April 21, 2014

Connections between literacy and music?

One of the tools that has proven effective in over 30 years of teaching reading has been the power of using music. As I have observed children over the years, I have grown to value the importance of music as a springboard to all learning—especially literacy development.

Here is some research that documents this observation:

Does music improve reading?

The authors of a classic study (Hurwitz et al, 1975) asked whether music training improved reading performance in first grade children. The experimental group received musical instruction including listening to folk songs with an emphasis on listening for melodic and rhythmic elements. The control group consisted of children who were matched in age, IQ, and socioeconomic status and who received no special treatment. After training, the music group exhibited significantly higher reading scores than did the control group, scoring in the 88th percentile versus the 72nd percentile.

After an additional year, the experimental group’s reading comprehension scores were still superior to the control groups’s scores. These findings provide initial support for the view that music instruction facilitates the ability to read.

And some reading readiness research reveals:

Does music help build listening skills?

“Learning to listen is a prerequisite to listening to learn” stresses researcher Mayesky (1986). Listening is the first language mode that children acquire, and it provides a foundation for all aspects of language and reading development. Listening is a very large part of school learning, with students spending an estimated 50 to 75 percent of classroom time listening to the teacher, to other students, or to media (Smith, 1992) Despite the frequency of listening activity in classrooms, listening skills are not frequently taught explicitly (Hyslop & Tone, 1988; Newton, 1990). “Most teachers teach, assuming that because they are talking, their students are listening.” (Swanson, 1996). As a result, many children do not acquire the listening skills necessary to acquire new knowledge and information. Too often listening is thought to be a natural skill that develops automatically, but in fact developing good listening skills requires explicit instruction. “If we expect children to become good listeners, we need to teach them to become active listeners” (Jalongo, 1995). Direct instruction in listening skills should include

lessons designed to specifically teach and model the skills necessary for active listening” (Matheson, Moon & Winiecki, 2000)

What about phonological and phonemic awareness— does music have any impact?

Phonologicalawareness, according to Snow, Burns & Griffin (1998), “refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their meaning.” Within phonological awareness but more fine-grained is phonemic awareness, which the same researchers explain as an understanding that words can be divided into a sequence of phonemes (individual units of speech sounds). In her research Adams (1990) states that children’s level of phonemic awareness on entering school may be the single most powerful determinant of the success he or she will experience in learning to read. To become successful readers young children need to understand that words are made up of discrete sounds, and they can then use that knowledge of sound to read and build words. Phonological and phonemic awareness receive so much attention because research shows that children with these skills are more successful at learning to read than those without these skills.(Bradley&Bryant,1985;Ehrietal,2001;Stanovich,1986;

Torgesen&Mathes,2000).

To understand the impact of musical experiences on children’s development of phonological awareness, it helps to understand the similarities between music and language. Where spoken language is comprised of a stream of connected phonemes, music is comprised of a series of discrete musical notes, or tones. Understanding a spoken sentence requires successfulauditory processing of the individualphonemes combined with the intonation communicated by pitch, and hearing music requires listening for the individual notes combined with their rhythmic values. Because of these fundamental similarities, we process music and language in similar ways. Many top educational researchers recommend integrating music into phonological awareness instruction. Songs—specifically rhyming songs—are an effective mechanism for building phonemic awareness with children in early childhood classrooms:

(Adams, Foorman, Lundberg&Beeler,1998;Ericson&Juliebo,1998;Yopp&Yopp,1997) Music improves phonological  and phonemic awareness.