Have you ever noticed that when you sing the lyrics to a song while looking at the lyrics you are actually reading? It seems that in our quest to improve reading test scores teachers have been led to believe that narrative (stories) and expository (informational) texts are all that matter when it comes to reading and learning to read.
The fact of the matter is, however, that whenever you are presented with words in a text, whether that text is a story, informational article, poem, speech, joke, cheer, or song, you are reading. In fact, when you sing (read) a song you are actually reading some of the very best material for developing word recognition, fluency, and vocabulary – three key competencies when it comes to learning to read. Songs are meant to be sung (read) repeatedly and while listening to others read – both productive approaches to developing fluency and sight vocabulary. Songs often contain rhymes, letter and sound patterns in words that are very helpful in developing phonics and word recognition. Songs also contain wonderful and exotic words, words that would help build students’ vocabulary.
We think that singing holds a key to students’ development of these critical reading skills, skills that are essential to reading comprehension and reading achievement. Indeed a recent study reported that struggling readers who were put into an intervention reading program that involved singing with the song lyrics presented to students, the students made exceptional gains in comprehension and overall reading achievement.

It doesn’t matter what you read; as long as you read something you are going to become a better reader. And, if what you read is meant to be read aloud, repeatedly, with others, contains familiar letter/sound patterns, and interesting words you have a wonderful tool for learning and teaching reading.
Have you ever noticed that the songs we sing in school and in our communities connect us to each other and to our culture? Why do we have patriotic songs that we sing in the summer time? Because they bring us together as Americans. Why were there Civil Rights Era songs? Because they helped bring together Americans who believed in equality and justice for all citizens, regardless of race or creed. Isn’t this something we want in our classrooms—developing a selflessness in students that allows students to begin thinking more about their communities than their own individual needs and wants? Song can help do that.

Are there not songs that tell the story of us – Americans? Not only are there patriotic songs, there are songs from the American Revolution, songs from the Civil War, songs from World Wars I and II, songs from the Great Depression, songs from the Civil Rights era just to name a few. Songs like The Erie Canal, Yankee Doodle, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Over There, and Happy Days are Here Again allow us to revisit our own heritage as Americans using the very same lyrics (texts) that were used by others to connect with their countrymen. When students are asked to sing (read) such songs they are forced to connect with the American experience. And when there is a teacher who can help tell students those stories embedded in the lyrics of a song, that teacher will help develop students’ knowledge of history as well their appreciation for history. Moreover, the experience that students will have will not only be cognitive, but also affective or what Louise Rosenblatt has called an esthetic response. Students need to have the opportunity to read, listen, and have their hearts touched. Everyone one reading this book right now, I am sure, has had an experience of hearing or singing a song from many years past; yet the memories that the song stirs brings us to tears. Songs have this ability, more than most other forms of writing that can engender this esthetic experience.

This is not to mention that singing helps us to feel better. How many of us sing, or at least hum in the shower? We do so because it is fun and makes us feel good. Brain scientists tell us that singing helps release endorphins in the brain, helping develop in us a feeling of well-being, leading to a higher sense of relaxation, less stress, and greater receptivity to learning. Certainly positive feelings and attitudes with less stress are goals for any classroom.

And of course, as we mentioned earlier, singing can help develop the reading competencies of students. Work by the National Reading Panel has noted that phonemic awareness, phonics or word recognition, vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension are literacy competencies that if taught consistently give students the greatest chance of success in learning to read. Songs and singing provide the platform for teaching all of these competencies in ways that are authentic and engaging for students and teachers.

Why Singing and Reading?
Phonemic awareness refers to the development of an internal awareness or conceptualization of and ability to manipulate the sounds of language. When students can hear discrete sounds in words, when they can blend sounds into full words, and when they can segment words into discrete language sounds they are developing phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is critical for young readers because phonics requires a strong awareness of language sounds. Some literacy scholars suggest that phonemic awareness is a better predictor of later reading achievement than IQ. Moreover, scholars also note that as many as one in five primary grade children have not developed sufficient phonemic awareness to profit sufficiently from phonics instruction.

