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One of the first things a child is rhythm. Whether that be the cadence of voice or the melody of a lullaby, rhythm deeply embeds itself into the mind of a child, and it can provide the foundation for many who are learning to read. It is important that teachers and families be aware and find ways to continue to integrate rhythm in their children鈥檚 lives.

Rhythm in our alphabet

The skills of an able reader include being able to identify beginning and ending sounds, breaking apart words (decoding), combining sounds (blending), adding or deleting sounds from words (for example 鈥� 鈥渟it鈥� to 鈥渇it鈥� or 鈥渇lit鈥� to 鈥渇it鈥�), and categorizing words that have the same sound. At the most basic level, students need to understand that our letters are symbols that represent sound. And, even though we only have 26 letters in our alphabet, we have 44 sounds! So, you can see how important it is to reinforce sounds as we teach reading.

Readers benefit from rhythm-based instruction

A recent looked at rhythm-based instruction with a group of students between the ages of 7 and 8. One group of students took a 3-month music class that included an emphasis on percussion, body percussion, rhythm, and movement. A second group of students participated in their regularly scheduled music class that did not emphasize rhythm. The researcher assessed students before and after the intervention and found significant improvements in the poorest readers.聽

Using rhythm to support kids with dyslexia

Rhythm also helps dyslexic readers. It can be difficult to assess dyslexia, but it is that between 5% and 10% of children have dyslexia, and approximately 90% of children diagnosed with learning disabilities have dyslexia. Two areas that are most prevalent in dyslexic children are the inability to detect syllables and the inability to distinguish between similar sounds. These children are also typically slower readers because they look at each letter rather than seeing a whole word. Interestingly, research has demonstrated that, in general, students who are developmentally dyslexic are unable to keep a beat. Working specifically with dyslexic children, one researcher that a rhythm-based intervention improved these students鈥� word recognition abilities.

Incorporating rhythm into literacy instruction

English Language Arts teachers in elementary schools may find great benefit in working with their music teachers in developing lesson plans that incorporate rhythm, rhyme, and repetition in an indirect way.聽

One simple lesson plan suggested by is to play a song and ask children to walk and bounce a ball in rhythm with the beat of the song. Try this with different songs in different classes and ask students to see if they can tell the difference between the rhythms (i.e., fast or slow) and why the song might be that way.

Another activity that introduces prefixes (e.g., un-, re-, pre-) and suffixes (e.g., -ing, -ed, -s) is assigning a specific rhythm or body percussion pattern to each prefix and suffix. Have students chant and perform the body percussion for different words, emphasizing the prefix and suffix rhythms.

A third activity that helps students with rhyming asks teachers to assign a specific drum beat or rhythm to represent rhyming words. Have students practice drumming the rhythms for each rhyming pair. Introduce a drumming rhythm/word that doesn’t rhyme and ask students if that word rhymes or not.

Additionally, families can introduce or continue interaction with music, using rhythm as a basis for physical activities: body movement, tapping to the beat, and inventing moves for different parts of the songs. Both families and schools can work together to help students boost their literacy skills.