| With the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), schools have become aware of the consequences of successfully teaching children to read. A major building block in early childhood education includes the decoding of phonemes, rhymes, and the rhythm of spoken and written word. As reading is crucial to success in any subject area or career path, every opportunity which increases skills should be offered to students. Music used to teach phonemic awareness, pitch, rhythm, and letter sounds may increase student achievement, based on the brain connection between music and building synapses. This is an experimental quantitative research study in the area of music instruction specific to phonemes, rhymes, and rhythms in kindergarten students. Additionally, this study offers significance and transferability to other school communities and settings because of the necessity of successfully teaching reading skills for students of all backgrounds and cultures. The research questions addressed included the increase in growth of scores on STAR reading assessment due to the main effect group (extra instruction vs. no extra instruction), the interaction effect due to the type of instruction, the interaction effect between the type of instruction and age, the interaction effect between the type of instruction and sex (male vs. female), and the interaction effect between the type of instruction, age and sex. Within the research site there were 214 students enrolled in Kindergarten divided heterogeneously by computer into 10 classes. Five classes received 5-10 minutes of extra instruction in phonemic awareness during bi-weekly music class. Curriculum additions included music and movement, songs and alliterations specific to building brain connections and differentiating instruction. While the study did not provide statistically significant data, students in the experimental group did score higher than those in the control group. The music instruction also seemed to be more significant for six-year-olds than for those who were five. |
