Date: November 14, 2005

Vol. 21 •Issue 23 • Page 19
Learning to Read

In a groundbreaking study a Canadian university researcher has discovered a way to use children's songs to teach kindergarten children to read.

The idea to incorporate song into the pre-reading environment arose from earlier research in which Patrick Walton, PhD, of Thompson Rivers University (TRU), located in Kamloops, British Columbia, used rhyming words and small group games as learning aids. He noticed that when he added "jingle-like" singing, children learned more quickly and remembered new words much longer.

Of the 45 kindergarten children in the study, 73 percent were reading by the end of the four-week study period, with only two 20-minute teaching sessions a week.

"There is almost no research relating singing to memory in young children, and none examining the effects of using children's songs to teach pre-reading and reading skills," explained Walton. "However, educators know that sound presented in a rhythmic way, like poetry, is an aid to memory. Our research represents an original and potentially fruitful line of inquiry."

The findings are consistent with recent brain research indicating that there are separate but similar brain mechanisms implicated for language and music, and considerable areas that are common to both, he said. "The addition of music to the presentation of text may provide children with an alternate neural pathway to receive and process information."

The process was simple, according to Walton, who created the songs especially for the study along with local musicians Cathi Marshall and Mike Turner and teacher-musicians Lance Jang, Dale Kallhoud and Heather Bounds.

"We piloted the songs," he explained. "If the kindergarteners didn't like a song, there was an immediate withdrawal of attention. The teaching songs need to have lyrics with one-syllable rhyming words and a bouncy, pronounced rhythm."

Kindergarten teachers and elementary education students at the university were involved in the study. The teachers taught the children the songs in conjunction with physical activity such as arm movements, sign language and finger-spelling.

"Children were taught the songs first without text and then were shown the lyrics or letters as they sang the songs," Walton explained. "This process seemed to not only increase the speed of learning to read the text, children appeared to remember the words longer than if they were taught the words without singing."

The researchers were excited to find that 73 percent of the children could read words that were different from words they actually learned as lyrics, including a child with autism who was involved in the study.

"The strong positive effect with the autistic child was especially interesting," observed Walton.

Based on the initial success of the program with that child, plans are now in the works to develop the program for children with autism. Walton will work in partnership with Amedeo D'Angiulli, PhD, Canada research chair and founder of the Centre for Early Education and Development Studies at Thompson Rivers University, to explore the potential of the program for that population and develop special teaching tools to put it into practice.

The research team compiled a CD of nine songs and a large-format book of the songs and presented the results at the American Education Research Association Conference earlier this year in Montreal, Canada.

"Our presentation was very well received," said Walton. "We've since received an invitation to a provincial music educators conference in Vancouver, BC, this October."

Walton's research group is writing up the results of a follow-up project that will involve 115 kindergarten children, including Aboriginal students, for publication in an academic journal.