Music and Fluency

Teaching Fluency through Music

                Two years ago I taught second grade in a very low socioeconomic school district; more than sixty percent of my students were receiving either free or reduced lunch. In my graduate courses I was already learning the impact of poverty on children in terms of mastering language and learning how to read and write. Children living in these impoverished areas are more likely to leave school each day only to return home to an empty house. Parents of many of my students worked two or three jobs in order to scrape by, therefore the social structure of parents reinforcing learning at home was insufficient or completely absent.

                Language acquisition happens in young children rapidly, especially in environments where children are listening to conversation and experiencing social interaction between peers and adults. In other words, the foundation of literacy begins with conversations and children talking. I was overwhelmed the year I taught second grade to find a way to help my struggling readers and writers somehow get back on track; many of my students were two to three years behind grade level. Although the task at hand seemed daunting, I was determined to find a way to help connect to my students and improve their oral reading fluency, as well as their comprehension.

                I tried many strategies to help my students with reading, such as putting students in “just right books,” having them work in guided reading groups, building up their site words through the use of flashcards and apps on the classroom iPads, and providing them with fluency passages to practice numerous times while reading it aloud to others. All of these strategies were worthy efforts; however, the one strategy that was the most effective with my students that year was building fluency through lyrics of songs.

                Reading lyrics to appropriate songs helps students to learn unknown words while the rhythm and musical cadence provide a structure for students to overcome “robot reading.” Robot reading occurs as students read in a word by word fashion that lacks expression, mood, and tone. Robot reading could form as a habitual way of reading, or as a student struggles to decode each and every word. If the reading is extremely choppy and the student reads with long pauses between words, chances are he or she is not going to comprehend the reading at all. Music then becomes a creative and fun way to help children overcome these types of struggles.

                Some tips I learned while using music to help teach oral reading fluency.  Pick out appropriate songs and think about what skill or strategy to focus on for that particular song. For example, you can find songs to teach vowel sounds such as the long or short a. Or you could work on word endings, or initial consonant blends. Whatever you choose to work on, I found it beneficial to have students read the song first before listening. While doing this you can also discuss the meaning of the words and any poetic elements or figurative language the song may contain. Once you have previewed and discussed the lyrics you can begin letting the students listen to the music and to sing along. Be careful that students are not simply just memorizing the song without understanding the words.  Sometimes, I would break down the verses of the song and assign them to different parts of the room. This was a fun challenge and my students always enjoyed determining who did the best job.

                Recently, a teacher in my school was asking me for some things she could do with a seventh grade student she is tutoring one on one with in the middle school. She was asked to focus on oral reading fluency and she was not given any program or guidance as to how to accomplish this goal. After speaking with her about the student and her needs, I realized that I knew this particular girl and had worked with her last year as in class support. I remembered that she enjoyed music and she even had her own “Beats” headphones. I recalled a project she worked on in social studies class where she had to create a song about the American Revolution. I suggested to my colleague that she try music with this student to improve fluency and she took my idea and used in the very next day. Using music lyrics to improve oral reading fluency may not be the first approach used by teachers, however I think this could be an oversight. For many students music can provide the bridge to learning how to read in a way that regular books may end up missing the mark, and it can also be a lot of fun!

Writing Portfolios

On Thursday my school is hosting an Open House for parents and students to come in and take a peek inside their child’s classroom and check out what has been going on in school. I love teaching writing and helping students become more confident and skilled at putting their thoughts onto paper. Since the beginning of the year I have been saving my students writing and accumulating it in a writing portfolio. I enjoyed reading and rereading my students writing and thinking about how they have grown as a writer.

Today my students were given their folders and had the opportunity to reread their work and choose three of their favorite pieces. I gave them each three post-it notes and asked them to order the top three pieces. I also asked them to include a note as to why they chose those pieces. They had to think about their writing and find what they liked about it. If they wanted to leave all their writing in the folder for their parents to see, they could, or only leave in their top three pieces. Either way, all of their writing would be given back to them at the end of the year in the folder. What a wonderful remembrance this would create!  Inside of their folder they also had an unfinished piece of writing, a fractured fairy tale. I explained to them that writers often have several pieces of writing going at the same time, and an unfinished piece. I told them that perhaps they would want to finish this story before the end of the year, and a few students shared with me that they wanted to do just that.

