Early Literacy Education Essays

Early Literacy Education Essays Early Literacy Education Essay Early Literacy Education Essay There has been a popular phrase that purports that â€Å"music is a universal language†. Even in the past, the relationship between music and language has been addressed by musicians, philosophers, and scholars (Bernstein, 1976). The musicologist Curt Sachs (1943) proposed that â€Å"music began with singing†. Comparisons between music and language are prompted by the strong similarities between the two. Both have an inherent structure and evolve over a temporal continuum, both have a meaning for the listener, and are innate expressions of human capacities. In music and in language there is a phonetic, a syntactic, and a semantic level.When children go to school, their experiences extend and enrich language learning. While some children come to school with an extensive ability to communicate, others need help in developing a rich repertoire of shared meanings. The subjects in school are embedded in the development of many verbal communication skills. When mastered, the children can easily learn concepts through songs as they become an aid to thinking.In this case, we can deem that music and language are both modes of communication, yet they have different goals. Generally speaking, while the primary aim of language is to communicate thought, one of the main goals of music is to heighten emotions and express them aesthetically. Music is born out of the need to express ourselves and to communicate aesthetically through the abstractness and the characteristics of sound (Aiello Sloboda, 1994, p. 42). As young children enjoy listening and talking in natural settings, music can be a useful tool in the learning process of children. The lyrics of familiar songs and nursery rhymes give children the opportunity to repeat familiar words and phrases in a joyful way.The magnanimous impact of music to literacy has been supported by a study by Smith (May 2000). In the article entitled â€Å"Singing and Songwriting Support Early Literacy Instruction†, Smi th provided examples of singing and songwriting activities that can support early literacy instruction in the areas of letter names and sounds, phonemic awareness, print conventions, background knowledge, vocabulary, decoding, and writing. Smith recommended that these methods can aid readers to adapt and expand upon his ideas to create their own singing and songwriting literacy activities.Summary of Smith’s ArticleSmith (2000) obtained previous studies behind the advocacy of using the arts in education. He mentioned that Dean and Gross (1992), Eisner (1992) and Hanna (1992) all agreed that art, music, dance, and drama activities can be used effectively in a variety of academic, social, and personal benefits for students. Smith suggested that meta-analyses of arts education research studies inferred that music activities in particular are â€Å"strongly associated with nonmusical curricular outcomes†. In fact, many studies have proven that music activities can augment à ¢â‚¬Å"students’ academic performance (Miller Coen, 1994), social skills (Surace, 1992), and content learning (Kassell, 1997)†.Across the world, teachers are working to improve the literacy performance of their students. Many teachers have created and implemented innovative approaches to translate current research into classroom practices. Given the explosion of information available about early literacy development, teachers are considering new approaches to their instructional repertoires. For example, we know that a young childs developing literacy skills are exercised when â€Å"emergent readers hear, sing, discuss, play with, and write songs, they are building important background knowledge that they will draw upon during later reading and writing experiences. With each new song, students learn concepts and word meanings that they will encounter in print† (Smith, 2000).Smith revealed that educators have suggested ways to use music to help students learn â₠¬Å"alphabet sounds and letters (Page, 1995), develop phonemic awareness (Ericson ; Juliebo, 1998; Yopp ; Yopp, 1997), and build vocabulary (Jalongo ; Ribblett, 1997). McCracken and McCracken (1998) describe activities for using nursery rhymes and songs to teach print conventions and basic spelling patterns†. In a similar study by Jalongo and Ribblett (1997), they supported that reading teachers have looked upon children’s memorization of a favorite book as unconnected to â€Å"real† reading. This is why, educators now know, based on emergent literacy research, that an important breakthrough in the literacy process occurs when a child knows a few books so well that he or she can tell if any portion of the text has been skipped or altered. Teachers also recognize that the typical young child arrives at school with a repertoire of memorized song lyrics, both contemporary and traditional, and that this oral language, when supported by written texts and musical enjoym ent, can become a valuable resource for reading instruction (Jalongo ; Ribblett, 1997).This