A Comparison of Three Selected Music/Reading Activities on Kindergarten Students' Scores of Listening Comprehension, Story Recall and Preferences for the Three Selected Activities

• Other Authors: Morrow, Lauren Alexandra (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Music
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-8852

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of three selected music/reading activities on Kindergarten students' scores of implicit and explicit story comprehension, on- and below-level story comprehension, recall abilities, and preferences for activities. Forty Kindergarten children served as participants. The control condition was reading story with no music (RO). The two experimental music conditions were: (1) reading story with choral refrain throughout (CR) and (2) reading story with instrumental response throughout (IR). Participants in the study were children ages 4-6 years old with a mean age of 5.4. The Florida Assessment for Interventions in Reading (FAIR) and Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) were used to assess participants' story comprehension. A pictorial Likert scale was used to assess participants' preferences for the three selected activities. Results indicated a significant difference in overall FAIR scores between the read only and instrumental response conditions as well as between the read only and choral response condition, with the read only group producing higher scores. A significant difference also existed in explicit FAIR scores between the read only and instrumental response conditions, with the read only group producing higher scores. No significant difference was found in overall DRA scores, implicit scores, on-level/below-level scores or preferences for activities. Though previous research has supported the use of choral and instrumental interventions to enhance the story comprehension skills of second-grade students, findings of the present study indicate that such interventions are not effective for younger children, and suggest that children as young as Kindergarten may not possess the maturity or musical exposure to engage in listening tasks while playing or singing. === A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music. === Spring Semester, 2014. === April 4, 2014. === Music Therapy === Includes bibliographical references. === Alice-Ann Darrow, Professor Directing Thesis; Clifford Madsen, Committee Member; Dianne Gregory, Committee Member; Eric Ohlsson, Committee Member.