It didn’t take the No Child Left Behind Act for Nancy Robohn to realize that music fits quite naturally into teaching mathematics, reading and even social studies. She has been integrating those basic subjects into her music classes for at least 10 years.
Robohn, a veteran teacher, taught music at Logan Avenue for a number of years before she was transferred to Riverside Elementary, with its heavily Spanish-speaking population, after it opened for the 2003-04 school year.
“We’ve been pretty innovative at Riverside,” she said, mentioning 40-minute class blocks instead of 20-minute blocks. “In 40 minutes, you’ve still got the children engaged and you can do so many more ways of reinforcing what you’ve been working on.”
The children need to be able to hear, absorb, “let it sift through and filter,” and the extra minutes of class blocks lets them do that.
The success of the Riverside effort already has been measured and posted: The school met all of the Adequate Yearly Progress goals set in all subgroups including the English as a Second Language group.
“With No Child Left Behind, it puts all of us in a position to be responsible for the reading skills, the math skills, and we all have to teach that across the system,” Robohn said. “Students in my room learn by reading, writing, listening and speaking. ...You have to use strategies to help these second-language youngsters who typically have difficulty hearing sounds that are different to them.”
Robohn said that English consonants have a hard sound, which children accustomed to the soft sounds of the Spanish language have difficulty recognizing.
To help them and others in the classes, she uses rhyming and matching sounds to give them “phonemic awareness, the ability to recognize and manipulate these sounds.”
Students who have not yet learned how to write the words assimilate the sounds more easily through music.
“If you sing it, the neurons fire in the brain,” she said. “This is not new; this is a concept we’ve always known about.”
Her classes create games that include chanting words, making up silly rhymes, and inventing nonsense words that also help with syllables and counting.
“And unbeknownst to them, it’s all learning,” she said. “When children are moving their bodies, dancing, marching, whatever they’re doing, the total physical response is there and it just rolls out of their bodies.”
The children use a variety of instruments, books, and supplies to express themselves as they participate in music, unaware of just how much they are expanding their ability to learn.
“I just feel like the more hands-on the children can have — whether it’s keyboards or computers or chanting or drumming — it’ll happen. It’s our job to keep kids excited about learning so they’ll stick with it.”
They count syllables and draw rows of drums, which helps give them an understanding of numbers.
“Music and math go together so beautifully whether you’re marching and counting beats. Before long, you can teach them how to multiply and divide by using beats and drawings,” Robohn said. “Say you’re going to be working on syllables, how many are you using in this particular word? ... Sometimes, all of a sudden, it just takes one more way of presenting material to make that light bulb come on.”
Robohn interjects a bit of social studies, too, with a section being taught last week on Native Americans. The subject is one that seems to fascinate both English- and Spanish-speaking children. Youngsters in the United States are often naturally drawn to the Indian culture.
“Then you talk to the little Hispanic kids. They had the Indians, too,” Robohn said. “They’ll tell you the stories of the Aztec Indians who are extinct.”
Socialization skills, too, come from working closely together in groups toward a common goal. They learn to show respect and how to get along within a group and make connections that are important to success.
“A choir cannot sing and do a good job if one person chooses not to follow the director,” she said to illustrate her point.
And music provides an outlet for children who may be struggling with a variety of issues, or having difficulty understanding concepts.
“Children cannot be unhappy when they hear music, Robohn said. “There is always joy, there is always a smile.”