is why Smith (2000) identified several literacy instructions (letter names and sounds, phonemic awareness, print conventions, background knowledge, vocabulary, decoding, and writing) where singing and songwriting can suitably be used. Smith (2000) provided salient examples where songs can be an aid in these areas. For example, in letter names and sounds, Smith (2000) identified that â€Å"pointing to the letters on the ABC song chart while singing the song helps my students establish a visual representation for each letter†. He also suggested that â€Å"follow-up activities to further reinforce learning of the letter names include having students chant the letter names as the teacher points to them in random order, and matching activities with alphabet letter cards or plastic magnetic letters. As students become familiar with the letter names, they can use letter cards to reconstruct the ABC song chart on the floor or a tabletop†. Smith (2000) even shared his experience in using â€Å"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star† to help his first-grade beginning readers understand that vowel letters make both long and short sounds. More importantly, Smith (2000) suggested that songwriting activities could assist in reading instruction because it â€Å"complements the joys and learning opportunities associated with singing†. To enable students to create their original lyrics, or even â€Å"re-writing† lyrics to an existing song could be a participative activity for both children and teacher because the teacher can suggest the song’s text and melodic patterns to support students’ songwriting efforts. Thus, â€Å"repetitive and cumulative songs provide extra support for initial songwriting in the same way that pattern and predictable books provide extra support for initial reading†.Critique of Smith’s ArticleSmith (2000) liste d the various ways teachers can enrich their early literacy lessons through songs and songwriting. He enumerated specific areas of literacy (letter names and sounds, phonemic awareness, print conventions, background knowledge, vocabulary, decoding, and writing) where music can assist and how songs can be used in these areas. Smith (2000) backed his suggestions with previous studies and his own experiences to prove the viability of the suggestions. With this, we can laud the author’s success in making his point by suggesting these methods. Smith (2000) made sure that the â€Å"use and interpretation of information† in his article is effective because he provided clear examples and even included the song lyrics used in his examples. Moreover, the author’s logic and the coherence of the article are satisfactory enough to be understood by common people who could find a good use of the methods he suggested.However, nowhere in the article where readers can actually pr ove scientifically that indeed song and songwriting can indeed effectuate learning to students. What Smith did was just list down possible methods, without mentioning the â€Å"measurable† outcome of these methods when applied by actual teachers. Thus, Smith’s article can fall short of just being an enumeration of activities using song and songwriting to early literacy education, without mentioning the rate of effectiveness of these methods. It leaves everything to the teachers to do the trial-and-error work to know which of these lessons can be assured to work as expected.ConclusionIndeed, music can transform into an integral part of instruction for students with special needs because it allows all children to participate in an activity at their ability level and provides a sense of community. In fact, music is one of Gardner’s (1993) multiple intelligences and, as such, combines various modalities to enhance learning (Edwards, 2002). Music is fun. It is joyful , nonjudgmental, noncompetitive, and predicable. This is why Smith (2000) had observed it as a viable tool to aid the literacy education of children. One use of songs in literacy is that songs hook the children into reading and listening comprehension. Children can easily understand the story when they sing and act out the story line, determine sequence of events, analyze characters, and much more. Light (2004) even revealed that songs can even help students tune into directions by singing them. Traditional work songs were written to make jobs more fun. Use traditional tunes with your own words. For example, â€Å"This is the way we wash our clothes † can become â€Å"This is the way we get our coats † (Press, 2006).Despite the observed flaw of Smith’s article due to the fact that it just enumerated methods but did not quantify the efficacy of each method, it can still be considered as a valuable reading for early literacy educators because of the specific areas it identified where songs and songwriting can be useful. It definitely could serve as an effective springboard to future studies in the areas of early literacy education methods and this study could be extended by measuring the effectiveness of each method and used in different scenarios like bilingual early literacy learners.;