Music therapy can be used as an effective intervention for reading difficulties. It incorporates elements of phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Music interventions address these areas through activities involving word recognition, rhyming, syllables, phonemes, fluent choral and partner reading, vocabulary building, and comprehension strategy instruction. Effective reading instruction integrates explicit teaching of these skills through modeling strategies and think-alouds.

1. Music Therapy as
Reading Intervention
Association of Ohio Music Therapists
State Conference October 5, 2013
By PresenterMedia.com
Mimi Sinclair, MM-MT-BC

2. Literacy Defined
The ability to use language and images in rich
and varied form to read, write, listen, speak,
view, represent, and think critically about ideas.
It enables us to share information, to interact
with others, and to make meaning.
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/literacy/panel/literacy.pdf
Reading is one component of Literacy

3. • A cognitive process
• A psychological process
• A social process
• A physiological process
• An emerging process
• A language process
• Represents linguistic intelligence
What is Reading?

4. • A complex human behavior
• Not just one process, but many
• Visually-mediated language skill
• The process whereby meaning is
derived from text
Definitions of Reading

5. Printed
Word
Recognition
Language
Compre-
hension
READING
Simple View of Reading

6. More Wholistic View of Reading

7. National Reading Panel Findings
Best approach to reading instruction
incorporates explicit instruction in:
• Phonemic Awareness
• Phonics Instruction
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Reading Comprehension

8. • DIBELS
https://dibels.org/next/
FREE materials for educational use.
Training manuals provided.
• OBSERVATIONS
Basic Skills Checklists by
Breitenbach
• Informal Reading Assessments
http://www.paec.org/itrk3/files/pd
fs/readingpdfs/cooltoolsall.pdf
Assessment Tools

9. • Phonological Awareness has been shown to be
a more potent predictor of reading success
than either intelligence, vocabulary, or reading
comprehension.
• PA is the awareness of sound structure, the
ability to notice, think about, and/or
manipulate units of sound.
Why Music Based Interventions?

10. • Word awareness
• Rhyming awareness
• Syllable awareness
• Phonemic awareness
Phonological Awareness

11. • Phonics is the system by which symbols
represent sounds in an alphabet writing
system, the relationship between spelling
patterns and sound patterns.
Music based interventions

12. • Fluency is the ability to read as well as we
speak and to make sense of the text
without having to stop and decode each
word. It includes reading expressively and
in melodic patterns.
Music based interventions

13. • Choral reading
• Cloze reading (fill-in-the-blank)
• Partner reading
• Predictable language method
• Repeated readings
• Echo reading
• Readers Theatre
Fluency instruction

14. Components of Effective Vocabulary Instruction
• Rich Oral Language Experience
• Wide Reading
• Specific Word Instruction
• Word-Learning Strategies
• Word Consciousness
• Adept Diction
• Word Play
• Word Origins
Music based intervention

15. • Comprehension is the level of content
understanding a student has after reading a
passage.
• Explicitly teach students to use strategies
Music based interventions

16. What strategic readers do:
• Predict at word/text level
• Expand vocabulary
• Check/confirm
• Maintain fluency
• Infer
• Synthesize
• Question
• Summarize/Determine
Importance
• Visualize
• Make connections
• Activate Schema
• Link/Make analogies
• Self-monitor
• Search/gather
• Adjust
• Evaluate/Critique/Analyze

17. • Is most effective when teachers model their
own use of strategies repeatedly over time.
• Read aloud.
• Think aloud.
• Reason through text.
• Reread for deeper meaning.
Strategy instruction

18. • Creating Strategic Readers by Valerie Ellery
• Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson & Katie Keier
• Teaching Literacy to Students with Significant Disabilities by
June Downing
• Florida Center for Reading Research
http://www.fcrr.org/for-educators/sca.asp
• Sounds of Emerging Literacy by Register, Hughes,
Standley at AMTA Bookstore
RESOURCES

19. Mimi Sinclair, MM, MT-BC
Music Therapy Services, LLC
www.music-therapy-cincinnati.com
msinclair@music-therapy-cincinnati.com
Facebook: musictherapycincinnati
LinkedIn: mimisinclair
Twitter: @MTSCincinnati