Running Head: THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN INSTRUCTION 1

The Effects of Music in Instruction on Phonological Awareness

Jenna Kuebler

Franciscan University of Steubenville

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Introduction

In the modern world of education, teachers are constantly bombarded with innumerable

new forms of teaching approaches that help improve student learning. These teachers discover

what forms of technology should be implemented into their schoolroom, what reading programs

could be set into place, and what the newest trends are for creating a successful learning

environment. But what would happen if these educators took a step back from the trending

techniques? What if they ceased their search for contemporary methods and instead looked to the

tendencies of the conventional human person in order to utilize a resource that mankind has

adored for centuries? Music, a resource that is prized to the extent that it exists in every corner of

the world, is essential to man. It is so fundamental to the human experience that it may be

impossible to separate from the individual, as research suggests that “the human brain...does not

treat language and music as strictly separate domains, but rather treats language as a special case

of music” (Kolesch, 2011). With music being a natural component to everyday living, the act of

implementing it into the classroom encourages students to connect their personal experiences to

their academic content. As successful teachers, it is imperative to utilize methods that create

meaningful learning experiences that last long after the school week ends.

Purpose

As the popular view of education progresses from being associated with strict institutions

to the updated ideal that school is where an individual is formed in both academics as well as in

character, innumerable new methods of innovative instruction have been introduced and

recommended. I chose music as my specific area of educational focus because of how central

and significant it is to the human person. It was not until coming to Franciscan that I understood
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the importance of the Arts, such as music, painting, dance, and so on. Through experiencing

these same subjects that have been taught since the earliest roots of human civilization, I have

been exposed to the expanse of self-fulfillment that is so often imparted upon the individual who

practices the humanities. I, personally, learn concepts better when they are conveyed through

music. However, just as each individual has his or her own differing strengths and preferred

hobbies, so too do the learning methods of each individual vary (Gardner, 2011). Music is often

seen as a common thread that may help to level the students’ learning ground, as it increases the

same skills used in reading and writing tasks (Paquette & Rieg, 2008). With this in mind, I am

curious to further explore the possible impacts that music may have on young readers and their

learning outcomes. What are the effects on phonological awareness when music is integrated

directly into the instruction of early education students?

I hope to see a distinct enhancement in academic achievement when music is

implemented into the reading instruction, as opposed to when the instruction is delivered in a

traditional setting, with the teacher delivering verbal pausing techniques and solely speaking and

writing. I hope that if the results are successful for music implementation that more educators

will be encouraged to explore creative alternatives in their teaching, as I consider inventive

alternatives to be strongly neglected in modern school systems. As for methodology, I will

assess which method of instruction suggests greater academic success for second grade students

as they segment both phonemes and onset and rimes. Each test will contain the same academic

material; one will be administered after traditional instruction and the other after musical

instruction. The assessment will be scored based off of the students’ verbal response and I will

record the data by hand (see Appendix A).

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I expect to see a dramatic advancement in both the accuracy as well as the retention of

the instructed information once music is integrated into the teacher’s pedagogy. I am inclined to

believe that this method will show beneficial results on the students’ learning, as research

suggests that the presence of music and music-related skills can enhance an individual’s

scholastic success in classroom phonics (Bhide, Power & Goswami, 2013). By approaching

literacy from an alternative perspective, the students may be able to delve deeper into proper

rhythm and sound recognition, both components that are inherently essential to reading.

