AsiaLIFE

The launch of an educational music project aims to make learning more fun and exciting for children, teachers, and parents. Words by Dorine Schreiner.

Anyone who has been to a karaoke knows of the popularity of song in the Kingdom of Wonder. Whether you want to relax after a gruelling week at work or get closer to some local work colleagues, the power of music can never be overestimated. But does music also have the ability to inspire children to enjoy learning subjects such as science in the capital’s international schools? iCan’s music teacher, Andy Hawkings, certainly believes so.

‘Mr Andy Sings … Science’ is a project devised by Hawkings to teach the British curriculum to children at iCan. The British international school’s curriculum has 36 units of work in the science strand for children aged between five and eleven. Andy has written a song that delivers the learning objectives for each of these units.

“The aim is to make learning fun and, hopefully, each song is fun to learn and fun to sing,” he says. “The songs can be turned into a dance, a performance or a finger play thus appealing more to kinaesthetic learners.”

These activities, together with the visual and auditory activities required to learn a song, are aiding learners of all types in their pursuit for knowledge.

The idea for the project was born whilst Andy was still working in the U.K. He noticed the power that music had in supporting a child’s learning.

After arriving in Cambodia, in 2007, he took the opportunity to see how much of the curriculum he could deliver through song.

He wrote eighteen songs for his class of six year olds that covered all areas of the curriculum, from counting to 10 to coping with bullying. These songs are compiled on an album called ‘Mr Andy and Friends’. Parents tell him that his songs are still sung along to by kids two years after first learning them.

Hawkings’ first music teaching experience was in 2001.

After returning to the U.K. from a trip to learn the local traditional music in Senegal and the Gambia, Hawkings’ West African drum teacher asked him to take care of his class in Brighton. Noticing that some students kept repeating their mistakes, he helped them individually to improve their skills. Their appreciation and progress was so great that Hawkings decided to go into teaching.

In 2003, he became a qualified primary school teacher and he’s been teaching guitar, ukulele and percussion to children and adults ever since.

Hawkings recalls a particular moment when he was in secondary school. He hadn’t studied for a German test. Five minutes before the exam he made up a song to remember the vocabulary. During the test he simply sang the song over and over again and managed to pass the exam with high marks.

“Children, and even adults, understand things best when they are interested or enjoying themselves,” he says. “Mnemonics in songs or singing about outer space, micro-organisms, materials and other topics make it all the more exciting and that motivates people to learn.”

The contents of the science curriculum will be waltzing through the heads of the children, just by singing the songs they learned.

The next step for Hawkings, who is also the music director for the Phnom Penh Players providing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the last two pantomimes, is to introduce his style of learning through song into other international schools as well as into local schools. His song writing workshops can tie in with any class or whole school topics that they are working on.

“The lyric generation process is excellent at stimulating thought and encourages the children to think about the key concepts,” he says.

The ultimate goal is to develop a “Mr Andy Sings …” book and CD for each subject area, which will then offer the entire British national curriculum through song at home. A ‘Mr Andy Sings… Religious Festivals’ book and CD is the next project plan.

“Hopefully, with these products parents will be able to help their children learn about the world around them in the same format as they learn about it in school,” he says. “Happy singing!”

For all enquiries about song-writing workshops or guitar lessons, please contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .