I love to spark my students' imagination at the beginning of a unit with high quality picture books related to the learning goals of the unit. The books are tangible, address multiple senses, and bring reading, art, and music together for my students. I had a great deal of success using the books which were illustrated lyrics and also picture books that introduce an discuss musical concepts during the last two years.
There is something magical that happens when the students gather around me to read a story together.
Even more so when it gives the children a glimpse of a world that haven't been exposed to, different regions, people, and vocabulary. The kids point out things in the pictures or ask questions about words. Then they begin to be invested in the song. A song about life on an island is hard for my students, born on the high prairies, to visualize. The books make the connection more real than only the song. It's a beautiful thing when we start singing and a child says, "I know what that [a lyric] means. Remember the picture we saw in the book?" That child has engaged and the books was part of the connection.
There have been several research projects that have quantified the impact reading picture books as part of a music curriculum has on our students. In fact one music education expert, John Feierabend design a curriculum that uses 20 illustrated texts of familiar American folk and children's song. The research found that when kids were first exposed to a song with a picture book of the song's lyrics, that the children had better musical accuracy when the song was presented for singing later!
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