Review of Literature

For some, being able to keep rhythm while dancing or clapping along to a song is

effortless. For others, it is incredibly difficult and seems impossible to be taught. However, what

if there was significance between the ability to recognize or maintain rhythmic beat and the

ability to read fluently? In the 2013 study, authors Bhide et al. sought to answer whether or not

incorporating music into instruction would drastically benefit students instead of the alternative

phonics enhancement program that was offered. Previous studies indicated that “underlying

difficulty in neural rhythmic entrainment found across the IQ spectrum is one cause of the poor

phonological skills developed by children who go on to become poor readers” (p. 113). To test

this theory, the authors studied nineteen children, aged either 6 or 7, who had been identified by

their instructors as readers who were struggling. Ten of these children were in the setting

specifically for phonological awareness intervention, while the other nine were in the setting for

musical intervention. The method of research for this study can be classified as quantitative, as

the results were collected and charted from tests as numerical data. After a pretest was given and

the separate interventions had been in place for two months, assessment tests were administered
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to the participants. These tests assessed numerous areas of phonics skill, such as a memory,

literacy, intelligence, and vocabulary, to name a few. Surprisingly the end results indicated that

the intervention that had strictly focused on the maintenance of rhythm was just as successful as

the intervention that had explicitly taught phonics skills.

I was immediately intrigued by this article. The thought of a correlation between

maintaining rhythm (something that I unfortunately still struggle with, even as a striving

musician) and overall reading success grabbed my attention right from the beginning and struck

me as something I would enjoy learning more about. One thing that was difficult for me

personally was the fact that the article was longer than most of the other ones I have read for my

literature reviews. It was also quite bland and used an immense amount of academic vocabulary.

This is relevant to my own research because I personally feel that teaching with music is just as,

if not more, beneficial as traditional instruction. I was actually ecstatic to read the results and

find the overwhelming success of the music intervention. What a concept! Who would have

thought that teaching musical skills would be just as effective as (and probably a lot more fun

than) essentially months of phonics instruction? For future research, I would like to see which

one of the interventions would have longer retention effects on the participants. If the authors

would follow up on the children for the months to follow, I wonder if the graphs would still

favor musical intervention.

With the addition of new teaching strategies and technological advances into classrooms,

teachers may become stressed by the overwhelming pressure to find the ‘next best thing.’

However, what if there are multiple methods that we could implement into our classrooms that

come from exceedingly simple resources that we have had all along? Iwasaki, Rasinski,
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Yildirim, & Zimmerman (2013) suggest a clever and ingenious alternative to traditional reading

instruction: to read actual lyrics of a song through singing them. The authors’ hypothesis was

that there would be a significant improvement in the students’ reading fluency once they had

practiced reading words, via singing, from sheets of lyrics. The participants in this study were

one of the author’s, Iwasaki’s, first grade students. The data was collected via quantitative

methods, as the participants took assessment tests to gage the success rates. Procedures included

having the students take the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) both before and after

having the non-traditional method in place within the classroom. The results were positive as the

authors concluded that 18/19 of Iwasaki’s first grade students made overwhelming progress

through the implementation of sing-reading. With only one student as the exception, every

participant had mastered a year’s worth of reading growth and many students even exemplified

having growth that was above average:

“Students were willing to engage in repeated reading of the songs throughout the

week until all students could read/sing the song fluently...the repeated reading

allowed even the less proficient readers to develop a mastery of the songs that was

equal to the more advanced students” (p. 140).

Through this method, the classroom was transformed into a learning environment that welcomed

learners of all levels and narrowed the achievement gap in Iwasaki’s class, thus creating a very

noticeable escalation in reading success.

I thoroughly appreciated the fact that this article was so reader-friendly and clear to the

point. It was not at all difficult to follow the authors’ thoughts, which altogether increased my

intrigue in reading it. Additionally, this article was satisfactory for me because it was incredibly

relevant to my research question. Singing and employing other types of musical abilities directly
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into a student’s learning transforms the process completely. Instead of isolating music as a

prerequisite to learning or exploiting music as a means of sparking mere engagement, this

method unambiguously weaves instruction and melodies together into one inseparable teaching

component. Something that was difficult with this article was the fact that it was difficult to

ascertain whether the article was empirical or non-empirical while reading. However after further

clarification, I was able to identify it as non-empirical. For future research, I would suggest

practicing this method with high school students who are struggling or reluctant readers. The

students could choose a song or album and, after having it is approved by the teacher, could

write a summary of what they think the musician meant or felt when he or she said certain

sentences. By using this method, older readers could experience a new spark in interest for

reading and finding meaning in texts.

