LANGUAGE ARTS

     I have noticed a significant effect on the children's learning in Language Arts.  Each of the children in the class has a "Poem and Song Book." This book contains a wide variety of poems and songs that connect to our current area of study (theme) and/or focus on a certain concept that I want the children to learn.  For example, if I wanted to introduce compound words to the children, I would find a poem and/or song that has several of them in it for the children to recognize and read.  By having this poem/song in front of them the children have a visual, as well as something concrete to connect it to.

    We generally begin the year with very familiar songs and nursery rhymes.  This familiarity allows the children to quickly connect to, not only the song, but also the words; non-readers are quickly able to feel like "readers" because they have the song memorized and can now follow the words (even if they can't actually read all the words they quickly become able to begin identify many words because of the connection to the song).  

    Many of the other poems and song in this book are sung to familiar tunes (such as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"), therefore the children are able to sing along and it isn't long before they are able to identify and read many (or all!!) of the words in the song.  

    The children are always excited about also being "Word Detectives" when we use our poem and song books.  During this activity, the children are asked to look at poems/songs from previous days or new poems/songs and are asked to find certain words or spelling patterns.  They then use markers to highlight these words.  The children quickly "tune into" finding words and become much more aware of words in their environment and in other books.  I am often interrupted during the sharing of Big Books by children saying "There is a compound word in that book" or "I can see a colour word in that story."  The purpose of these "Word Detective" activities is to not only heighten the children's awareness of words, but to also develop and strengthen their sight word vocabulary.  The children certainly become active participants in their learning through these kinds of activities.

    These poem and song books also allow the children to participate in partner reading activities.  Since these songs/poems become very familiar to all the children (we spend lots of full class time looking at the poems, looking at the words within them and reading them together) they all begin to feel confident in their reading ability and are able to engage in partner reading activities without any hesitation.  The children are also able to assist and support each other because of the familiarity of the poems/songs.  I often hear children saying to each other "That word has two vowels beside each other so they make one sound;"  they are able to give each other "clues" about words without telling the other child the word.

MATHEMATICS

    I also use many poems and songs to assist the children in better understanding and remembering math concepts.  These songs/poems often have words about mathematical processes such as how to add and subtract or they are songs about remembering distinguishing the differences between squares, triangles and rectangles.

    The children are often heard whispering the songs to themselves when they are complete independent seat work.

RELIGION

    The use of songs and music is a very important part of our Religion program.  We gather, on a daily basis, in a circle around our prayer candle in order to begin our learning day.  During this time, the children share prayers, stories and what we call our "morning song."  This song is generally focused around the liturgical year or around a certain theme we are covering (e.g..  In February we might use "What Makes Love Grow" as our morning song because of Valentines Day).

    We often discuss the songs in order to understand the words in the songs and what message the songs are sharing with us.  We always try to connect the music and the words within the song to the everyday lives of the children.  We spend a great deal of time discussing and choosing our "morning songs" in order for the children to take ownership of these songs.

    The children greatly enjoy sharing these "morning songs" because the songs allow them to be active participants.  The songs are meaningful to the children and they enjoy the beat and rhythm of the songs and music.  By the end of the school year, many of the children have favourites songs to tell about and these songs are usually "morning songs."