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From Groans to Grins: A Play-Based Approach to Teaching Music Literacy

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strategy when beginning to teach music literacy. Ac- Three Domains of Music
cording to a Kodály model, a “prepare, present, prac- Teachers might focus on three domains of music to
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tice” approach allows teachers to expose students to teach music literacy: rhythm, melody, and harmony.
specific musical elements, then define them, and final-
ly practice them until fluent. In their book Music Play, 1) Rhythm: Students can show proficiency in the rhyth-
Wendy Valerio et al. unfold a similar informal early mic domain by demonstrating an accurate sense of
childhood sequence where teachers acculturate students pulse, meter, and tempo.
to a variety of sounds, then those students imitate those
sounds and practice them until they are assimilated into 2) Melody: Proficient students might recognize and pro-
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the students’ musical vocabulary. Understanding this duce intervals, scales, and tunes.
iterative process of music learning is important in de-
veloping sequences for building students’ music literacy 3) Harmony: Students fluent with the harmonic domain
across their lifespan of musical learning. can situate music they encounter within a tonality and
identify the function of various harmony and progres-
sions.
Breaking Down Music Literacy
Gordon disaggregated music literacy into three expe- Teachers can work within these specific domains to tar-
riences: aural, oral, and visual. The aural experience get the individual areas of sight singing through play
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describes listening to and discerning musical elements. and create a fun environment that encourages students’
Oral experiences describe one’s ability to verbally pro- success in building musical skills.
duce musical elements. The visual experience of music
literacy describes processes of recognizing and decod-
ing musical symbols at sight. Sight singing is one way to Playing in the Rhythmic Domain
coalesce these three experiences into one difficult cog-
nitive task. Reducing cognitive load by developing these
composite skills independently can help students gain Aural Literacy: Poison Rhythm
proficiency with sight singing. Gordon’s framework pro- Teaching rhythm in ensemble spaces lends itself to
vides a strong starting point to conceptualize how some musical play because rhythms are catchy, and rhythmic
activities span multiple literacies. In this article, we games are inherently social activities, like dancing or
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will retain his definitions of aural and visual experienc- clapping. When I was a student teacher in Houston,
es, while reframing the oral experience to a synthesized students loved the game “Poison Rhythm,” which my
experience. In my experience teaching, some students cooperative teacher used to develop students’ rhythm
were able to learn music by rote, thereby developing vocabularies. This game involves the whole class in a
their aural literacy. These students could also write their version of “Simon Says,” where there is a four-beat
solfège next to note heads in a variety of keys, demon- rhythm notated on the board. This rhythm should in-
strating their visual literacy. However, synthesizing the clude the elements the teacher intends to practice, such
two experiences was difficult. For example, they could as the dotted-quarter-eighth-note pair, or combinations
not accurately sing the solfège at sight. Synthesized lit- of sixteenth notes. The rhythm on the board is the poi-
eracy, therefore, is the ability to demonstrate aural and son rhythm, and anyone who begins to perform that
visual literacies simultaneously. Breaking music literacy rhythm is “out.”
into distinct components—such as aural, visual, and To level the playing field, the teacher should practice
synthesized literacy—enables more targeted instruction the rhythm with the group a few times, thereby aural-
and assessment by allowing educators to isolate specific ly reinforcing the teacher’s rhythmic pedagogical goal.
skill areas, identify gaps in student understanding, and The teacher can perform these rhythmic patterns on
tailor learning experiences to support focused cognitive a neutral syllable or using a rhythmic solfège system,
development in each domain. depending on their goals for the students. After this,

CHORAL JOURNAL October 2025 Volume 66 Number 3 9