Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hello, my name is Julie Novak, and I'm thrilled to be speaking with you today about my topic, which is utilizing music therapy to teach language skills for students, who are Deaf or hard of hearing. I'd like to start with telling you a little bit about myself. I was previously the music therapist and music educator at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. I worked for 10 years with the School for the Deaf preschool through eighth grade programs. I currently work for the Center for Hearing and Communication in Broward County, Florida, and now my focus is high school students. I would like to briefly share with you what music therapy is. Music therapy is a field that requires a degree. It requires a Board Certification and an internship. I like to define music therapy as "the use of music for non-musical goals." You can find music therapists in many types of settings. You can find them in clinical settings, in hospitals, in hospice services. You can also find them in educational settings. A lot of times school districts hire music therapists in special education settings. Research has indicated that music can aid in memory/attention. It provides motivation and reinforcement, and helps establish a positive learning environment. Oftentimes, when I talk about Deafness and music, I sometimes get a quizzical response. One could hypothesize, that students who are Deaf or hard of hearing: Why would they be good at music and why would they enjoy music? I always, when I get that kind of response, I like to highlight Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which states that all of our brains are wired certain ways, in different ways, and all of us have gifts. My theory and Gardner's theory is that, just because someone's hearing mechanism doesn't work like the typical hearing population, it doesn't mean that their brain is still not wired and gifted for music. In my studies and in my experience at the School for the Deaf and the Blind, I have known profoundly Deaf individuals, who are rooted in the Deaf community, but still enjoy any type of feedback they get from music. They have speaker systems at their house, they use earbuds, and even though what they're experiencing is vibrational, they still get reinforced and motivated by the rhythms of the vibrational feedback. May I add, just like the hearing population there are some hearing people, who don't enjoy music. Music is not their thing, they don't enroll in any classes in music. They are just not connected to music. I think similarly to the Deaf community, there are some Deaf members, who don't identify with music at all. Research has indicated strengths and preferences for children, who are Deaf or hard of hearing. Let me give you a few seconds to read these bullets. It states that music should be appropriately amplified. It is important for a teacher or parent to realize, that for a student who is Deaf or hard of hearing, a Fisher Price boombox is not going to do justice to the music that they are going to hear. You want to make sure the sound equipment is legit, and that it's high quality. Children, who are Deaf or hard of hearing, require more exposure, which makes sense, because maybe their musical experiences aren't as vast as someone, who had a lot of experiences previously. Rhythmic tendencies tend to be stronger than pitch-related abilities. It's really interesting in a lot of the research, the students, who are Deaf or hard of hearing, do just as well as the hearing subjects, when it comes to rhythmic testing. So rhythmic tends to be very salient for the Deaf population. Finally, sustaining instruments give more aural feedback, are more reinforcing than percussive instruments. This is an interesting finding, because a lot of times in the Deaf community, you'll see big bass drums at football games and at pep rallies. While that instrument is very reinforcing for the Deaf community, the research found that low-frequency instruments like a trombone, that sustains a low pitch, tends to be more be reinforcing and gives more feedback. Another example is a bass guitar, when you strum the string or when you pluck the string, the sound going through the amplifier is reinforcing. It's important here that I mention, that preference is very important. As you know in the Deaf or hard of hearing population, that lot of times the hearing varies. There's high frequency loss, low frequency loss. So it is important to match preferences with the hearing loss. For example, the soprano recorder, which is a small high-pitched instrument, a lot my Deaf students didn't like that instrument, because it wasn't low pitched. They would actually detested that instrument. But occasionally, I have one or two students, who would just fall love with the soprano recorder. So you really do you have to pay attention to preferences. I'll give you a second to read the slide. Is music a part Deaf culture? I think, if I would ask a member of the Deaf community, they would probably say, "No," that it is not part of Deaf culture, and that it is more part of hearing culture. I have in working with the Deaf community, I have found big examples of ways that music is utilized in the Deaf culture. If you remember, for example, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music varies according to culture and social context. Music in America is very different than, let's say, music in tribal Africa. I would like to make the same comparison that music in mainstream hearing culture, might be different than music that's found and created by the Deaf community. One example, I love to use is the Gallaudet Fight Song. The song has strong rhythmic examples inside of it. It has a calm response type of feel, and it is used by the Deaf and passed from generation to generation, much like a folk song is passed down from generation to generation in the hearing culture. Another example of music in the Deaf culture is D-PAN, Deaf Performing Arts Network, d-pan.com is a website, where Deaf people can perform. There's a performer there named Sean Forbes, who actually creates raps and incorporates ASL sign into his raps. My last example of music in Deaf culture is Rathskellar, which is a Deaf performing arts group that travels around United States performing rhythmic chants, performing dance, and performing all kinds of instruments or actually it's more geared towards movement in sign. I'll give you second to read this slide. For my graduate studies, I looked at the use of music to teach