Music signifiers: focussed listening to music as a stimulus to creative writing

Abstract

Increasing pressure is put on learners in the New Zealand education system to reach identified bench marks in their writing. The Literacy Progressions (Ministry of Education, 2010) identify the levels of competency each child is expected to reach at the end of Year 4; and are aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum (2007) Level 2 English learning area. The classroom teachers are responsible for the planning, implementation and development of skills the students need in order to reach the National Standard level for writing. This pilot study investigates the integration of the focussed listening to music in the creative writing lessons for a group of nine Year Four children in a decile three school using a multi-modal pedagogy developed by the researcher. It is based on a case study by Trinick (2010) in a decile eight school and has been adapted to suit the learning needs of the students in a decile three school using the action research process. All data for this research was collated over a series of fourteen lessons in an eight week period and examined using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyse and identify each student's 'experiencing' and 'realisations' of the music. Socio-cultural influences in the lives of the children impact on the language and ideas they bring into the classroom, and the Discourses used in their writing. The theories of Universal Grammar and Universal Musical Grammar will be discussed to help connect the children's work as being meaningful and not made up. Therefore research on the innate neural resources of the default mode network and working memory of each student will also be incorporated to align their brainstormed ideas and creative thinking with the gap between their 'realised' ideas and creative writing. The three pieces of music played will be harmonically analysed in order to match the composers' intent for their music with the creative writing produced by the children. The findings of this pilot study suggests that the children's responses (e.g., oral, visual, visceral) are not necessarily reflected in the way the National Standards are written and therefore, teacher judgement is rendered even harder to make.