Music is often acclaimed for its ability to be read universally. No matter what language a

person speaks or what style of life he or she comes from, if two people who know the basics of

notes and chords meet, they can communicate with each other through their instruments.

Paquette and Rieg (2008) took this concept of musical benefit a step further by looking at how

music, when weaved into classroom instruction, impacts the success of English Language

Learners (ELL’s) in literacy. The findings were collected using secondary data analysis and the

participants included numerous unspecified young children who were ELL students. While

numerous strategies dealing with musical instruction were provided, one in particular is more

familiar than readers may realize. This activity included teaching songs, such as Old MacDonald

and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Using Old MacDonald was beneficial “for teaching individual

letter sounds or spelling words” while Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star introduces simple words that
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“rhyme, i.e., are and star, or high and sky (p. 228). It was concluded that young ELL students

show high levels of success when instruction is paired with music and the authors emphasize the

similarity between components of skill between both literacy and music. For instance, skills that

are used when listening to music can either align with or enhance those skills used in reading and

writing tasks, such as listening skills, verbal formulation skills, and original composition.

I personally really liked this article for many reasons, but notably because the author

emphasizes the fact that this type of instruction is not limited to teachers who are musically

gifted, but that it should in fact be endorsed by teachers who have any range, or even limitation,

of skill in music. This article relates exceedingly well to my own research because it includes

young children specifically and the positive effects of introducing music into their literacy

instruction, however it delves even deeper into narrow area of study by examining the effects of

this question within a diverse population. Honestly, I had trouble finding things to dislike in the

article. One thing that I did notice as a distraction was the fact that when the authors referenced

other studies, the years were written in blue. I am not sure why this is, but it caused me to lose

my place or simply just not want to read where the brightness was located. For future research, I

think it would be beautiful and culturally impactful to investigate how beneficial it would be on

an ELL’s learning if the American teacher learned songs from the ELL’s native home and

translated them into English for the student to learn. For instance whether there would be a

recognizable increase, or even interest, in phonemic awareness if a teacher could translate a

nursery rhyme from the foreign country and re-teach it to the student in English.

As education professionals strive to find new ways to enrich the learning of young

students, teachers experiment with different forms of instructional methods that will enhance
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both students’ levels of engagement as well as their literacy skills. Alcock, Cullen & St. George

(2008), explored a fascinating route for teaching: presenting the necessary instruction via music.

In their study, the authors sought to answer the question of how “musike,” or what most

audiences would call ‘the humanities,’ influences young children’s proficiency in reading. This

investigation was conducted as a case study, specifically applying the method of direct

observation, either during the actual study or at a later period through technological recordings of

the events. For these events under observation, the participant groups consisted of young

children from educational centres in Australia. The first two groups were from a centre

containing 23 children with ages ranging from six months to five years old, while the third group

was from an alternate centre and was made up of 30 four year olds. These participants were

observed while practicing sentences while chanting, using imaginative skills to build sentence

fluency, and rhythmically clapping with their speech. The conclusion suggested that using these

forms of interactive learning were extremely beneficial for the individual learners and their

literacy skills, as they performed with accuracy and displayed independence in learning. They

benefited from the social thrill of being physically involved, but also benefited mentally by the

concept that these events were “expanding [each’s] vocabulary and assisting the development of

phonemic awareness” (p. 8).

I consider this article to be worthy because of the authors’ dedication to both the

preceding studies before formulating their research question as well as the great amount of effort

and detail put into undergoing and recording their observations. Much was done to research the

concept of “musike” and to analyze not only previous studies, but additionally ancient cultures

associated with music and past theorists. This article pertains to my research question because

the authors seek a direct connection between literacy development and instruction with music. In
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my opinion, they found very convincing evidence of a strong correlation between the two. The

one thing that I disliked was that there was not much direct evidence of success beyond

observation. While the authors were surely limited with such young age groups, it would have

been more groundbreaking if there were statistics involved or a “without music” and “with

music” testing scenario. As a suggestion for future research, I would recommend lessening the

gap between the age ranges. The first two events that were observed contained a group that

varied so widely in terms of developmental levels and abilities. The youngest children were six

months old, while the eldest were five years old. This is quite a massive difference. I would

suggest that for future study, the authors should separate the control groups into three categories:

infant (0-1 years), toddler (2-3 years), and young child (aged 4-5 years). Although there does not

appear to be any indication of the age variations skewing the results in any way, it would most

likely be the most beneficial to excavate findings and how these findings differ amongst separate

age groups.

