Literacy Standards

Early literacy standards emphasize phonological awareness and oral language development. The Early Reading First grants in No Child Left Behind examine how preschool age children acquire language, cognitive, and early reading skills. Oral language development involves learning expressive and receptive spoken language, including developing vocabulary. The use of the song lyric can be useful in helping children learning language and vocabulary. Early literacy also involved developing alphabet knowledge and letter recognition. Many publishers focus on learning letters and letter sounds through music. These programs also develop the child's print awareness using musical cues. One of the key components of early literacy is developing phonological awareness. Using songs, fingerplays, word games, nursery rhymes, jump rope rhymes, etc. can help children achieve phonological awareness. Early Reading First documents define phonological awareness as:

• identifying and making oral rhymes;
• identifying and working with syllables in spoken words through segmenting and blending;
• identifying and working with “onsets” (all the sounds of a word that come before the first vowel) and “rimes” (the first vowel in a word and all the sounds that follow) in spoken syllables;
• identifying and working with individual sounds in spoken words.

One of the best websites for finding materials to use in your classroom is Songs For Teaching. This site includes lyrics and audio song files for download. Featured are fingerplays, cheers, raps, chants, as well as songs on phonics, grammar, spelling, and phonemic awareness. This site also has counting songs, multicultural songs, action songs, etc. Coast Music Therapy includes many resources that are helpful for assisting students with learning disabilities with oral and written language development. Research includes studies of using music to assist learning and development. Their students examine music as a mnemonic device, music as an aesthetic to elicit attention, motivation, and positive mood, rhythm as a timekeeper for movement, and singing/chanting as a compensatory strategy for functional speech. Programs such as Zoophonics combine music and the sound of the letter with kinesthetic signals and visual print recognition as a way to strengthen concepts of letter sounds and learn phonics. See the appendices for lesson ideas and examples of nursery rhymes, fingerplays, jump-rope rhymes, etc.

The United States Department of Education has focused on developing early literacy skills. Free brochures are available on the web. The parent guide, "Put Reading First," includes suggestions on how to help the young child learn to read and provides us with definitions of terminology used in early reading.

• Put Reading First: Helping Your Child Learn to Read: A Parent Guide - Preschool Through Grade 3
• Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, Kindergarten Through Grade 3