Osceola chosen for prekindergarten violin literacy pilot program

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Osceola chosen for prekindergarten violin literacy pilot program

Around Osceola

Wednesday, 26 January 2011 00:00

The Florida Department of Education has selected the Osceola County School District to pilot an Early Childhood String Program, providing the funding that will provide string instruction to pre-kindergarten students.
The purpose of this project is to determine the effect that focused group instruction in violin will have on the development of kindergarten readiness skills in pre-kindergarten students in two Title I pre-kindergarten sites: Poinciana Academy for the Fine Arts and Chambers Park, an annex of Central Avenue Elementary School. A total of 72 students will receive violin instruction taught by a highly qualified strings specialist using a curriculum that has been specifically designed to align with the purpose of this project.
“I am extremely grateful to Dr. Eric Smith, commissioner of education, and the Florida Department of Education for selecting Osceola County for this outstanding pilot program and for providing the necessary funding,” Superintendent Michael A. Grego said.
Four intact classes of 18 students per class will be included in this project. In eight small groups, nine students per group, students will receive instruction twice each week. Each session will be 20-25 minutes in length. Students will be engaged in a literacy-based program directed toward the development of language, as well as pre-reading and kindergarten readiness skills. The curriculum, based on brain research and applied to prekindergarten string instruction, was developed by Judy Evans, Collier County. The program also is also designed to enhance the development of violin performance skills, attention span, focus, listening skills, fine motor skills, sound exploration and social skills.
“We have found that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year,” said Laurel Trainor, professor of psychology, neuroscience and behavior at McMaster University and director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind. “These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training.”
Trainor’s own study involved young students who were provided string instruction.
The children who were given the string instruction improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities, such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ than did the children not taking string instruction.
This study, as well as the work done by Evans, suggests that musical training is having a positive effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.

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-2 #1 staciaburnham 2013-05-19 06:09

I must be missing something here.... Education is such a mess, no money, laying off teachers, cutting NECESSARY programs and we are gloating about a pre-K violin program??? Don't you think this money could be better spent somewhere else????

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