Methodology:

After finding confirmation that my research question was a valid cause for inquiry

through the literature review articles I read, I knew that my research would have to be done

within a real school system, as opposed to being a hypothetical situation that was based off of

additional articles. I took note of the common themes and advantages that these researchers had

mentioned, but strongly wanted to conduct research through an activity that I had never

previously before seen done. For instance some did a pre-test and a post-test, others used

electronic scoring or recording devices, and others used pre-recorded music or lyrics from known

songs. I decided to create my own activity, utilizing my ukulele and creating a noisemaker to
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diversify the musical method for the students. Certain assessment methods were extremely

intriguing. In the 2008 study by Alcoc et al., the participants were simply observed as they

performed their musical activities, in a very playful and natural environment.

Since my research question was a bit broad, I decided to choose two separate areas of

phonological awareness that I could assess: segmenting, for phonemes and onset and rime. In

phonics, segmentation is the separation of a word’s multiple phonemes, or individual sounds,

thus breaking its whole assemblage of mixed sounds down into its smallest components. For

example, the word “cat” would be /k/ /a/ /t/, as the student would demonstrate distinct pauses

after each sound. In phonics, the concept of onset and rime is similar to phoneme segmentation,

except that the individual separates the initial sound from the ending sounds once the vowel

appears in the word. The pause starts just before the vowel is read. For example, the word “cat”

would be /k/-/at/. The first phoneme is sounded out, but once the vowel appears, the remaining

sounds are blended and simply read as one would normally do. Through deciding to incorporate

both of these sections of phonological awareness into my study, I suspected that I would be able

to hone my research in more specifically on areas of literacy and I additionally would benefit

from being able to test the effects of music in two separate phonological settings, instead of

possibly getting disparate results in only one isolated setting. To do this, I chose to study the

phoneme segmenting skills of students after traditional instruction and after musical instruction,

compare, then study their segmenting skills for onset and rime the next day under these same

conditions, and compare once more. I created a segmenting success chart (see Appendix A) that I

used for both settings and sessions. This chart contained sections for each student’s name and

age, a table to quickly mark segmenting success or failures, listings of the most successful

instruction methods to be circled after the assessment took place, and lastly a section for my
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additional personal observations. I also included an instructional method, titled “no preference,”

for those sessions that indicated that the second grade student did equally as well with traditional

instructional as he or she did with musical instruction. The reason why I created this form was

because I wanted every participant to have the exact same assessment given to them, in order to

avoid possible discrepancies. I chose the specific set of listed words to reinforce this same

consistency from a standard list of vocabulary words for the second grade level. Each assessment

trial, traditional instruction and musical instruction, used the same words to maintain continuity

in analyzing which method improved literacy skills. The research was conducted through

convenience sampling and by means of quantitative data.

The participants for this study included eight second grade students in an urban

elementary school within the Midwestern region of the United States. These students ranged

from ages 7-9. I selected this grade because I had previously been assigned as a field student to

this teacher in the past when she had taught for a different grade level. With the knowledge that

she now was teaching second grade, I was quite pleased because that had been my ideal grade

level to study when I first decided upon this research topic. I do not believe that this sample was

representative of the population because the study was only conducted in one class within one

school, to students who all lived in the same general geographical area. Therefore these

participants were most likely from similar upbringings, with similar backgrounds and therefore

would have lacked the natural diversity that exists within a genuine second grade population. All

names within this study have been changed to pseudonyms for the sake of anonymity.

