The effect of musical activities supporting to reading skills on children' reading skills

This research has been carried out to examine the effect of musical activities, supporting to reading skills, on reading skills of children. Sample of the research is 24 children in experiment group and 22 children in control group. In the research, as a part of their daily curriculum, children in experiment group were administered ?Curriculum of Musical Activities that Supports Reading Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children? for 10 weeks, three days for a week, at least 40 minutes for each day. Control group, however, continued their daily curriculum. Data has gathered through ?General Information Form? and ?Research Test of Literacy Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children, Literacy Skills Sub-test? Gathered data evaluated with the help of SPSS 15 software pack in this research. In evaluations of data, frequency and percentage distributions are included. One of the non-parametric tests, Mann-Whitney U test, is used in independent two-group comparisons while Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test is used in dependent groups. As the significance level, 0.05 is used; it is stated that if p<0.05, there is significant difference, if p>0.05, there is no significant difference. As a result of research, in acquisition of reading skills of children in experiment group who were administered with Curriculum of Musical Activities that Supports Reading Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children, there is a significant difference in Research Test of Literacy Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children, Literacy Skills Sub-test and all of its sub-factors (p<0.05). According to findings, gained as a result of statistical analysis, Curriculum of Musical Activities that Supports Reading Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children positively affects children? reading skills. Pre-test scores of groups on Research Test of Literacy Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children, Literacy Skills Sub-test show that they were at the same level. However, after the application, scores of experiment and control group have differentiated in favor of experiment group. According to these results, it is revealed that Curriculum of Musical Activities that Supports Reading Skills for 61-72 Months Old Children positively affects reading skills of children (alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, word knowledge and pronunciation).