"Academics Through Music"

The Challenge: Teachers Gilbert and Marks recognized their young emergent and struggling readers and writers needed help to fully grasp a literacy skill-set. They also wanted to provide all of their students, not just those who were struggling, with an enjoyable and fun learning experience that would reinfore the literacy learning curve.

The Solution: Gilbert and Marks wanted to blend music into the children's daily reading and language arts block. Each day, the class began their language time with several songs. While listening to the music, the students followed the words of the songs on an overhead projector or from their songbooks. Nursery rhymes and familiar songs were used to help students recognize words and improve their vocabulary. Musical language repetition and read-along song cards enhanced the students' fluency along with sight recognition. They were then asked to write stories and publish books relating to the music. As a community building experience, Gilbert and Marks shared this music curriculum with the entire school in a Friday morning sing-along that included the revival of important historical songs.

Accomplishments: All of the students involved in the program met the State's required reading exiting standards. Both Ms. Marks' and Ms. Gilbert's students achieved scores that year that were grade-level and above. In addition, the school's teaching staff reported that students were more receptive to their studies upon returning to class, and Ms. Gilbert noticed better test scores when background music was played. Equally important, the enthusiastic response to this program inspired parents and PTA to fund a music and arts education program introducing children to renowned composers and artists and their works.