Can You Feel The Beat?

Music, to me, is very calming and peaceful.  It puts me into a state of mind where I can just focus and think.  In my classroom during free homework work time, I plan on playing soft soothing music.  I feel that it will help the students relax and not feel so tense or caught up in everything else around them.  Instead I hope it helps them clear their mind.  When listening to a song I have heard before, it normally brings back the memories to the time I first heard it.  If I have not heard the song before, I like to listen to the lyrics and feel the beat and tempo.  These are all memories that come back to me that give me the sense of relief everytime I turn on the radio, CD player, or Ipod.
In my classroom, however, I will not just use the music to get their mind off of things so that they can focus on some of the work, but yet I will find engaging music that goes along with the lesson plans to help them learn the material.  A lot of students learn better when something is to a beat rather than a drowned out lecture or video.  I would then find a wide variety of music to hopefully grasp every student at some point in time.  One of my assignments could be to find a song or create a song to relate it to the lesson that is going on; what a great way to not only get the students minds going, but also to give them something enjoyable to do for a project.  This I believe would motivate the students more on some of the assignments and to help them get their grades to improve.  Like I stated earlier, anything with a beat is a great way to get some information memorized because it gives a beat to move along to.