Big Idea

I had my students submit a playlist of 5 songs that they connect with. I asked students to think of songs that would set them apart from other students – such that when we looked at the songs, we definitely knew it was them. The idea was to see if students could predict who could be good friends or just acquaintances based on song choice- sort of like how FB can predict possible connections based on interests. After I collected them, I typed them out onto anonymous cards and handed them out to students. Of course, once they got them, they wanted to find and share who they were on this grid but I told them to keep it a secret for now.

Their job was to sort the students on a scale from one extreme to another based on musical taste.

The idea was that students who were right beside each other were close friends while the further away from each other meant that they were only acquaintances or perhaps people they wouldn’t talk to in class. I gave them 15 minutes to cut out, organize, discuss, sort, and listen to tunes. After, I had a few groups share their lists on the board and we looked. We found that there were of course similarities, which showed that there were students with similar musical tastes. But, does that mean students who are matched close together are good friends?

In the end, I showed them a list that matched the student to the playlists and people got to see who they felt should be their closest friend due to musical taste. And, I asked, does musical taste predict close friendships? Explain using the CER format.

Resources

Handout(s): Handout – Predict Friends Using Playlists

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