Award Date

5-1-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching and Learning

First Committee Member

Chyllis Scott

Second Committee Member

Steven Grubaugh

Third Committee Member

Kenneth Varner

Fourth Committee Member

Steven Bickmore

Fifth Committee Member

Richard Miller

Number of Pages

203

Abstract

This dissertation discusses how music and literacy claim many of the same skills, ways music may be used as a motivational tool to help promote strategies for skill development, and how teachers working in teams have the innovation to generate strategic learning. By combining music symbolism with the literacy curriculum, one can create a set of elementary school lessons that integrate musical melody with the facets of literacy, mathematics, science, and movement to formulate beneficial opportunities for student engagement and learning. Students cultivate learning by using the elements of rhythmic literacy, such as identifying beat values in conjunction with their literary equivalent. Important music skill sets that are educationally meaningful for students to develop include identifying rhythmic values and observing how to problem-solve or evaluate note values by words per measure. Combining technology with the concepts mentioned above renders the music skill sets interactive and engaging. The tool of technology is crucial in the sonic-inspired classroom environment to enhance perspectives of music and literacy learning. Students creating song prose in their learning environment with these resources are motivated to engage in discourse and to educationally collaborate by creating group music themes while clapping to the beat of their practice prose. The culminating activity of this project involved students creating their rhyme, using ABA (chorus-verse-chorus) form, incorporating their knowledge of rhythmic literacy with non-locomotor movements, and engaging in group projects, to include the advancement of inspiring ideas of collaborative spoken, rhythmic sound levels. Methodological approaches include research and design of music and movement by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Zoltan Kodaly, Orff Schulwerk, and Gunild Keetman. Such approaches to music-meaning may promote the development of identifiable classifications for describing and interpreting one’s musical experience, however, differing confounding variables may affect study results, such as the extent to which students gather information.

Keywords

Communication; Literacy; Rhyme; Rhythmic Literacy; Song prose; Technology

Disciplines

Curriculum and Instruction | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Education | Educational Methods | Language Description and Documentation | Linguistics | Music | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures

File Format

pdf

File Size

2200 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Friday, May 15, 2026


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