I conducted this research over two consecutive school days. They were performed in the

morning as the usual warm-up writing activities were being practiced in class. One at a time, I

took the second grade students to a separate side classroom where my materials were neatly
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prepared. I would ask the student some routine preceding questions (see Appendix B) and each

quickly grew to be comfortable with me through this. Next, I explained what the activity would

be. I instructed phoneme segmentation through traditional instruction by explaining to the

student that in order to segment, one must pronounce every single sound he or she hears in the

word. I used small hand gestures, in a slicing movement, to give a visual representation of where

pauses would take place as the sounds began and ended. I then gave multiple examples with

items I found in the room, such as how to segment the words “chair,” “table,” and occasionally

my own name and the student’s name. Once the second grade student demonstrated to me that he

or she could segment the word “dog” for his or her self, the official activity commenced. I

verbally offered the student each listed word to segment from my premade chart and would

either write a checkmark or an “x” to record whether the attempt was a success or a failure. If the

student did not precisely separate each individual sound within the word, it was recorded as a

failure.

For the second setting within the same session with the individual, I gave the same

examples that I did with traditional instruction; however I informed the student how to separate

each sound through the exhibition of speaking each sound while at the same time rhythmically

strumming my ukulele. Each phoneme was pronounced at the same time that I strummed, so that

the segmentation grew into a measurable consistent beat. For example, in this way the example

word, chair, or /ch/-/ai/-/r/, became /ch/ (strum) /ai/ (strum) /r/ (strum). After this instruction, I

gave the student a handheld noisemaker and directed him or her on how to do the same thing that

I had done with the sounds, but with the noisemaker shaking as a downbeat instead of as a

strumming pattern. With each pronounced sound, I instructed the student to shake the

noisemaker rhythmically as they verbally spoke each phoneme. In the same way as before, I
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made sure that the student could correctly shake and verbally segment the example word “dog”

before I began recording the data, to ensure that he or she understood the given directions.

For the next session on the following day, the students were brought into a separate room

because the initial area had been reserved for that morning. The participants were the same

second grade students, except one student had been absent from school that day and therefore

could not be in the second study. The same procedures were done for both traditional instruction

and musical instruction. The only differences were that this activity tested the segmentation of

onset and rime instead of individual phonemes and that, during the musical trial, each student

was physically given the ukulele to strum for his or her self, instead of once again using the

noisemaker. The same example words were given, with the addition of the word “wall” for a

more solid sense of comprehending the task, as some students found this activity to be more

difficult than the first. The participants strummed and pronounced the words at the same time,

correctly performing words like /sh/-/y/ through the act of strumming down twice while at the

same time vocalizing each set of sounds.

To end the sessions, I told each student that he or she had done a great job and asked a

few of the students if they would like to play the ukulele since I had extra time to be at the

school. All but one student, who was extremely shy and preferred not to speak, were extremely

eager to play. I held down the chords on the neck of the instrument and the student holding it

would strum freely. One participant was so excited that she had really played a song on the

ukulele that she asked me if I could write a note for her to give to her parents, describing her

great achievement. The teacher asked if she could look at what the activity was, as she had

continually heard ukulele strumming patterns from her classroom. I demonstrated the methods

for her and she liked it so much that she asked if she could take a photo. She did so and then
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asked one of the participants to sing a song for me from his church, as he had been known to

often sing during their class time. He did so gladly upon her request and immediately was much

more present and loud than he had been during his own sessions with me. Once I was completely

finished and had completed filling out the data sheet with additional comments, I packed up and

went back to the classroom to thank the teacher once again for letting me come in, all of the

students immediately ran up to hug me and asked if I could come back and do music for their

class again. The teacher told the students that if they were good with their schoolwork, I could

come again as a special guest and host an interactive music class for the students.

