Phonics Lesson Plans Brought to Life With Music

Music in the classroom has been an important tradition through the years.  It may take a little time to find the music that connects with your lesson or you may need to provide reasons why music is valuable for learning curriculum.  Perhaps you feel a little guilty for having that much fun in your class, and need to explain the value to other teachers or parents.  Here are a few roles music plays in helping children learn to read, write, speak clearly and confidently, and listen.  I hope this information assists you in taking the plunge, and adding more music to your day. 

Singing in the classroom provides an entertaining way for your students to build all four of the interdependent strands of language: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Catchy songs rich in rhyming, tongue twisting, and phonetic repetition will build listening skills and phonetic awareness.  Vocabularies will increase with ease. Confidence will grow in practicing pronunciation and understanding the meaning of new words and topics.  Themes of the songs promote discussion and expressive language.  For an activity, try printing the lyrics for your students to develop left-right tracking.  There are many choices in song selections specified for phonics.  Just pick your favorite songs and begin experiencing the enjoyment it will bring you and your students. 

Learning phonics songs provides repetition of consonant sounds and vowel sounds. Student will recognize sets of words that begin with the same sound in songs, speech, and poetry. The added attraction to using music is that after your student leaves the classroom, the songs will remain in their memory long after class is over. This is where connections will be made and higher learning will take place. Adding music in the classroom is not only fun, but extremely valuable as multi-sensory learning.  Provided below are a few music links to lesson plans discussing music in the classroom.

  Here's an example of a phonics song played by Barbara Moseley, Lesson Planet's Music Guide.

Phonics Lesson Plans Using Music: 

Alphabet Game:  Students identify letters in the alphabet and pronounce them phonetically correct.

Contraction Action: Students will learn to read and spell common contractions formed from a verb paired with the word not while singing.

What's That Sound:  Students will learn to pronounce the correct consonant sound when seeing the letter associated with that sound with music.

Sing Vowel Sounds:  Using the tune to "B-I-N-G-O" you can quickly teach the children the five vowels and 'y' as a vowel.

Introduction To Poetry:  Students investigate similarities between music and poetry.