Music Literacy and Language Literacy: Parallel Connections
Do I need to know about Brain-Targeted Teaching? Are there similarities between songs and stories? What are the benefits of combining music and English language arts (ELA)? Why would I spend music time to read a book with my students? Within this article, I provide answers to these questions and a sample activity that promotes music learning and language learning.
Brain-Targeted Teaching
Brain-Targeted Teaching (Hardiman, 2006) addresses students’ emotional and cognitive needs. Neuroscientists recognize the interactions between the cognitive and emotional brain systems. The brain processes incoming stimuli first in the emotional center. “If information processing is short-circuited to the emotional center before the thinking center, long-term memory and deep learning is significantly impaired” (Hardiman, online); therefore, teachers that incorporate teaching strategies for promoting positive emotion can enhance long-term memory. Music is an effective tool for promoting positive emotions.
Similarities Between Songs and Stories
There exists a strong relationship between songs and stories; both can enhance brain development and increase a child’s vocabulary. Trollinger (2010) notes the brain functions in a similar fashion when an individual reads aloud or sings, and that singing positively effects language development, speech, and comprehension. The sounds and foundational structures of reading and singing provide children “multiple opportunities for engaging in reciprocal vocalizations while simultaneously immersing children in the structure, rhythms, rhymes, and melodic patterns of language” (Cooper, 2010, p. 24). Brain imaging provides researchers and teachers with evidence that songs and stories can “light up the brain” and “research shows that a love of books is the number-one determinant of future academic success” (Cooper, 2010, p. 24; Pfaff, 2008, pp. 123-124). The figure below shows the structural similarities between music learning and linguistic learning.
by Shelly Cooper Editor’s Note: This article appears as one of a series written especially for Ala Breve by experts in the field of music education. Benefits of Combining Music and English Language Arts
“Children who are immersed in music and language are more prepared to listen, more receptive and alert, and more active in their responses” (Cooper, 2010, p. 26). Songs and “sound stories” provide opportunities for students to manipulate individual phonemes (song examples: Apples and Bananas, Old MacDonald, Come to My Farm). Songs help children in the production of phonemes because during singing sounds are produced at a slower rate (the ratio is approximately 1:2) and with greater separation of phonemes. Singing a book to and with a child offers the benefit of manipulating individual phonemes in an enjoyable manner.
When teachers sing the words, they produce sounds at a slower rate that provides children more time to process, which in turn promotes phonemic awareness and language comprehension. Through singing—whether by using phrases of the text or creating songs to enhance existing text—children are provided opportunities to echo and respond to the teacher. These types of response activities avoid students becoming “stranded at superficial levels of comprehension” (Cunningham, et al., 1989, p. 130). Integrated music lessons provide rich reading response activities that help students build and increase vocabulary, comprehension, phonological awareness, and reading fluency. The arts “enhance and motivate other learning. The systems they nourish, which include our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and other motor capacities, are, in fact, the driving forces behind all other learning” (Jensen, 2001, p. 2).
Answers to Questions
Do I need to know about Brain-Targeted Teaching? Yes. If we provide students with positive learning environments and promote positive emotional responses, they are likely to recall more information and store than information in both short
Figure 1: Musical and Linguistic Learning - Baa Baa Black Sheep Musical Learning
Antecedent consequent phrasing
Inflection that rises and falls with the sense of the phrase
Harmonic sense
Singular sounds flowing together to create a larger meaning
Source:
http://www.ecmma.org/blog/movement_matters/teaching_literacy_is_teaching_music 52 October/November 2014
Linguistic Learning Asking a question, responding with answer
A tonal language based upon a melodic scale Sentence structure built upon parts of speech
Inflection that rises and falls with the sense of the phrase
Alliteration and rhyme
Singular sounds flowing together to create a larger meaning
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