The data and analysis
The Data includes:
1. The "Blue" survey
2. The "Yellow" survey
3. The "One Perfect Sentence" assessment
4. The "Green" summative assessment
You will find a description and the data tables/graphs below.
1. The "Blue" survey
2. The "Yellow" survey
3. The "One Perfect Sentence" assessment
4. The "Green" summative assessment
You will find a description and the data tables/graphs below.
The "Blue" Survey
The Blue Survey: How does music and movements make you feel about learning with music and movements?
The blue survey consists of five questions and one “smiley face” preference question, which focuses on how students feel during music and movement lessons as well as before and after their lessons. Note: Question 4 was removed as it confused students.
A total of 90 yes/no responses were collected. Nearly 87% of the students indicated music and movement gave them a favorable feeling toward lessons and learning. This high percentage was reinforced by the “smiley face” preference where 72% chose the happy face, 22% were neutral in their selection and one student chose the sad face.
Below is the Blue Survey data table and graphs:
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data:
The Blue Survey: How does music and movements make you feel about learning with music and movements?
The blue survey consists of five questions and one “smiley face” preference question, which focuses on how students feel during music and movement lessons as well as before and after their lessons. Note: Question 4 was removed as it confused students.
A total of 90 yes/no responses were collected. Nearly 87% of the students indicated music and movement gave them a favorable feeling toward lessons and learning. This high percentage was reinforced by the “smiley face” preference where 72% chose the happy face, 22% were neutral in their selection and one student chose the sad face.
Below is the Blue Survey data table and graphs:
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data:
THE "YELLOW" SURVEY and "My One Perfect Sentence":
The Yellow Survey: How helpful is music and motion in learning? Write a perfect sentence.
The yellow survey consists of five questions measuring how helpful music and movement is when learning. The "One Perfect Sentence" summative assessment measures how helpful academic results were achieved after music and movements were applied in the classroom.
On the survey, students were directed to measure their answer to each of the 5 questions with a ranking between 1 and 5 where 1 indicates music and movement is not very helpful in learning and a 5 indicates music and movements is very helpful in learning.
A total of 90 rankings were collected. Nearly 85% if the students indicated music and movements were helpful/ very helpful in their learning by ranking their answers with a 4 or 5. Less than 9% of the students indicated music and movements were not helpful with a ranking of 1 or 2, and almost 7% were undecided with a ranking of 3.
Please see the Yellow Survey graphs and data tables for more details.
My one perfect sentence:
96% of the first grade students competed a perfect sentence, and 6% did not complete a perfect sentence. Seventeen students started their sentence with a capital letter, concluded their sentence with an appropriate end mark, and included proper spacing between words. One student did not show mastery in writing a perfect sentence.
Please see the "Yellow" Survey graphs and data table for more details as well as video evidence of students using the movement while taking the assessment. T.he evidence is below
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data:
The yellow survey consists of five questions measuring how helpful music and movement is when learning. The "One Perfect Sentence" summative assessment measures how helpful academic results were achieved after music and movements were applied in the classroom.
On the survey, students were directed to measure their answer to each of the 5 questions with a ranking between 1 and 5 where 1 indicates music and movement is not very helpful in learning and a 5 indicates music and movements is very helpful in learning.
A total of 90 rankings were collected. Nearly 85% if the students indicated music and movements were helpful/ very helpful in their learning by ranking their answers with a 4 or 5. Less than 9% of the students indicated music and movements were not helpful with a ranking of 1 or 2, and almost 7% were undecided with a ranking of 3.
Please see the Yellow Survey graphs and data tables for more details.
My one perfect sentence:
96% of the first grade students competed a perfect sentence, and 6% did not complete a perfect sentence. Seventeen students started their sentence with a capital letter, concluded their sentence with an appropriate end mark, and included proper spacing between words. One student did not show mastery in writing a perfect sentence.
Please see the "Yellow" Survey graphs and data table for more details as well as video evidence of students using the movement while taking the assessment. T.he evidence is below
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data:
THE "GREEN" SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT:
The summative assessment consisted of twelve questions where the students were graded for their correct answers based on questions directly relating to the 8 songs and movements taught in their lessons. A total of 216 answers were collected. 94% of the questions were answered correctly. 6% of the questions were answered incorrectly.
Two songs have movements that matched the learning target. Those songs are "The Capital, Endmark Song" and "Horizontal, Vertical Song." The other songs soley just have words, and no movements.
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data or assessment:
Two songs have movements that matched the learning target. Those songs are "The Capital, Endmark Song" and "Horizontal, Vertical Song." The other songs soley just have words, and no movements.
*Please click on each individual photo to view entire data or assessment:
Graph of combined answers
questions 1-12:
The Analysis
Qualitative Results:
- Students preferred learning through music and movement, and demonstrated the songs during the assessment.
- When asked if music and movement motivated them to learn, 90% of students responded, yes, 10% of students responded no.
- 88.9% of students responded that they did like when we: listened to music to calm down and get our brains re-focused for the next lesson, music and movement got them excited for new lessons, listening to music while writing and making songs and movements up to learn something new. 77% of students said they learn when singing all together as a class.
- Brain related questions: 88.9% of students said morning movement is very helpful to start the day and get their brains firing. 61% of students said that movements and signing we do has helped them learn. 38% of students said the drum helps them spell words and 94% of students said brain breaks help them re-focus throughout the day.
