Becoming Literate

Literacy requires a set of skills and a set of practices. It is about gaining the skills and knowledge required to be able to read and write but also about how a person uses printed materials and how they may view themselves as a reader or writer. Children need to have confidence in their ability to use their literacy skills. Learning to read and write is a complex process referred to by Ehri, (2005:168) as ‘One of the great mysteries’. There are many variables which contribute to the process of becoming literate and researchers continue to examine the mystery of why some children appear to learn easily and others seem to struggle. Literacy is a multiplicity of skills, knowledge and experience.

An early years environment needs to be one which fosters literacy habits, positive educational values and self-image. Children need to see and share in reading activities and develop a thirst for learning. Confidence is crucial and the enjoyment of literacy activities. Wanting to learn is a major step towards being able.

Learning is a process constructed from sensory experience and thought. Bringing together experience, through engagement with the environment, and thought, through the posing of questions inviting children to think. Children need inspiration, expectation and motivation. Children learn what they believe is relevant to them. They will attend to and remember experiences that they enjoyed and had meaning for them.

Spoken language skills are innate and fundamental to future literacy progress. Children need to develop good receptive and productive vocabularies. It is important that children can detect the subtle variations in language sounds; this is termed ‘phonological awareness’ (PA) and refers to the smaller chunks of sound into which words may be broken and reconstructed – syllables, rhymes and phonemes.

Language and phonological skills are the foundations of literacy development and difficulties are predictive of later literacy difficulties (Snowling and Hulme, 2012). Hence, this is an important area of focus when considering early precursors to literacy skill acquisition. Heath et al. (2014) confirm that ‘phonological awareness, letter knowledge, oral language … are acknowledged within-child predictors of literacy development’.

The learning of letter names and sounds is also fundamental; Piasta and Wagner (2010) found that children were more successful at learning letter sounds when they also learned letter names. Learning to discriminate letter shapes from numbers, pictures and each other is a visual skill which is also required.

Children need to acquire bibliographic knowledge – knowledge of how books work –the direction of text, the purpose of text, how the pages are turned, page numbering and the sequence of events in a text.

Literacy also requires both mental and physical skills. Cognitive skills are the thinking skills a child will need to call on. These include ‘comprehension’ – an understanding of the spoken word, ‘focus and attention’ – the ability to focus on an activity and pay attention to instructions and actions occurring around them, ‘sequencing and prediction’ – the ability to order and think of following scenarios or consequences, ‘rapid automatised naming’ – the ability to name items in quick succession and ‘memory’ – the ability to retain and recall information and events. Whilst good cognitive skills are indicative of good literacy skills, poor cognitive skills also correlate with poor literacy.

Motor skills also contribute to literacy acquisition. When reading aloud a person must move their eyes across and down a page of text and may need to move a mouse of a computer or turn the pages of a book. They must remember what to do; which way to follow the text. This becomes habit as children are read to and learn to read for themselves. Writing requires the additional physical movement of a pen on a page or the selecting of letters on a keyboard. Motor and visual skills need to be co-ordinated. The act of writing becomes automatic over time involving muscle memory (consolidation of a specific motor task into memory through repetition) for the forming of letters.

Movement may also contribute to literacy learning in its ability to stimulate the brain. Tomporowski, et al. (in McClelland, 2014) suggested that regular exercise alters brain functions that underlie cognition and behaviour. Moving in time to language patterns also helps to embed the patterns. The inability to tap to a rhythmic beat correlates with literacy difficulties. Rhythmic games such as clapping rhymes helps to strengthen awareness of the rhythms in language.

Bringing together this wide range of skills, knowledge and experience contributes to literacy success. The close relationship that music shares with language renders it a perfect medium for this task. Participation in musical activities is enjoyable and motivational and literacy skills can be promoted in a natural, inclusive and informal environment. Musical activities designed to specifically promote these early contributors to literacy learning can do much to provide a solid foundation upon which formal literacy teaching can begin.

Commonalities between Music and Literacy

Many areas of commonality render music and literacy ideal learning partners.

Music Areas of Convergence

Musical activities promote auditory awareness and discrimination

Musicians good at SiN

Singing promotes fluency of speech

Songs can help to build vocabulary

Prosody in music

Rhythm

Sound patterns

Pitch

Graphic notation

Symbol recognition

Supports visual skills

Music stimulates the brain

Music-based strategies aid comprehension

Music training improves attention

Music is an effective way to learn sequences

Music promotes fluency

Music enhances memory retention and recall

Language

Listening

Auditory discrimination

Speech-in-noise (SiN)

Speaking

Music and language are innate to humans

Prosody

Phonological Awareness

Awareness of and discrimination of sounds in large and small grain sizes

Mapping Sounds to Symbols

Symbols convey meaning

Cognition

Comprehension

Attention/focus

Sequencing and prediction

Rapid Automatised Naming

Memory

Music is motoric Movement

Movement stimulates the brain

Music is engaging for young children Motivation

Additional benefits:

Emergent Literacy Skills

Discrimination of the sounds in words is pivotal to literacy

Ability to hear in a noisy environment

Spoken language is predictive of reading

Good vocabulary required

Prosody in language

Syllabification

Onsets and rimes

Phonemic awareness

Bibliographic knowledge

Recognition of letters and words

Text needs to be understood

The ability to focus on a task affects learning

Deficit is predictive of poor reading

Predictive of reading

Vital to literacy

Movement supports learning (kinaesthetic)

Motivation promotes learning

Participation in musical activities causes the brain to release the chemical dopamine which increases pleasure, motivation, brain function, decision-making, plus assists movement and reduces anxiety.

Repetition (which embeds learning) through music is enjoyable – as opposed to drill. Music is a holistic learning medium and provides a means of integrating many disciplines.