Listening Script 2-2 PDF

# LISTEN FOR MAIN IDEAS ## Part One Linda Wertheimer: This is All Things Considered. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Noah Adams: And I'm Noah Adams. Most schools offer music and art classes to give students a well-rounded education. New research indicates those classes may do more for students than just giv...

# LISTEN FOR MAIN IDEAS ## Part One Linda Wertheimer: This is All Things Considered. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Noah Adams: And I'm Noah Adams. Most schools offer music and art classes to give students a well-rounded education. New research indicates those classes may do more for students than just give them an appreciation of the arts. According to a study in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature, studying music and art can significantly advance a child's reading skills and especially boost math proficiency. Michelle Trudeau reports. Michelle Trudeau, reporter: A class of six-year-olds getting a special music lesson, part of a special arts program that researcher Martin Gardiner and his colleagues at the music school in Rhode Island designed for several elementary schools in the state. Martin Gardiner: We started out wanting to see the impact of arts training in some first- and second-grade kids. MT: So, some classrooms had an extra hour of this special arts curriculum incorporated into their normal school week. MG: And other classrooms getting the standard curriculum in the arts, which was pretty standard for Rhode Island and rather representative of the country as a whole. MT: The standard curriculum, say the researchers, gave students music lessons twice a month and art lessons twice a month. The typical music lesson tended to be somewhat passive, says Gardiner. Students listened to tapes and concerts and talked about music in class. In contrast, the special arts classes met twice weekly and got students actively involved as a way to teach them the basic building blocks. MG: The kinds of skills that they are learning in these grades are... in music, they're learning to sing together properly, sing together on pitch, sing together in rhythm, sing together songs; and, in the visual arts, they're learning to draw shapes and deal with colors and forms, and so forth. MT: A very interactive, experiential approach that took advantage of children's natural inclination to master enjoyable tasks and build upon sequential skills. MG: And at the end of seven months, all the kids in the school took standardized tests, and we looked not only at how these teachers rated the kids on attitude and so forth, but also how the kids scored on their tests. MT: And here's what the researchers found. First of all, those kids who'd entered the first grade toward the bottom of the class in reading and then received the special arts program for the year had now caught up to the average in reading. MG: And that in itself is wonderful. But, in addition, they were now statistically ahead in learning math. MT: Dramatically ahead in math, compared to the kids who had not received the special arts classes throughout the year. The researchers found also that the kids who continued their special arts classes for a second year continued to improve in math. ## Part Two MT: Psychologist Frances Rauscher, from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, says this is an important study showing that a group of typical children, regardless of talent or parental involvement, can reap benefits from arts training that affects other academic areas, especially math. Frances Rauscher: It's getting as close as is absolutely possible to the real world. You know, this... these are kids that already enrolled in schools that are just simply assigned to these different groups, this test group and this control group. And what they're finding is a strong effect in the improvement of mathematical ability as measured by school standards. So, this has real general... real world appeal. MT: Rauscher's own recent research could help explain why arts education might have this additional benefit. In her study, a group of three-year-olds were given music lessons in preschool-piano and singing. Rauscher found they scored significantly higher on a particular IQ test that measures abstract reasoning-a skill, adds Rauscher, essential to mathematics. FR: Training in the arts, and particularly training in music, enhances the ability for children to understand proportions and ratios, and that's obviously a skill that's very important for mathematical reasoning. MT: Just how music enhances mathematical skills is unknown. It may be by the more general effect of increasing self-esteem, or maybe something neurological happens in the brain, or maybe, psychologist Andrea Halpern from Bucknell University suggests, these children are learning how to learn. Andrea Halpern: In other words, you can learn skills, but you can also learn about how you learn things. And that seems to be a hallmark of the true mature learner, that they know how to learn things. And it's possible that these early interventions might be having some effect in children knowing how to attack new material. MT: Whatever may be going on in the growing brains of children, both psychological and biological, these new findings underscore an increasing awareness among scientists and educators that a rich learning environment can significantly enhance children's intellectual development in unexpected ways. I'm Michelle Trudeau reporting. # LISTEN FOR DETAILS (Repeat Listen for Main Ideas) # MAKE INFERENCES ## Excerpt One MT: The standard curriculum, say the researchers, gave students music lessons twice a month and art lessons twice a month. The typical music lesson tended to be somewhat passive, says Gardiner. Students listened to tapes and concerts and talked about music in class. In contrast, the special arts classes met twice weekly and got students actively involved as a way to teach them the basic building blocks. MG: The kinds of skills that they are learning in these grades are... in music, they're learning to sing together properly, sing together on pitch, sing together in rhythm, sing together songs; and, in the visual arts, they're learning to draw shapes and deal with colors and forms, and so forth. ## Excerpt Two MT: Rauscher's own recent research could help explain why arts education might have this additional benefit. In her study, a group of three-year-olds were given music lessons in preschool-piano and singing. Rauscher found they scored significantly higher on a particular IQ test that measures abstract reasoning-a skill, adds Rauscher, essential to mathematics. Audioscript 283