Sounds as Syllables: Music and Literacy 6
Come see me in the Bay Area, Sunday, May 19, at the Children's Music Network Northern California Regional Gathering! 1:30 PM at The Our Lady of Angels Church, 1335 Cortez Ave., Burlingame, CA.
To be able to break words on the page into their syllabic components is one of the most basic reading skills. But do children naturally hear words as a series of syllables?
Not really. When we are listening for words, we are usually listening for meaning. For instance, say the word elephant. What is your first response?
Mine is visual, I see an elephant! I must be seeing the illustration from a Babar book from my childhood, because my elephants are line drawings wearing blue and red clothes . . . and now I am thinking about something I learned last month, that elephants are cetaceans with a third frontal lobe . . . But my free-associations have nothing with the sound of the word elephant, or how to read or write it. The auditory experience of the word has dissolved into personal meaning.
Syllables are often easier to “get” when they are devoid of the distraction of sense. “Fee, fi, fo, fum,” chants the giant in Jack in the Beanstalk. Now, those are syllables! Be giants, stamp out each Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum with your feet.
Now, be Jack running away. Running, running, running, running . . . two running feet, two syllables!
Go back and forth between the giant and Jack a few times, chanting and stamping, chanting and running, and you are teaching the sound and feeling of one- and two-syllable words.
Another way to teach segmenting is to use the most familiar words possible. Nothing is more familiar than the names of the children! Using drums or body percussion, go around the circle (or back and forth in a dialogue) combining each syllable of a name with a hand slap or drum beat, and let the group echo.
Yas-min! Yas-min!
Jo-sé! Jo-sé!
A-me-li-a! A-me-li-a!
An-tho-ny! An-tho-ny!
As much as possible, keep this in a context of steady beat. The children who are not speaking can keep the rhythm going quietly, slapping hands on thighs or tapping them on their chests.
A gathering drum is a wonderful segmentation tool. Children can come up to the drum, one at a time for a personal dialogue – beating each syllable they say.
Teacher Student
Hel-lo! Hel-lo!
How are you? I am fine!
What’s your fa-vo-rite co-lor? O-range!
And so on.
The hand slap games we used to play on the playgrounds are another perfect segmentation activity. Remember, A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea?
Two children stand or sit opposite one another, clapping and slapping hands.
Clap Right Slap Clap Left Slap Clap Slap Both Both Both
A Sai- lor went to Sea, Sea, Sea
To see what he could see, see, see
But all that he could see, see, see
Was the bottom of the deep blue Sea, Sea, Sea!
For an alphabet twist on this song, you can turn C into the letter “C” – and then go through the rest of the letter. A Sailor went to A, A, A to see what he could A, A, A . . . and so on, into utter nonsense.
Which is really what syllables are, anyway!
Loisanne Foster Jun 23, 2013
I did a stint as a high school remedial reading teacher and I’ve taught many a nonreader to read including some in the current School to Work Program where I teach language arts part time.
This is wonderful! I will add this to my tool kit! Just this year I used clapping to have students count syllables, but not in the game-like format. Why not? Once I gain their trust, I can do about anything with them (well, most of them).
Thank you!