Findings

Through this study, the results indicated that music does not have a significant effect

directly on phonological awareness, but that it does increase student engagement and focus on

the given task, activates learning curiosity, and lastly decreases behavioral issues. Between the

two separate sessions, the results showed a greater success rate for music instruction with onset

and rime, as opposed to with individual phonemes. For phoneme segmentation, traditional

instruction showed a greater success rate 50% of the time, while musical instruction did 12.5%

of the time. However, students performed equally as well 37.5% of the time under both of the

instructional settings. For onset and rime segmentation, the students’ results did not favor

traditional instruction over the others, but instead favored musical instruction 42.86% of the time

and both methods equally 57.14% of the time. This was a fascinating finding for me because

many of the second graders found greater difficulty in understanding how to segment onset and

rime than they did phonemes before starting the assessment activity. For instance, it took longer

to explain the concept of onset and rime and a greater number of explicit examples had to be
THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN INSTRUCTION 16

given before many of the students were ready to try it for themselves. Even after attempting the

word “dog,” many had to be corrected and reminded that this activity was no longer phoneme

segmentation, the one type they were used to from the day before.

Figure 1

Figure 2
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There did not appear to be noteworthy association between the musical instruction’s

succeeding where traditional instruction did not, as there were many cases where the results were

leveled. For instance, for some students who experienced difficulty in segmenting the word

“float” into its onset and rime after traditional instruction, they instead demonstrated success

after the musical instruction had been given. However conversely, some students who succeeded

with segmenting the word “rain” in traditional instruction failed to do so after musical

instruction. The amount of times that this situation occurred was so high and was so commonly

found in the raw data that I believe it helps to explain why the ratio of “no preference” was so

high when trying to determine the preferred method of instruction. Since there was quite an equal

balance between single words being successfully segmented in one trial and unsuccessfully the

next, it would not be unreasonable that the two instructional techniques were of similar

preference rate.

While musical instruction did not provide groundbreaking results for this study, it

demonstrated certain unexpected advantages over traditional instruction. For example, almost

every student was immediately excited to participate in the activity. The ukulele was resting on

the table and a great deal of the participants eagerly reached out and picked up the instrument

before they even sat down in their designated seat to start the activity. Students who also

demonstrated a lack of interest or signs of distraction during the traditional instruction trials were

immediately refocused after I told them that they would get to use the ukulele in the next trial if

they focused on the task at hand. I experienced virtually no behavioral problems after that, with

almost all of the students who had demonstrated these attentive deficiencies remaining alert and

concentrated.
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Figure 3

Additionally, when asked which instructional method the students would prefer to have

implemented by their own teacher in the classroom, 62.5% of the students chose the musical

technique. 5 out of the 8 second graders would willingly choose to have their instruction

presented in this way. While academic success rates are crucial, this research suggests that music

could be useful in even a diverse area of the classroom. For instance, if music were to be

implemented in a warm-up activity, a transitional period, or a closing activity, the students would

possibly show areas of academic achievements because of this one pleasant external factor. As

noted from my methodology, the classroom teacher was extremely willing to invite me back as

an educational experience for the students. Especially because many of her students seemed to be
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musical learners, defined by Gardner (2011) as having the strength of “musical intelligence,” it

would probably be beneficial to incorporate additional music into the classroom when possible.

Recommendations

For future recommendations, I would suggest using a larger and more diverse population

for participants. When I chose the second grade classroom, I did not realize it would be such a

small and quite homogenous group. I suspect that it would be beneficial to continue this research

and collect the data from multiple different schools that were ranging in size, socio-economic

status, test score averages, geographic locations, and so on. I imagine that the results would be

much more reliable and enlightening under these varying circumstances.

To improve my findings, I would suggest that other researchers attempt my study in their

local areas, with a greater strictness towards the research sessions being scripted and consistent. I

attempted to do my best within my own sessions, but there were certain times I noticed

discrepancies. This proved to be one of my limitations. For instance in some trials, I corrected

students after their failed attempt at segmenting with traditional instruction, but did not for other

students or I failed to also correct students in the musical instruction trials. These corrections

were reflexive for me because I tutor first grade students in the same side room that I was placed

in for these trials, so these corrections kept occurring as a natural reaction for me once I

registered mistakes. I cannot blame my unexpected data on this sole factor, but I would very

much like to see the study redone in this way.