- When asked how students felt about singing a song to learn a spelling pattern, they responded by saying, "The ce, ci,cy and ge, gi, gy song helps me because those are hard sounds to find in words. (Interview, Feb. 8, 2017).
- All students interviewed recalled that they sang a song to themselves while taking the assessment.
- When asked how does learning with movement in math make you feel, the student responded by saying, " Um, I feel good because I can use my arms to help me know which way is horizontal and which way is vertical" (Interview, Feb 7, 2017).
Quantitative Results
- My One Perfect Sentence assessment measured that 94% of students wrote a complete sentence with all the correct components, a capital letter at the beginning, an appropriate end mark at the end and proper spaces between words. 6% of students did not show proficiency in writing a complete sentence.
- The "green" assessment results were fascinating. Students showed mastery of 8 out of 12 answers on the assessment were answered with 100% accuracy from all students in the study.
- 94% of students stated that one or more songs helped them answer a question on the assessment. This evidence can be found under "The Green Summative Assessment video above.
I found the qualitative results to match up quite perfectly with my students. More than half really love learning new songs to help them learn and even beg me to make up songs to introduce to the class. There are a few students in class that they do not enjoy singing the songs as a class, however I spotted some of those students on video, using the movements while taking the assessment. It might not be "cool" to sing, as they are 6 and 7 years old. That is an interested point, however, as my ultimate goal is to educate more teachers on brain science and how that is connected with learning. If our class could inspire other grade levels to come up with songs to help them learn, it can be a win win situation and who knows how far you can take it- on every subject. I found the quantitative results to be very interesting! Students scored extremely high on the assessment, proving that the songs and movements work. The repetitive singing and movements on a weekly basis have shown that this brain based learning strategy is successful. The one thing that caught my attention is the capital, end mark song for writing a complete sentence. Only 6% of students did not write a perfect sentence on the assessment, however 17% of students got this question incorrect on the summative assessment. These students did not write that a complete sentence needed spaces, as they got the capital and end mark correct. Dibels scores have drastically improved since Middle of the Year Assessments. Below you will se the progress from their MOY score and their progress monitoring scores. This shows that students are understanding sounds in words as they read fluently through this formal assessment.
This video shows students taking the summative assessment questions 1-12: |
This video shows students using movements/songs during the complete sentence assessment: |
DIBELS SCORES BELOW:
MOY Dibels Dorf fluency:Below you will see the MOY scores in red. The farthest score on the right is the student's progress monitoring scores. 100% of students have improved their reading fluency scores since the MOY Dibels assessment.
EOY DIBELS DORF FLUENCY:
Below are the Beginning of Year, Middle of Year and End of Year Dibels Reading scores. From the beginning of the year, all students improved in all categories of the Dibels Reading Assessment. |
MOY Dibels Dorf Accuracy:Below you will see the MOY scores in red. The farthest score on the right is the student's progress monitoring scores. This progress monitoring data shows that 100% of students are improving their reading accuracy scores.
EOY DIBELS DORF ACCURACY:
Below are the EOY Dibels Scores in Nonsense Word Fluency, DORF Fluency, DORF Accuracy.. Cumulatively all students improved on their reading fluency, accuracy and nonsense word fluency. |
I have learned an immense amount of information about the brain and how it connects to musical beats, movements and learning. In my blog post, Using Brain Science to Promote Learning and Success in Your Classroom, I learned about the three ways our brain supports learning: Chemistry, Structure and Function. The first way our brain learns is chemically. Happy brains learn better than stressed and exhausted brains. This connects directly to my research because we constantly take brain breaks, kids are happy and they are observed being more alert and excited to learn, therefore learning takes place. Another article that really struck a chord with me was, How to Teach Students About the Brain. Teaching students about how their brains operate is a huge step in empowering them on how they can control their own cognitive and emotional health and learning. My job as an educator is to change their brains everyday and grow those dendrites. I teach my students about what dendrites and synapses are by relating their brains to a tree. We grow our "trees" everyday and it starts by moving our bodies with morning movement. In the article Singing Across the Curriculum, W.P. Bintz discusses how singing songs help students learn core phonics, build phonemic awareness and even builds sight word vocabularies. He goes on to say that repeated singings and readings help develop reading fluency. My research demonstrates this teaching strategy by singing songs and also relating them to familiar tunes that students might recognize. You will see that our "Because" song is actually the tune for "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Our line up song is the tune for Jingle Bells. Some other songs I made up have their own unique tune. The frontal Cortex is the part of the brain that aides in cognition, sensation and emotion (Jenson, 2000). In the blog post, Ignite the Brain with Performing Arts, Jensen talks about the parts of the brain and how they are connected with memory and movement. “Re-wiring the brain is more effective in feeling successful and rebalancing the brain through active movement. (Jensen, 2000). Relating the concept of the lesson to a physical movement can aide in retention. Jensen talked about students learning the 50 states, but this was accompanied by running to a specific spot of the room for each state. This is similar to my "horizontal, vertical" song relating the lines, horizontal and vertical to a physical body movement. Overall I have really enjoyed digging deeper into how music, movement and the brain all work together in perfect harmony! I look forward to continuing my research with future classes.
References:
Jensen, E. 2000. Learning with the Body in Mind. San Diego, CA: The Brain Store, Inc.
Bintz, W. P. (2010). Singing Across the Curriculum. Reading Teacher, 63(8), 683-686.