Because songs and song lyrics by their very nature deal with language sounds, they are nearly perfect for nurturing phonemic awareness in children. Songs contain rhymes, alliteration, and other language features that teachers can use to help students become more aware of language sounds. When children sing Old MacDonald, for example, they have a wonderful vehicle for becoming aware of vowel sounds – “E I E I O.” And when children sing Bingo they are given the opportunity to learn certain letters and the sounds that are represented by them.

Phonics refers to the ability of readers to translate written letters in words into their pronunciations. Because songs rhyme, they contain what some literacy scholars call rimes and others call phonograms or word families. Knowledge of the phonogram at will help students learn to decode or sound out words such as bat, cat, fat, sat, cattle, and scat. Research into phonics tells us that one of the best ways to develop phonics is through word family instruction. Songs are treasure troves of phonograms. In Meet Me in St, Louis, Louis students are exposed to word families such as -at, -ound, -ied, -air, and -ear to name just a few. Moreover, because songs are usually sung repeatedly students also have the opportunity to read words several times through and develop their sight vocabularies, critical to reading success.

Vocabulary refers to the knowledge of word meanings. If students can sound out a word but not know its meaning they are not really reading. Those unknown words are essentially nonsense words for students. Students need to learn the meanings to thousands of words over the course of a school year. The best way to learn new words is to be exposed to new words through meaningful contextual reading. The lyrics in songs are a form of contextual reading. When students sing they will be exposed to new words for which their teacher can help them discover their meaning(s). In just the first verse to Meet Me in St, Louis, Louis, students would come across words such as spied, gazed, flat (an apartment), and tootsie wootsie. Not only are these great words that students will need for reading, they are also great words to use when they are engaged in writing. Moreover, words such as tootsie wootsie will help students take greater delight in words and develop an ever increasing appreciation for the words in our English language.

Fluency has been called the critical bridge between phonics and comprehension. Moreover, it has also been called the neglected goal of the reading curriculum because it is often not given sufficient attention in classroom reading instruction.

Fluency is the ability to read words automatically or effortlessly and with meaningful expression or prosody. When readers are automatic in their word recognition they are able to devote less of their limited conscious attention to the words in text and give more to making sense of the passage itself. When readers read with prosody, or what some linguists call the melodic elements of language, they are giving evidence that they are reading with meaning. Moreover, prosody in reading allows readers to chunk text into meaningful phrases and clauses. Automaticity and prosody are best developed through repeated and assisted practice of real texts. Repeated readings refer to reading a text several times until it can be read with automaticity and appropriate expression. Assisted reading involves reading a text while simultaneously hearing it read by someone else.

Songs, once again, are ideal for developing fluency in students because songs are meant to be read/sung repeatedly and in assisted ways. When a teacher or other person sings to students while they follow along silently, students are engaging is assisted reading. When students sing written lyrics of a song with others (a partner or the whole class), they are engaging in assisted reading. When students sing the written lyrics of a song while listening to a prerecorded rendering of the song by another, they are engaging in assisted reading. Moreover, when they do these forms of reading and eventually perform the song for an audience, they are engaging in repeated readings of the same text.
Songs are meant to be sung with others, and they are meant to be sung repeatedly. It is not an uncommon experience to get a song lyric in your head in the morning and then find yourself singing the same song all day long. When students do this and are also presented with the written lyrics, they are engaging in repeated readings.