vocabulary. I chose 24 target words, and I really focused on children age three and four years old. I had a hearing sample and a group of students who were Deaf or hard of hearing. I targeted words in six different categories to teach them. I made sure before I started the testing that they were unaware of the vocabulary, that I was introducing. In this project, I had four conditions or four situations that I taught in. One was, I paired music with visual aids and sign language. So I used song to teach vocabulary. In my second condition, I used rhythmic chant paired with visual aids and sign language. My third condition, I just used conversation paired with visual aids and sign language. Finally, my fourth condition was a control condition, which I didn't teach words at all in the session. I found that the preschoolers, who are Deaf or hard of hearing made the most gains in the rhythmic condition, that the rhythmic chant helped aid teach vocabulary most out of the melodic conversation and the control group. I will give you a second to read the slide. This finding corroborates with previous research that states, "Rhythm is very salient for people with hearing loss," and the results could implicate that rhythmic chant could be used in preschool classrooms. In music classrooms, it may be beneficial to use rhythmic chant to teach vocabulary. In this next clip that I'm going to show. It's an example of how I use rhythmic chant to teach vocabulary. This is a chant that actually teaches opposites. I'm going to show the clip for you now. "To my rap, tell me the opposite, when I snap. Listen, I say, 'Yes,' you say, 'No.' I say, 'Fast,' you say, 'Slow.' I say, 'Hot,' you say, 'Cold.' I say, 'Young,' you say, 'Old.' I say, 'Wet,' you say, 'Dry.' I say, 'Hello,' you say, 'Bye-bye.' " "Good job!" "Who wants a turn? Dionte!" "Listen, listen to my rap, tell me the opposite, when I snap. I say, 'Yes,' you say, 'No,' 'No.' I say, 'Fast,' you say, 'Cold,' 'Slow.' I say, 'Hot,' you say, 'Cold.' I say, 'Young,' you say, 'Old.' I say, 'Wet,' you say, 'Dry.' I say, 'Hello,' you say, 'Bye-bye.' Bye, Dionte." "Yeah! Good job!" Music is connected to language and may be a reinforcing way to teach and reinforce standards. For example, a common kindergarten English standard is: Remember key details from a story. A lot of times songs are stories, and we call them story songs. A lot of times folk songs embed stories in them. Parents and teachers can help students, who are Deaf or hard of hearing, with temporal language by asking them, "What happens at the beginning of this song, what happens in the middle, and what happens at the end?" A lot of songs have a sequence, and the music is a great memory aid. Plus, it gives students an opportunity to act out songs, so that they can not only have an auditory aid with the music, but a kinesthetic aid with acting it out. An example, that I like to use in my kindergarten classes is a song called "Grizzly Bear." I'm going to sing it for you right now. "A grizzly bear, a grizzly bear is sleeping in a cave. Please be very quiet, very, very quiet. If you wake him, if you shake him, he gets very mad." In a kindergarten setting, after I taught the song to the students, I would ask questions like, "Who is in the cave? What is the bear doing? When does the bear get mad? Where is the bear? Why should you not shake the bear or wake him?" These are great examples tied to that kindergarten standard, and it's a lot of fun for the students. Song books are another avenue, where music is tied to literacy. A lot of the story songs, that I talk to you about have been made into beautiful books with visual aids, and the song serves as an auditory aid, memory cue for the students, who are reading the book. So just a reminder about story songs that are illustrated. Moving on to an older grade, fourth grade English standard, and a common standard is: Identify and use common types of figures of speech. I'll give you a second to read the slide. Research has indicated that students, who are Deaf or hard of hearing have less use of imaginative language, have difficulty understanding figurative or symbolic language, and because of this are delayed in other subjects. Well, music and song lyrics are rich in figurative language. Every popular song imaginable has some sort of figurative language incorporated into it. Music has similes, metaphors. Tons of songs use idioms and all different kinds imagery. Sometimes, songs are good examples for language. Other times, there're songs with lyrics that are not good examples of the English language. Again, that is a good non-example to point out to students of what kind of language use is inappropriate here, or what kind of language use is appropriate. So figurative language in popular music is a wonderful way to analyze figurative language. I'll give you a second to read the slide. In this slide, I give you ideas to utilize when listening to music with students. For example, music can be used to identify parts of speech used in the song. Find all the adjectives in the song lyrics. Find all the verbs. You could also identify synonyms that could be substituted for specific words. This is a great way to expand vocabulary, picking out certain words in songs and asking students to substitute a word that has a similar meaning. You can ask them to substitute words within the same class, different adjectives, nouns, adverbs. You can ask them to identify errors in a word class use within the song. Writing songs with specific directives that target language composition objectives. Finally, just by describing the music can help students expand their language, when talking about music and poetry, because lyrics to songs are really poetry. Here, I'd like to give you some examples of popular music or popular songs that use figurative language. For example, Katy Perry's "Firework". She states, "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?" "Do you ever feel so paper-thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?" Here you can talk to the students, "What is the meaning that she's trying to convey here?" Obviously, she's saying, "Do you feel sometimes that you don't matter, that you're not important?" Let's look at some the similies she uses. Let's look at some of the metaphors. "Like a house of cards" would be a great example of a simile. So after the verse feels very hopeless, she then brings us the chorus of Firework, which she uses a simili. "Just open up like the Fourth of July." Then the main chorus is the metaphor, "Baby you're a firework." It