Spotify Classroom Playlists!

I don’t often play music in class, mainly because I don’t typically know what to play, don’t want to have to think about what song should come next, and don’t know if having music will distract students too much as they work.

HOWEVER…today was different.

Yesterday, a legend and icon passed away. Rest in peace Tina Turner, THE Queen of Rock n’ Roll. My parents loved Tina Turner and her music, so I grew up listening to her and knew almost all of her songs by the time I was in middle school. I am also a huge Tina Turner fan, and love her energy, strength, and incredible vocals.

Most of my students knew that Tina Turner had passed away yesterday, but hardly any of them knew her music, and when I showed them a photo of her and Ike Turner, none of them knew who Ike was. I gave them a brief run-down of Tina’s life, particularly her history with Ike, and then played them a quick snippet from Jay-Z and Beyonce’s song “Drunk in Love,” where Jay-Z raps “Eat the cake, Anna Mae, eat the cake, Anna Mae.” THAT song they all knew, but none of them had ever picked up on the Ike and Tina reference before today.

They spent the whole class practicing writing equations of exponential functions (blog post HERE about this task) and listening to Tina Turner’s biggest hits (in my opinion). Here is the playlist I made for today:

TINA TURNER TRIBUTE playlist

The Friday before the Superbowl, we had a Rihanna Day, which they LOVED, to celebrate her first live performance in years. Rihanna’s music was a huge part of my college years, so I was very excited to have a reason to play her best (clean version) hits! They still talk about this day and try to get me to play her songs again.

RIHANNA DAY playlist

Last year, when students were working on an art and math project, I made a playlist that would play the orchestra version of a well-known song followed by the original version of that song. I love the orchestra versions of the songs, and it was fun to have the students guess which original song was playing based on just the orchestra instruments.

BRIDGERTON playlist (orchestra version and original versions)

This is a list of songs I enjoy that are easy to listen to no matter what your music preferences are.

EASY LISTENING playlist