An additional limitation for me included that fact that, as mentioned before, one of the

participants was present for the first session but was absent for the second. This meant that the
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second set of collected data was compared out of a smaller group of students; therefore the

percentage rates were automatically different from those in the first.

For the field of literacy, my recommendation would be to look at the impact of the genres

and moral lessons from reading classes and investigate if there is an association between those

and school success. In this research paper, I chose to look at the effects of music on elements of

reading because I believe that music can help in teaching to the whole student. This consists of

wanting the best for each and every student physically, emotionally, and mentally; these are all

areas that I believe music can help balance and regularize. I would be very interested to see if

schools that had uplifting and empowering literature or literature programs were more successful

in terms of academics, school growth, overall satisfaction from parents, safety, and so on.

Literature plays a tremendous role in shaping young children. If these early readers were

immersed in books teaching students to be perseverant, would the schools have higher

graduation rates than before? If they were taught with multicultural books emphasizing different

perspectives, would bullying rates go down? These kinds of questions raise my curiosity and I

would be highly interested in reading articles pertaining to this influential area of study.

Educators have so much more of an impact than they could ever comprehend and this

information would probably help teachers across the country become more aware of the great

need for intentional teaching across the country.

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References

Alcock, S., Cullen, J., & St. George, A. (2008). Word-play and "musike": young children

learning literacies while communicating playfully. Australasian Journal of Early

Childhood, 33(2), 1-9.

Bhide, A., Power, A., & Goswami, U. (2013). A rhythmic musical intervention for poor

readers: a comparison of efficacy with a letter-based intervention. Mind, Brain, and

Education,7(2), 113-123.

Bolduc, J. (2009). Effects of a music programme on kindergartners phonological awareness skill.

International Journal of Music Education, 27(1), 37-47.

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic

Books.

Iwasaki, B., Rasinski, T., Yildirim, K., & Zimmerman, B. S. (2013). Let’s bring back the magic

of song for teaching reading. The Reading Teacher, 67(2), 137-141.

Koelsch, S. (2011). Toward a neural basis of music perception; a review and updated model.

Frontier in Psychology,2(110). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00110.

Kouri, T., & Telander, K. (2008). Children’s reading comprehension and narrative recall in sung

and spoken story contexts. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 24(3), 329-349.

Paquette, K. R., & Rieg, S. A. (2008). Using music to support the literacy development of

young English Language Learners. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36(3), 227-232.
THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN INSTRUCTION 22

Appendix A

Student: ______________ Age: ___ Group #: _______ Session #: _______ Date: ___________

Pre-Test and Post-Test

Segmenting Phonemes
After traditional Accomplished After instruction Accomplished
instruction O or X with music O or X
Rug Rug

City City

Rain Rain

Float Float

Shy Shy

Pack Pack

Results favor: Traditional Instruction Instruction with Music No Preference

Additional comments:

Student: ______________ Age: ___ Group #: _______ Session #: _______ Date: _________

Pre-Test and Post-Test

Segmenting Phonemes

After traditional Accomplished After instruction Accomplished

instruction O or X with music O or X
Rug Rug

City City

Rain Rain

Float Float

Shy Shy

Pack Pack

Results favor: Traditional Instruction Instruction with Music No Preference

Additional comments:
Appendix B
THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN INSTRUCTION 23

Questions for the Second Grade Participants

(General Script)

Opening questions included:

“How do you spell your name?”

“How old are you?”

“Do you know what this instrument is?”

“Do you know what segmentation is?”

Preceding example questions as a comprehension check, to ensure that the

participant understood the directions included:
“Do you think you got it?”

“How would you segment the word ‘dog’?”

Ending questions included:

“If you could choose to include one of these methods in your classroom, which one

would you want your teacher to use?”

“Would you like to play a song on the ukulele?”

THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN INSTRUCTION 24

Appendix C