For Parents and Teachers
Chapter 3
I've created this page that both parents and teachers can use because together these adults play an integral part in children's early learning process. That goes for any adult, from nanny to grandparent, who's involved in the young child's life. From the moment a baby enters the world, the actions of adult caregivers make a critical difference in language development, the precursor to literacy development.
When a child enters daycare or preschool, teachers come to share in the roles played by parents and other caregivers. The parent-teacher team has an important collaboration in bringing the young child into literacy readiness. The mission of this page is to focus both on what parents and other caregivers can do with music during non-school time, what teachers can do musically in the classroom, and how these actions can coexist to serve every child's needs fully. The topics will change from time to time, so please come back often.
Previous For Parents and Teachers Chapters:
The Rhythms of Language
- Table of Contents
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Hand-clapping Words and Segmenting Sounds – Page 2
LEARNING ACTIVITY: “The Hand-Clapping Rap” – Page 3
LEARNING ACTIVITY: “Raiders of the Lost Bark” – Page 5
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Hand-clapping Words and Segmenting Sounds
Learning to segment words into their component parts is an important part of learning to read and write. Children must learn to separate words into distinct phonemes, the smallest units of sound, in order to know how to sound out and spell words. The word “cat,” for instance, can be segmented into three distinct phonemes represented by the three letters: c, a, and t.
For multi-syllable words, the reader must be able to recognize the separate sounds in the word and sound out each one in turn. In order to spell or sound out “catastrophic,” it helps to separate it into ca-ta-stroph-ic.
Clapping the syllables of words helps children start to hear the component sounds. It's also a good way to learn the prosody of the language, or how words are accented. Prosody is something one often misses when learning a new language. The learner might grasp a word itself, but not the rhythm of it. Whole sentences can come out sounding very strange if the rhythm of the language is off. Music and anything that builds a learner's auditory sense helps improve one's grasp of prosody.
Liz Buchanan: For Parents and Teachers Page 3Chapter 3 AntelopeDance.com
LEARNING ACTIVITY: “The Hand-Clapping Rap”
I wrote “The Hand-Clapping Rap” after watching demonstrations of Dalcroze Eurhythmics with children. Emil Jacques Dalcroze invented this technique for learning musical skills at the turn of the twentieth century. Eurhythmics involves using a variety of body movements to help the learner grasp musical concepts such as rhythm, pitch, tempo and dynamics. At its core, Dalcroze trains one's auditory understanding, a key to success in reading as well as music.
In a eurhythmics class with children, the instructor often asks students to tap their names on a hand drum. Others in the circle echo the tap by drumming their hands or legs.
In “The Hand-Clapping Rap,” I offer children the opportunity to clap syllables in different categories of words. On the CD, we clap the syllables of food words, but children can be asked to think of words in a variety of categories.
This song combines a very simple melody with the chanting and rhythm of a rap. During the chorus and the rap that introduces the words, the children can clap on a regular rhythm. Then they echo the leader in clapping out the rhythms of the words.
To enhance the learning activity, text can be added. Creating flash cards of the words is a great activity, as is a class-created (or child and parent-created) book. When I taught this song to a classroom of four-year-olds, I sat at a table in the classroom during free choice time and wrote out the words out on strips of card stock, underlining the separate syllables in different colors, and drawing a simple picture of the food. The children had a chance to watch what I was doing and try it out themselves.
When preparing to sing the song in the classroom at circle time, lay all the words out on the floor in the middle of the circle, starting with the one syllable words. Repeat each word and clap it with the children as you lay it down. Another game is to mix up all the cards and then have children say the words and sort them by the number of syllables.
Children also could make a syllable clapping book with different categories of words. In one classroom, different class members chose words and made illustrations. In each category, we put a word in the book with one through four syllables. Here are some words and categories that we used:
Fruits: pear, apple, pineapple, pomegranateLiz Buchanan: For Parents and Teachers Page 4
Vegetables: peas, onion, broccoli, rutabaga
Animals: bear, lion, antelope, armadillo
Colors: red, yellow, lavender, periwinkle
Transportation: truck, airplane, bicycle, helicopter
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CLASS BOOKS – My friend and colleague Fran McKinney, a longtime teacher and children's songwriter from Wisconsin, has had great success using home-made song books with her students with special needs. She describes teaching the children a song and at the same time showing them a book she created with pictures and the song's lyrics. Often the song books related directly to class activities and special events. For instance, she photographed children on the pumpkin-picking expedition, then created a book using the photographs as illustrations and a simple-pumpkin picking song as text. You can look at Fran's books and order them on her web page: FranMcKinney.com
Class books can have many variations. Children could make a category book like the one described above. Different children could illustrate a book about a song the class enjoys such as “The Wheels on the Bus.” Children could be photographed acting out song-stories such as the sleeping-beauty song, Thorna Rosa or The Three Little Pigs (on my CD). Simple songs could be created and sung about class expeditions, such as visiting a pumpkin patch or the local pizzeria. Pictures of students on the field trip could be used to accompany the text. For instance, these simple lyrics to the tune of “Muffin Man” describe a pumpkin-picking trip:
Oh let's go to the pumpkin patch,
The pumpkin patch, the pumpkin patch.
Let's go to the pumpkin patch, and find a pumpkin.
Oh see the pumpkins big and small …
Oh see the pumpkins wide and tall …
We'll weigh our pumpkins, then we'll pay …
We'll carve a jack-o-lantern face …
Or we can make a pumpkin pie …
Expanding a song to create books offers many possibilities for vocabulary building and further hands-on exploration. What a great way to learn what a rutabaga or a pomegranate is! Add even more foods and have a tasting. For the colors, paints might need to be mixed to create new, exotic shades. For animals, children could look through books of animals, draw pictures, and clap the number of syllables in each animal word.
Liz Buchanan: For Parents and Teachers Page 5Chapter 3 AntelopeDance.com
LEARNING ACTIVITY: “Raiders of the Lost Bark”
One game that can benefit emerging readers is thinking up the missing part of a word. For instance, with compound words, children might be asked:
Say “something.” Say it again without the “thing.” Some ____
Say “pinwheel.” Say it again without the “pin.” ___ wheel.
Say “motorcycle.” Say it again without the “cycle.” Motor ____
Children also learn to separate out the onset and rime. One could be asked:
Say run. Say it again without the ‘r.’
Say dog. Say it again without the ‘d.’
Say find. Say it again without the ‘f.’
By learning to separate the starting sound from those that follow, the child begins to understand the families of words that have the same end sounds. Reading the words in the families becomes that much easier, as cat, fat, mat, bat, rat and sat all have the same end letters, just different beginnings.
This silly song invites children to play with beginning and ending sounds. Make a flash card for each of the words, and separate the beginning sound from the rest of the word. Have different letters available to form the nonsense words. Ask a child to pick out the correct letter.
My Dog Lost the ‘B’ from Her Bark
By Liz Buchanan
(Tune: If You're Happy and You Know It)
Oh my dog lost the B from her bark (repeat)
My dog lost the B from her bark bark bark
Now all she can say is “Ark!”
Until she found a “G” and went “Gark”
Oh, then she found an “S” and went “Sark”
Oh, what she really needs is a B you see
Please find a B for me.
Oh my cow lost the M from her moo …
Now all she can say is “oo”
My turkey lost the G from his gobble
Now all he can say is “obble”
My Frog lost the R from his ribbet
Now all he can say is “ibbet.”
© 2010 Liz Buchanan