Amanda and Christy: Thank you for sharing your love of stories and spoiling a little sister with her fantasies. Thank you for so gently yet emphatically pushing me forward, adjusting my talk and letting me know that you believed we would get here eventually. Jana Atlas: Thank you for your research into reading development and openness in considering an extension, your support of a project that sometimes had no clear ending, your knowledge of statistics and when and how they would be useful.
I am grateful for the wisdom and perspective you each brought to this project; it's stronger to have you a part of it. Thank you for opening your classrooms, sharing your time, and saying yes when I asked you to be a part of this crazy adventure. Lauback and Gayle: Thank you for pushing me beyond my comfort zone, shaping this crazy idea into existence, mentoring me through classes and upstate New York winters, igniting inspiration in the hallways, and being my honorary mom away from mom.
Introduction
Gross motor movement involves the whole body or large parts of the body (e.g. arms and legs). As children move around their environment, the brain uses information gathered through the senses as fuel, strengthening and reorganizing structures, making new connections, increasing understanding of the world, and continually sending messages to keep exploring (Medina, 2010). In essence, skipping is one of the brain's motor signals that it is ready to move on to higher learning activities.
This construct includes phonemic awareness, or knowing the sounds of language (eg, knowing that the word bath has the sounds /b/ /a/ /th/). Phonemic awareness is related to decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension and is one of the best predictors of later reading achievement (National Panel on Early Literacy, 2008). A good reader will be able to automatically recognize many words, decode (ie, extract the sound or translate the written symbol of the word into its component sounds) unfamiliar words quickly.
Literature Review
One of the earliest separations of school and play in the United States can be traced to the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite in 1957. During the relative calm and prosperity of the late 1970s and 1980s, play was even deliberately and thoughtfully incorporated into the classroom (Wolfgang & Sanders, 1982). Many school-based assessment tools are also aligned with the Big Five categories.
In the reading brain, this area applies its pattern recognition function to the rules of written and spoken language (e.g. spelling, phonology, syntax). If reading is expected in schools, then it should follow that the design of classrooms takes into account what is known about the demands of the growth and development of the reading brain. One of the best ways to investigate how successful reading occurs in the brain is by comparing it to brains that have difficulty acquiring reading (for example, dyslexia).
De Diego-Balaguer et al. 2016) describes attention as a causal factor in the process of learning in general. All the participants continuously attended the same school as in the first study.
Method
Of the 76 participants included in the study, 66 returned a completed demographic survey (ETM n = 37, non-musically oriented n = 29). The teachers of the classrooms included in this study reported more than a decade of teaching experience, including at least five years in kindergarten. Of the 85 students whose parents signed and returned the informed consent, 76 were included in the analyses; 9 of them were excluded.
Reasons for exclusion included: leaving the school district for the entire year (n = 2), failure to respond to assessment questions (n = 1), and prolonged absences during testing periods (n = 1), all of which resulted in data incomplete. While ETM does not have a set curriculum with a rhythm guide, it does have a collection of experiential song games that incorporate the most observable and easily identifiable aspects of the program. The game is an interpretation of the song, literal and/or metaphorical, while the experience.
Depending on the needs of the students, the teacher can change the strictness of the structure of the song experience game. In one version of the game, the children stand in a circle while the teacher walks around inside and everyone sings. The intensity of the movement matches the intensity of the song (larger/higher movements for higher pitch or stressed words).
A map is a visual symbol of the game-song-experience and also occurs after many games (Richards. Students create a personally motivated symbol (i.e., a symbolic representation that is personally meaningful but not uniformly recognized, such as is a written word ), representing elements of the song-experience-play game. The researcher then met with each classroom teacher to discuss the best method for disbursing the consent information packet (eg, in a meetings with parents in the classroom, by mail).
However, body language and a lack of response to test items indicated discomfort, leading to a discontinuation of the assessment by the researcher.
Results
Analyzes were performed with a Bonferroni confidence interval adjustment for a more conservative interpretation of the data. There was a significant main effect for Time for all subtests, indicating that scores increased for both groups over the school year. Students' prior knowledge and skills (pre-kindergarten experience) played an important role in their later performance, supporting the use of Time 1 as a covariate of interest.
Discussion
The lack of a significant difference in rhyme discrimination performance between classroom types observed here is similar to Nation and Hulme's (1997) findings that even across a four-year grade span (ie, the equivalent of kindergarten through third grade), discrimination ability did not differ significantly from one year to the next. While building a successful and efficient auditory system is the primary goal of ETM, each of the sensory systems is involved in the process. This would leave the group experience of singing and movement intact, while helping to isolate the potential contribution of a shared movement-sound symbol (ie, a game played by the group that intentionally matches the song).
During the first phrase, "Clickety clickety clack," the train moves forward with the feet falling on each syllable. For the last phrase, “click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click,” the train moves forward again, but for a longer period of time, since the phrase itself is also longer. In the earliest of phonics teaching, letters become the symbols for the sounds of speech.
Does taking on different roles within the context of the ETM song experience games also contribute to the development of perspective taking and empathy? The results of the current study provide additional evidence in support of this inclusive view. One of the strengths of this study is that it was conducted in the natural classroom setting, with children from the general population, making it easier to generalize the results to other kindergarten classrooms.
However, the potential impact of this is reduced due to the lottery-based procedure for school assignments (first choice is not guaranteed), the presence of ETM and non-music-oriented classrooms within the same grade level at each school (student placement) with a requested teacher is also not not guaranteed), and the fact that many students are unaware of the nature and use of ETM in the classroom until after school begins. Second, the researcher had equal reason to hope for favorable outcomes from both classroom types, both due to the nature of this thesis, and friendships with each of the teachers involved in the study. Could the results be even greater since language is an integral part of the ETM experience.
Wolf (2018) admits, “Teaching reading is difficult, full of pitfalls, with obstacles along the way until children reach a level of proficiency that allows them to do so. His experiences give life to the stories we read, which in turn enriches the complexity and language of his play and adds even more meaning to the words in the text. Music and language side by side in the brain: a PET study of melody and sentence production.
School 2 ** School 3 **
Your child's class has the opportunity to participate in a research project that examines early literacy practices. I attended school in the San Juan Unified School District from kindergarten through 12th grade (Orangevale Open K-8 and Casa Roble) before completing a bachelor's degree at UC Santa Cruz. Although my graduate studies took me to the opposite side of the country, I would love to complete this research within the educational community that nurtured my own lifelong love of learning.
Data collection will take place four times: at the beginning of the year (late August to early September), November/December, March and May. The assessment will consist of a series of quick activities related to early reading, and will look at skills such as rhyming and knowledge about words and sounds. Privacy is guaranteed at all times; No student names will be written on the assessment materials.
Electronic data files will be encrypted; physical materials will be stored in a secure, locked cabinet. I will ask each student if they agree to participate before each assessment session and anyone who disagrees or indicates discomfort will be excused from the assessment activities. Any information learned in this study that has the potential to improve the kindergarten learning experience will be shared with the learning community.
Remember that participation is voluntary and permission can be withdrawn at any time without consequences for you or your child. Steve Byrne, Chair of the Alfred University Human Subjects Research Committee ([email protected]) for issues related to research integrity. Please sign to indicate that you have read the above information and give your child's consent to participate in the study.
I am asking for some information about your child's home life and previous school experiences.
