The Effects of Using Music as an Instructional Tool in Teaching Phonics to

Kindergarten Pupils

Reading is an essential skill that children must learn in order to become successful at

school and to expand their understanding of the world they live in. It helps them develop a

greater range of vocabulary, wider understanding of words, and improved communication

skills. Children who possess good reading skills are observed to do well in academics.

In kindergarten, phonics is a strategy that is taught to children to help them read and

write. Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by helping them connect sounds with

letters. This provides a solid foundation on the reading skill of students and enables them to

achieve better reading accuracy and fluency. Research supports the view that phonics a key

predictor of later reading success. Children become lifelong learners as they are taught the

vital skill of reading.

However, some children who struggle in vain with reading when they reach the first

grade soon decide that they neither like nor want to read (Juel, 1988). Even if they do not fall

into any of the recognized at-risk categories, these children soon are at risk of poor literacy

outcomes. These poor literacy outcomes could possibly be from poverty or other risk factors,

but these could also be result of lack of literacy-stimulating experiences and excellent,

coherent reading instruction (National Research Council, 1998).

The major prevention strategy for them is excellent instruction. Throughout the

years, many strategies and instructions have been developed in order to effectively and

efficiently teach reading and phonics. Educators strive to teach reading in a more creative

and enjoyable way for the pupils to understand the concepts more easily. One of these is

through the integration of music in learning-to-read programs. The correlation of music and

learning has been researched and evaluated for many years. They believe that literacy can

be developed through incorporating music in teaching reading. Research also suggests that

music education significantly contributes to the development of beginning readers in their

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Remanielle G. Ferrer Master of Arts in Education, Teaching in the Early Grades (K-2)
phoneme-segmentation fluency (Gromko, 2005). Music melodies can also help enhance the

ability to remember and to learn new information.

Not only does music aid in teaching phonics to children, but it addresses as well the

multiple intelligences stated by Howard Gardner. It addresses not only a specific individual,

but the needs of the whole group as well. The use of multi-sensory instructional

approaches, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic contribute to the development of letter-

sound knowledge (Joliffe & Waugh, 2012). Using multi-sensory instruction allows more

cognitive connections and creates richer learning experiences.

Several teaching strategies are developed in order to incorporate music in reading.

For example, singing songs that teaches the sounds of each letter will help them remember

the phonetic sounds easier. A more familiar example is pointing to letters in a chart while

singing the alphabet song which helps the pupils visualize the letters.

In the future, I want to conduct more research about this topic as I do believe that this

would be helpful to further improve the quality of education, especially in reading and

literacy. I would like to discover and develop more strategies to make reading effective for

children. And in our endeavor to provide the best quality of reading education, our learners

would be the most served.

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Remanielle G. Ferrer Master of Arts in Education, Teaching in the Early Grades (K-2)