When my students received their folders there was lots of reading, talking, and sharing in the room. One student asked if he could award each of his pieces of writing with a post-it note. Another student marked her number one piece of writing as “My very first essay.” Still there were others who pulled out pieces that were funny and used figurative language creatively, such as metaphors and onomatopoeia. Some students found pieces of writing that were very long, and others noticed some pieces were particularly short and they realized they had been stumped at the time. There was a feeling in the room of being proud of what they had accomplished, and they also realized how much they had improved in writing since the beginning of the year.

I have been working on collecting these pieces of writing since the beginning of the year. To me each one is precious and represents the child who created it. I shared with my students that I hope that they continue to grow their love and skills of writing into fourth grade and beyond; and one day they can look back at the portfolio they created in the third grade and realize what a gift their writing was for all of us.

 

Teaching a Mindful Classroom

     The average adult body is made up of 50 to 65% water (water chemistry in the body). Dr. Masaru Emoto studied the profound effects of prayer on water (messages in water). When the intent of the prayer is pure the water would form a cohesive crystalline structure. This was true whether it was one person praying, or many people. However, the intentions must be pure and true. Thinking about these two points makes me wonder about the power of our thoughts. Western religions, such as Buddhism have led our country to embrace the positive impacts of yoga to creating a healthy mind and body connection. But what about the science of mindfulness, and how could it impact student learning, teaching, and the classroom environment. Dr. Dan Siegel, an interpersonal neurobiologist (website) has written books and given talks extensively on the subject of the mind and the connection to human behavior, as well as relationships. While Dr. Siegel states candidly that there is no widely accepted definition of the mind by any of the branches of science; he defines the mind as an embodied and relational emergent process that regulates the flow of energy.
     Thinking about the mind and being mindful came to me out of the desire to teach my students the value of resilience. Resilience, or GRIT is the ability to recover quickly from difficulty. This is an important skill to teach our students and our children. Today more than ever with the pace of our world, I believe our children will grow up to face challenges, adversity, and problems we would not believe fathomable. Resilience seems to be the one thing we can teach them to deal with these challenges. Vygotsky (1978) theory was that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. As educators and parents we understand well the importance of relationships to a child's development.
    I think the source of teaching our students and children resilience begins with the quality of the relationships we develop. I would like to make the connection between the quality of relationships that we develop with the ability to be mindful. To be mindful, for me, would mean making a conscious effort to be present when someone is speaking with me, to listen actively. This means to stop what I am doing and give the person my full attention. I also think it means taking the time to think about myself and my students each day in reflection. Ten minutes of sitting silently in my thoughts in the morning could make the difference between creating mindfulness in my classroom, or letting the day run away with or without me.

Your Brain on Spring Break

     My school has a week off for Spring Break this week and that got me thinking about the question of whether time off is helpful or hurtful to student learning. I remembered a few weeks ago as I was taking a long drive, a decision came to me from out of the blue. It was something that I was not even thinking about, or contemplating, I was in fact dealing with a much bigger issue. But there was this big decision that I knew I needed to make, and I just knew it was the right thing to do. Then during this break I spent two days on the couch resting, and thinking, and some more resting and thinking. To an outsider this may seem completely unproductive, lazy, and useless. After two days though, something suddenly occurred to me and it was so crystal clear. We need breaks from the day to day for our mind to allow space to find connections, solve problems, and to be creative.
     We know that kids need breaks in the classroom, so do adults. We can work effectively and productively for a certain period of time, but then we need to take a break, even if it is a quick one. Why should it be so hard to understand that people and kids also need extended breaks, real vacations, and time to recoup and relax? One reason might be because we worry that things won't get done, or we may fall behind on work, or a critical issue will pop up. Whatever the logic or reasoning may be, taking time off to relax and recharge is absolutely necessary and should be taken just as seriously as work itself. Your brain works very hard for you day in and day out, especially with the continuous streams of technology that our brain has to process, such as twitter tweets and Facebook posts. Our brains are on overload.
      According to the NYT article here Press Reset on your Brain the brain works in different modes depending on whether it is actively engaged in a task, or not actively engaged, such as mind wandering, or daydreaming mode. The article suggests that the mind wandering or daydreaming mode allows the brain to make connections it would not have otherwise made, which in turn can lead to solving problems, being creative, finding a cure for a disease, or inventing something new. Huh? I guess that is why I was able to solve some problems while sitting on the couch resting! The brain is a magnificent and beautiful part of the human body. Having some understanding of the way our brains work can help us as teachers support our students by taking the breaks we need to be the best we can be, and allowing our students the downtime they need to process, let their minds wander, and grow. So now as far as Spring Break and my students' learning...will they forget some things that I taught them? They probably will. But will their brains come back reset, recharged, and able to take in new learning? I think so.