Phonological Awareness and Music –

Overlapping Areas

Syllables

Music, especially for children, is often syllabic. The rhythm in the music will match the syllables in the words of the song. Emphasising these and asking children to tap out syllables in words will help their ability to spell as they will be able to chunk long words into smaller sound segments.

Where recalling a musical tune helps children to remember words to a song this may also help them to identify syllables as the sounds in the music match the chunks of sound in words.

Rhymes

When we remember a tune, this often jogs our memory of the words too. When we can remember a word at the end of a line in a verse, there is often a rhyming word to follow in the next lines. This helps children to match words with rhyming sound patterns.

Words with the same sound may be spelt the same – they have the same pattern at the end: found, sound, pound, round table, stable, fable, land, stand, brand, hand

This of course, is not always the case but if children learn that words belong to a ‘family’ this makes it easier for them to remember the spelling and to recognise chunks of sound so that they don’t need to sound out every letter in a word when they are reading.

Phonemes

As you can see from Kate Rusby’s song, (Activity 9) songwriters make good use of alliteration – using words with the same first letter sound – Big, Brave Bill. When children learn songs and rhymes with matching initial sounds, this becomes fun and children can be encouraged to think up more words with matching initial sounds.