RM Winter 2016 FLIP

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Reading Matters
Teaching Matters
| 40| Reading Matters | Volume 16 • Winter 2016 |
encouraged her to learn how to hold the book and turn the
page and discover when the next section of print was coming
up. Observing how these tools were effective in teaching Sarah
prompted Julie’s interest in learning more about how songs,
chants, and sing-alongs can promote literacy in early readers.
Anvari, Trainor, Woodside, and Levy (2002) emphasize the
relationship between music and reading acquisition, particularly
in relation to phonemic and phonological awareness. To clarify,
phonemic awareness is a type of phonological awareness and
refers to discernment of phonemes. Phonological awareness
encompasses “any size unit of sound” (Yopp & Yopp, 2000, p. 130);
the ability to recognize and say rhyming words, to count syllables,
to segment word parts such as the beginning /ch/ and ending /ip/
are examples of such awareness. Early experiences with language,
especially speech that is intuitively altered when directed at
young infants, involve musical attributes. These attributes include
repetition, tempo or pacing, up/down patterns in pitch, much
like the rising, falling, drawn out, and staccato notes in a song.
Children hear and become sensitized to these differences. This
parallel between music and early speech suggests that “early
skill with music might enhance reading acquisition to the extent
that reading depends on the same basic auditory analysis skills”
(Anvari et al., 2002, p. 113). What is most important here is that
home and school experiences build sensitivity to the sounds of
spoken language. Yopp and Yopp (2000) suggest several guidelines
for activities that promote such sensitivity and awareness: (a)
playfulness; (b) intentionality in focusing on the sounds of spoken
language; and (c) part of a comprehensive reading framework.
Combining such experiences with music is likely to incorporate
these elements while being memorable and engaging.
Phonological awareness is more likely to develop through
repetition, pronunciation, and rhyming patterns within songs and
chants. Hearing individual sounds within words and associating
phonemes with specific letters can be supported through
singing and listening to songs. Hearing the pronunciation of
words modeled as syllables as they are elongated in song may be
beneficial to readers, especially if they are following along with
the text in front of them (Anvari et al., 2002). For example, The
Animal Boogie (Harter, 2005) video
includes many examples of repetition and
stretching letter sounds within its verses. Vowel sounds like the
oo vowel team in “boogie” are repeated in the chorus of “boogie
woogie oogie.”While examples such as these may seem silly or
simply playful to adults, children love playing with the sounds and
do not realize that they are also building necessary understandings
for early literacy development as they are singing. The singer
in the video stretches out consonant sounds such as the /l/ in
leopard and the slithering sound of the /s/ in snake. Emphasizing
these sounds while singing and tracking along with the print in
the book makes reading appeal to the auditory senses while also
accentuating phonemic awareness and letter-sound concepts.
When song picture books are used, concepts about print are
more meaningful, and print conventions are learned in context
(Fisher, 2001; Paquette and Rieg, 2008). For instance, songs with
patterns can be used to support print concepts such as one-to-
one or voice-print matching. To clarify, we might start with a fairly
simple text with single-syllable words such as The Wheels on the Bus
(Kovalski, 1987; Zelinsky, 1990), as it is a song selection the child
already knows. Because the child has memory for the words (and
tune), he is more likely to match his voice to the single-syllable
words on the page as he follows along with his finger. Thus, he is
freed up to focus on regulating the voice-print matching, rather
than having to also decode the words. As his print concepts
mature, the learner is ready for the next step. We might choose
to sing and read, Over in the Meadow (Galdone, 1986). Once the
child is familiar with the words to the song, the text can serve as a
self-tutorial for the child, helping him to learn to regulate voice-
print matching or pointing behavior with multi-syllabic words.
As he follows along with the words, he is likely to recognize that
his finger needs to stay on the word, meadow, for two beats.
“Over in the meadow
in the sand in the sun
Lived an old mother turtle
and her little turtle one.”
As an added resource, children can watch videos such as Over in
the Meadow
and read and sing along. A number of these videos function similarly
to an e-storybook with highlighted words and animated dots that
track the print for the child. Of course, most children will eventually
develop the phonological awareness to understanding that words
like meadow have two parts or two claps while bus has one, but the
joint access to music and text is likely to speed up such awareness.
Research with e-books and CD-ROMs suggest that incorporation
of animations and sound as opposed to static visuals (printed texts
and illustrations) are likely to assist the development of reading
skills, especially in children who are at-risk (Neuman, 2009; Shamir
& Shlafer, 2011). Such multimedia learning environments, when
high quality, purposeful, and coordinated, offer multiple entries for
acquiring literacy as opposed to a single visual print medium (Mayer,
2003). In cases where videos, CDs, or e-books or even picturebooks
are unavailable, singing while reading teacher/class-made charts
or Big Books offers a multi-sensory substitute. Such created texts,
in lieu of, or in addition to, these more costly resources are likely
to inspire pride in creativity and reading-writing connections.
To support word learning in reading and writing, children
can also create their own variants of familiar songs. To provide
demonstrations, teachers might use published variations of
a familiar song such as Over at the Castle (Ashburn, 2010) or
Berkes’ Over in the Arctic (2008) or Over in Australia (2011) to
suggest the playful transformation of Over in the Meadow. The
latter two teach about different types of animals and their
habitats but also serve as mentor texts, demonstrating how
to create a variant. As an early example, teachers might use a
counting song, Five Little Ducks (Raffi, 1989) to read and sing:
“Five little ducks went out one day
over the hill and far away.
Mother duck said,
‘Quack, quack, quack, quack.’
But only four little ducks came back.”