This essay was written in response to an e-mail from a teacher who was being required to do a "Reading in Music" evening for parents and children. While this idea is an imposition when not expected, it can be a fabulous opportunity for building support for arts programs when planned carefully. Teachers and the parent organization might plan together for this type of evening to replace the usual performance or concert, which can easily become exploitation of children rather than a showcase for learning.
While it is frustrating to music teachers that administrators don't "get it" that music is a language which requires its own literacy, usually there is a hidden opportunity in requests for programs that link literacy and music. Its all in how you look at it!
To create a perspective from which to operate with integrity, remember that music is the broad language of sound. Word language is a narrower language of sound, choosing only specific sound components from the broader spectrum. Therefore, you can have music without word language, but there is no way to have word language without music. Every time the children come to music class they are learning processes, understandings, and skills that open doors to reading and literacy in word language. You also are teaching reading every time they come to music, both through building aural discrimination and listening skills, and by working with text in an authentic context.
All of the strategies you use to teach music are essential for teaching word language, and songs are the perfect authentic literature for emergent readers because they have repetition, rhyme, and predictability. As children get older and read to learn (rather than learning to read), they enhance their understanding of text by highlighting story sequence, characterization, and form through movement, sound exploration, and dramatization. When they read words, the language center of their brain is engaged, but when they read music, "the brain lights up like a Christmas tree." (Frank Wilson) For many children, the activities we do in music/movement classes is critical for them to develop any strategies for understanding text.
The artistic processes of creating, performing, and responding (Scott Shuler, CSDE) will also help you organize your experiences for the evening. Be sure that parents and children have the opportunity to experience all three during the evening's events.
They can create sounds for the characters in a story. Or they can read a poem off a flip chart that has highlighted key and rhyming words ("Wee Willie Winkie", or "Loose Tooth" are ones I like), then play the highlighted words on instruments. Write out the directions so they can read those as well.
They can create "Baggie Books" to go with a story text. (See ArtSmart)
They can perform a song with movements, or a play party game. First have them learn it aurally using a tape recorder, then they can read the words off a chart. Be sure to point out the phonemic awareness that is being developed through this activity - do you have short vowel sounds, long vowel sounds, blends, beginning consonant sounds, two vowels together? These phonetic elements are always there when we use text in the music classroom - music and movement teachers just don't focus on them in the same way a reading teacher does.
Responding means listening to something, then analyzing some element of it. I like to have children and adults listen to a story through one of three lenses: sounds, pictures, movements. It is possible to create three hats or sandwich board tags that have the three different lenses indicated. One person reads the text (Try "Where the Forest Meets the Sea," by Jeannie Baker, or "Snow Magic," or "Papagayo," by Gerald McDermott. After they have done this activity, have them share their experience of the story by saying sentences starting with "I saw . . .," "I heard . . .," or "I felt . . " Put these sentence starters on a flip chart page, or big signs on the wall.
You have a great chance to show parents how music is critical to reading development, not by abandoning teaching/learning IN music, but because the processes involved in learning music are the same processes that are required for language ARTS learning. Think of this day as an opportunity to get parents and your principal excited about what you do, then have a plan for a follow-up study group to read and learn more about this together. Help them understand that reading is just one element of literacy, which also includes listening, speaking, writing, and thinking in a language. You develop all these skills!
There is tons of literature available right now - "Teaching with the Brain in Mind," by Eric Jensen, published by ASCD should be on every teacher's and administrator's reading list. Gardner is old hat, but a staple source for support for the arts.
Much of this information is written in books or articles. You can start on this web site with the Total Literacy/HOT Readers article, the ArtSmart book, and the books suggested. Soon there will be an annotated listing of articles and books that provide the support data you need.
My greatest concern is that you don't spend lots of time grudgingly creating an event to satisfy the needs of the moment when there is an opportunity to begin building understanding and support for your program, and what is best for children.