would be interesting to talk with students, "What do you think she means by you're a firework?" and "What does that describe?" Discussion can be opened up from there, because song lyrics are really poetry. Another popular song, that I chose for an example is Ferge's "Big Girls Don't Cry". She uses figurative language like "We've got some straightening out to do." It'd be an interesting conversation. What does "straightening out" mean? How would you sign that ASL? "I'm going to miss you like a child misses their blanket." What is that concept trying to convey? "But I've got to move on with my life." Does she literally mean I've got to move into a different house or that I need to proceed forward in my life? So these are examples of figurative language used in popular songs. I just took the beginning of Adele's, "Rollin in the Deep". She starts with the lyric, "There's a fire burning in my heart..." Of course, you'd have to rely on context to know whether it's a passionate, loving fire or one that is full of misery and festering. This would be a nice phrase to think about ASL versus English. In English, this is how we would say it. Is there an ASL idiom that closely matches with this English phrase or this poetry? Online now, it's a pretty amazing, all of the different postings of people and their interpretations of songs into ASL. With every popular song, there's about 200 translations of people's imaginative gloss. Some of them are really bad, and some of them are ingenious. Someone, that I'd like to point out, whom I think is a genius, is Kelly Greer, K-E-L-L-Y G-R-E-E-R. She does a beautiful interpretation of "Rolling in the Deep". So this would be a good example to kind of compare language, the two languages English and ASL. Here's the English on the board, here is the ASL interpretation by Kelly Greer. Let's compare the two. This brings us into talking about the Bilingual-Bicultural model. By analyzing English lyrics, it's a great way to discriminate between the two languages. It gives the students a real visual cue of here's English, here's ASL. Here's "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele, here's Kelly Greer's ASL interpretation. It has students compare language models. I again state, "Pick one popular song. Evaluate performers of this song in ASL. Who did the best job in performing the song by reflecting ASL structures and rules?" Here you can have middle school or high school students discriminating good language models. Who justifies ASL and expresses it in a beautiful, conceptual manner, and where is ASL badly represented? What is not American Sign Language? So it would be a good practice for students to figure out what is a good language model. In my middle school classes, I would assign a song project. In following the Bilingual-Bicultural Model, I would have students analyze song lyrics and create a gloss for the ASL. Another good practice is to take a song that is mostly performed in ASL, for example, the Gallaudet Fight Song or the CSDB Fight Song, that the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind uses and figure out ways to translate ASL to English. It's quite challenging and a great exercise for discriminating between the two language models. Over the years with the song project, I had many students perform some brilliant pieces, where they were able to gloss the ASL independently and perform it artistically. I'm going to show you an example of a student, who performs a song that he glossed and performs it with great artistry. (instrumental music) Well you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, no time to talk Music loud and women warm I've been kicked around since I was born And now it's all right, it's okay And you may look the other way But we can try to understand 'The New York Times' effect on man Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ahh haa haa haa stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ahh haa haa haa stayin' alive Ohh get it more (instrumental music) Well now I get low and I get high And if I can't get either I really try Got the wings of Heaven on my shoes I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose And now it's all right, it's okay I'll live to see another day But we can try to understand 'The New York Times' effect on man Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ahh haa haa haa stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ahh haa haa haa stayin' alive (instrumental music) Another project, that I'd like to share with you, is in the elementary school. We talked about the Star Spangled Banner, which has very difficult vocabulary even for adults to analyze. So we took the English, we analyzed what the meaning was, and then we created an ASL gloss to the Star Spangled Banner. Victoria does a beautiful job of expressing the gloss in a very musical, artistic way. I'd like to share that with you now. O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? I'm going to give you a few seconds to review the last slide. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the following points: Music is highly reinforcing and can be reinforcing for students, who are Deaf or hard of hearing, it should be utilized to teach non-musical goals, when working with Deaf or hard of hearing populations, it is important to remember that preference matters, so if the student is reinforced by a certain kind of music or a certain instrument, it is important for educators and parents to support that preference. Another important point is that rhythm is important to the Deaf population. Rhythm is very salient. A lot of studies done with Cochlear Implants also state that rhythmic is the most salient characteristic of music for those with Cochlear Implants. It is important to focus on rhythm. Music often requires the use of language and teaching children, who are Deaf to talk or write about music gives them a non-threatening, enjoyable opportunity to practice language skills. Finally, discussions about meanings in music can also be structured to increase vocabulary and word class usage skills. I hope that you gained some knowledge from my presentation today. If you have any questions or comments about the presentation, feel free to contact me at my email, which is julienovak_77@yahoo.com. I look forward to reading your feedback. Thank you.
B1 deaf music stayin alive stayin language hearing Music Therapy to Teach Language Skills for Deaf / Hard Hearing Students 35 3 songwen8778 posted on 2016/07/29 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary