-build-literacy-through-popular-music/” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>We've partnered with the Cleveland Cavaliers, for example.“And they support our programming in Cleveland. We want to do the same in every major city in America.”
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