Want to Teach Reading and Math? Try Singing!

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Written by Elizabeth Poncelet

This was the title of a session that I attended at the Minnesota Educators Association Conference (MEA) in October of 2019. As an elementary music specialist, I was hooked. I knew that music supported literacy and math; I simply needed the data to back it up. So this was the start of my research project, Music: The Link to Literacy.

Correlation Between Music and Literacy
Previous research has indicated that there is a correlation between music training and reading, specifically pre-reading abilities (Corrigall & Trainor, 2011). According to Hall and Robinson (2019), music and reading share three primary learning processes: auditory processing—which is the ability to hear and manage sound; symbolic representation processing—which is the use of symbols to communicate a message; and coding processing—which is the ability to use encoding and decoding processes to make meaning. With their individual studies, Moreno, Friesen, and Bialystok (2011) and Swierk (2018) supported this belief that music training for children improved rhyme awareness, the ability to understand that a symbol can be a representation of a concept, and memory processes.

Music and the Brain
Just as the leaders in literacy believe it should be the phonemes before the graphemes, the music leaders, such as Feierabend, Kodaly, Orff and Suzuki, agree it should be the sounds before the visual notation (Choksy, 1987; Frazee & Kreuter, 1997). This raises the question, Could music provide that link to literacy?

  • Daily singing activates more areas of the brain than almost any other singular activity. In addition, daily singing boosts vitality, fights disease, and enhances lung capacity and memory (Olsen, 2003).
  • Brain research tells us that the ability to keep a steady beat and the playing of musical instruments are both significantly correlated with higher reading achievement (Kraus, 2010).
  • Folk songs provide simple, basic, and easily sung patterns that can be remembered. Folk songs are passed down from generation to generation and assist in developing language, expression, vocabulary, and fluency needed for reading. Using folk songs and singing games to practice reading and math skills raises achievement (Olson, 2003).
  • Children learn more easily and retain information longer when rhyme, rhythm, and music are used as an avenue for enhancing learning (Hanson, Bernstorf and Stuber, 2014).

Music Really Does Affect Literacy
With these facts in mind, I implemented a four-week music curricular program based around phonological and phonemic awareness. After implementation of this program, I compared the results of the treatment group (my four sections of Kindergarten students) to the control group (the other two buildings of Kindergarten students) where the program had not been implemented.  Looking at the data from pre-test scores of the different subtests of the Phonological Awareness Skills Test as compared to the post-test scores, students in the control group increased an average of 30-40 percentage points, while the treatment group increased on average about 50-60 percentage points! For almost every single subtest, the percent increase was significantly higher in the treatment group than the control group.

The data is there! Want to teach reading and math? TRY SINGING!

Elizabeth Poncelet (MS Ed-Instruction ’22) teaches at Pinecrest Elementary-Hastings MN.

References
Choksy, L. (1987). The kodaly method: Comprehensive music education from infant to adult (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall.

Corrigall, K.A., & Trainor, L. (2011). Associations Between Length of Music Training and Reading Skills in Children. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 29, 147-155.

Frazee, J., & Kreuter, K. (1997). Discovering orff: A curriculum for music teachers (LIVRE SUR LA MU) (Illustrated ed.). Schott.

Hall, S. N., & Robinson, N. R. (2012). Music and Reading: Finding Connections from Within. General Music Today, 26(1), 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/1048371311432005

Hansen, D., Bernstorf, E. D., & Stuber, G. M. (2014). The music and literacy connection. Rowman & Littlefield.

Kraus, N., & Chandrasekaran, B. (2010). Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 599-605.

Moreno, S., Friesen, D.C., & Bialystok, E. (2011). Effect of Music Training on Promoting Pre-Literacy Skills: Preliminary Causal Evidence. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 29, 165-172.

Olson, E. (2003). Affirming parallel concepts among reading, mathematics, and music through Kodály music instruction [University of Iowa]. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.005640

Swierk, K.G. (2018). Correlation Between Music and Preliteracy Skills in Preschool Age Children. Undergraduate Research Journal, 4, 5.

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