Intersection Between Music and Literacy

Intersection Between Music and Literacy Instruction

The work of Fisher and McDonald entitled: "The Intersection between Music and Early Literacy Instruction: Listening to Literacy" relates that teachers worldwide are striving toward improving the literacy of students through many creative and innovation implementations applying research to practices in the classroom. Fisher and McDonald review "early literacy instructional goals with specific examples of musical activities that foster early literacy development." (nd) Concepts of print are reviewed in Fisher and McDonald's work who relate that exploration of concepts of print and print structure and functions may be accomplished through musical endeavors as students learn which way to hold the text book, in learning to read left to write and other basics of reading. Music further provides contributions toward students gaining understanding of the concept of the progression of a story and in terms of sequence. Fisher and McDonald review the work of Gilles, Andres, Dye and Pfannenstiel (1998) who note that a new vocabulary is acquired by students with every new song they learn. There are various methods introduced in this work for making use of music to further literacy learning in the classroom

CRITIQUE

While this article makes some very good points concerning the link existing between music and reading, theoretically some very fine points were lacking. Specifically as a basis for the effectiveness of this method of combining music and literacy instruction is the work of Howard Gardner and his 'multiple intelligences' which is worth a mention in any serious work in this area. Gardner's 'multiple intelligences' provides a model of human intelligence that places music significantly relevant in development of educational literacy programs. Further, the work of Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and their colleagues of the University of California, Irvine, on what is termed 'The Mozart Effect' reports research that show a causal relationship between aspects of intelligence and music.

APPLICATION