How to Use Music to Improve Reading Fluency

Reading fluently is a language arts skill that involves reading with smoothness, accuracy, speed and appropriate expression. Music has a constant beat and flow through time. As a result, music is an excellent tool for helping children improve their reading fluency.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Find folk songs or educational music for children. To integrate subjects and teach using cross-curriculum material, find songs with social studies, science, math, or language arts content. WeeSing and SchoolHouseRock are some excellent resources. (See resource list).

2. Make a poster of the song's lyrics and display it on the board for your students. To help fluent reading occur, make sure to put each phrase of lyrics on a separate line.

3. 
    
   Reading music lyrics helps readers look ahead

   Sing the song to your students while pointing to the lyrics. Drag your hand or finger below the words, directing the readers' eyes. Make sure to drag your hand 2-3 beats ahead of what you actually sing. This will help your students to constantly look ahead of what they are reading, a skill necessary for good reading.

4. When long notes or long rests (no singing) occur, ask the students to look ahead at the next phrase. Help them by dragging your hand below the next phrase.

5. 
    
   Children read better as they sing

   Once your students are familiar with the tune and words, ask them to sing with you. Continue to point to the words 2-3 beats ahead of what you actually sing. Allow students to take turns being the pointer.

6. Repetition is essential for improving fluency. Sing the song while looking at the lyrics over and over again.

Tips & Warnings

• If you know the song, it is not necessary to have a recording of the music. Singing without a recording can allow you to sing at different speeds.
• To help students with transitioning the skills they develop from reading while singing to reading without singing, you can try reading the lyrics without singing. However, do this AFTER you have sung the song several days.
• When reading other materials, encourage your students to look ahead the same way they do when reading/singing songs.
• Some teachers start teaching songs by reading the lyrics without the music first. The music is what will help your students read/sing the words with fluency, so it is counterproductive to start without the music. After your students know the songs very well, then you can try reading the words without the music.
• You will find that some students will be very successful reading new words to song but unsuccessful when reading new words without song. This is typical because music has a driving power to help with fluency. Keep encouraging these students, and keep using music with these readers.

Resources

• Wee Sing Home Page
• Wee Sing Song Search
• American Folk Song Search
• School House Rock Songs

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on 1/14/2009 This is really interesting!

[beachmom]

on 1/14/2009 Wonderful article! I use music in my ESL classroom everyday. 5* article!

[TobyLee]

on 1/6/2009 Nice article on using music to assist learning to read.

[Zazell]

on 1/1/2009 My daughter had a tough time learning to read. Music allows children to be more calm when learning to read. We let our daughter read with classical music playing softly which I believe helped her to become an excellent reader. Great article.

[meacham01]

on 12/31/2008 This is such a great article and right on target. I hope many people read this .