Songs, more than any other form of written text, have melody. Melody is prosody. So, when students sing songs they are presented with texts that beg them to read/sing with prosody. When they engage in repeated and assisted reading/singing of song lyrics they are not only developing automaticity of the words in the lyrics, their practice is aimed at developing a prosodic rendering of the text. Songs and song lyrics, perhaps, are among the best materials for developing fluency, a critical goal of reading.
Comprehension involves making meaning from words in text. Usually we think of students making meaning from stories and from informational texts. However, songs also provide a wonderful opportunity for teachers and students to explore meaning. Songs often tell stories in short, poetic ways. The brevity of these stories allow students and teachers to examine the stories deeply in a relatively short period of time. Moreover, the source of many songs comes from the lived experience of others – love, tragedy, war, work, and more. The use of songs again allow teachers and students to dig deeply into the source of the song, a source that often connects with history, social studies, and other content areas.

Returning to our earlier example, Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis is the story of a married couple. The wife is a bit headstrong and goes off to the World’s Fair of 1904. She leaves a note for her husband to follow her there so that they can indulge in all the pleasures of this great event. Although brief, the story told in this song is worthy of exploration and discussion by students and teacher. How will the husband react when he reads the note the wife left him? What should the husband do? Should the wife have left on her own? Describe the wife. Describe the husband. What will happen next? How will the story end?
The song also is rooted in an historical context. There was a World’s Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri. It celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The fair, was held at a large park in the outskirts of Saint Louis. At the fair ice cream cones and hamburgers were reputed to have been introduced. This is information that is part of American history and American culture. Students should learn this. They should also learn about Saint Louis and why it is an important city in the United States. They should learn about the Mississippi and Missouri rivers which play a role in the development of Saint Louis and other historical events. They should learn about Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, other members of the Corps of Discovery, the Native Americans they met, and much more. The song Meet Me in Saint Louis, Louis can be the springboard into such rich learning and comprehension for all students.

Why We Developed this Program?
We hope we may have convinced you that the use of songs and song lyrics holds great potential for helping develop all aspects of students’ literacy. If you think of song lyrics as a form of text to be read, then the simple act of reading or singing the lyrics will make you a better reader. That should be an obvious conclusion to most educators. However, the truth of the matter is that most educators of the past generation have viewed singing and music as expendable parts of the school curriculum. In more and more schools around the country, music and singing have been eliminated from the curriculum or severely curtailed. The reasoning is that educators must focus on the key competencies expected of elementary and middle schools – reading, writing, mathematics and the academic content areas. Music, singing, and the other arts have been increasingly viewed as “fluff” to be minimized or eliminated. So instead of music and song being an increasing part of children’s school experience, the opposite has been the harsh reality.

The authors of SingReadLearn have a much different perspective. One of us is a college professor in Ohio, interested in struggling readers, who has conducted research into how to improve students’ reading outcomes through reading fluency instruction. As a young person he learned to read by singing with his family regularly. Another one of use is a fifth grade teacher in a public school in North Carolina who realizes that many of her students experience difficulty in learning to read, but who also recognizes that more and more students are not aware of their own cultural literacy as Americans and do not find great enjoyment in going to school. And still another one of us is a professional musician and writer who has for years made the connection between music, literacy, and culture.
Individually and as a group we have come to the recognition that music and singing offer a unique approach to teach reading or to complement existing approaches to literacy instruction. We have also come to recognize that music and singing were not priorities in most elementary or middle schools. If anything, music and singing were slowly but steadily being minimized and eliminated from schools. Even publishing companies had little interest in our ideas for using singing and music to teach reading.
And so, we decided on our own to develop our own program, without the assistance and resources of a publishing company or grant from a governmental or philanthropic agency. Instead, we used our own experiences from in and out of the classroom, our own good sense, our knowledge of the scholarly research, and our own knowledge of children, reading, and the American experience to create this program that you have before you.

We think that SingReadLearn is a winner – for kids and for teachers. Teachers and children will enjoy opportunities to sing and read. Moreover, by engaging in this program on a regular basis, we are highly confident that your students will make gains in literacy well beyond what they had been previously making. And, they will develop a greater love and appreciation for this wonderful language called English and the words that give it substance.

Singing is Reading. Singing is Learning. Singing is Fun.