Today we live in a world even more oriented toward research and development, and yet the propensity to view the world through a myopic perceptual lens is still evident. The ever expanding body of research in music teaching and learning is beginning to lay a foundation for how teachers can be more effective in their teaching and how to plan significant musical learning experiences for their students. A fundamental aspect of the musical experience is melody; its understanding is an important part of musical learning.

This article summarizes selected research concerning the musical development and learning of elementary school-age children. With an eye toward the needs of practicing teachers and the needs of undergraduate music education students, what follows are both research summaries and suggested teaching strategies pertaining to melodic development that can be incorporated into any teacher's daily planning, teaching and curriculum activities.

Perceiving and responding to the various dimensions of melody are fundamental parts of understanding music, as are the thinking processing by which children make sense out of tonal-melodic material. Investigations into how children perceive and process melodic information suggest that both age and cognitive development are important factors in considering how a teacher designs and implements classroom musical activities.

The study of how children acquire or learn a song has provided insight into how children's musical thinking emerges, as well as led to important implications for effective teaching. Like children's rhythmic development, among the most important findings in children's melodic perception and processing is the idea of sequential development.

PERCEPTION.
The majority of studies on children's perceptions of melody has been experimental in nature, often requiring children to express their discriminations in rather simple ways. Same-different comparisons of two or more patterns, verbal responses or manipulating a researcher-designed apparatus to various transformations of melodic fragments, along with the measurement of pitch distances have been the most frequently methods used to investigate melodic development in children. In addition, direct observations and critical interpretations of singing and listening behaviors, as well as research interventions that provide musical problems for children to solve have been used. Increasingly, the criteria for assessing children's aural perceptions of melody are moving toward measures that emphasize children's active involvement in music, as well as seeking to balance teaching interventions with exposure (Cuddy and Upitis, 1992).

SONG ACQUISTION.
How children learn to sing a song has a healthy body of research to suggest that both preschool and elementary-age children progress through similar stages. Bentley (1966) found that school-age children: grasp the general shape of a tune by attending to its rhythm patterns, first; approximate its tonal configurations; and then move to the correct coincidence of pitch. Moog (1976) notes that children begin with the words; add the rhythm; and finally the pitch. Davidson, McKernon and Gardner (1981), studying the spontaneous singing of young children, found four phases in how children acquire song: the overall topology; rhythm surface; pitch contour; and key stability. Welch (1986) has noted a similar development pattern in children's singing, as well.

The developmental pattern that emerges across each of these studies suggests that children tend to apprehend the global or surface features of song first. That is, they grasp the words or distinctive phrases first; identify figural aspects, such as phrase endings; present an underlying pulse; and extract the singing rhythm of the words. Attempting to match pitches and producing the overall contour of individual phrases, along with projecting a defined tonal center, mark children's final acquisition of song.

MELODIC PROCESSING AND PRODUCTION.
Similar to children's acquisition of song, studies of children's melodic processing and production reveal that the contour of melody acts as a powerful initial organizer for making sense out of tonal or melodic material (Davidson, 1985). Both the processing and production of discrete intervals and a stable pitch reference emerge out of children's apprehension of contour schemes (Dowling, 1982, 1984; McKernon, 1979; Werner, 1917/1961). In other words, contour schemes guide perception by facilitating the immediate recognition of familiar tunes, as well as lay the seeds for the development of a sense of tonality. By the age of 8, children's melodic perception operates within an increasingly stable tonal system where melodic information is stored and processed according to a tonal reference rather than by contour schemes (Davidson and Scripp, 1988).

PERCEPTION.
For developing children's melodic perception, several general principles are worth considering: # Focus children's attention on deciding whether or not two patterns sound the same or different, and probe for the thinking behind their decisions.

#1 - A more useful task may be of the "sorting variety." For example, ask children to find two patterns out of a choice of three that "go together" or are the "same" or "similar." This actvity helps children understand more precisely the basis for making comparisons.

#2 - Ask children to identify familiar songs that are played on melodic instruments, such as the recorder, bells or piano.

#3 - Ask children to "make up a song" and then have them "write it some fashion so that a friend can read it." These activities help integrate a child's use and understanding of many musical ideas, particularly that of melodic properties.

PERFORMANCE.
Performance activities should begin with nurturing children's free spontaneous melodic play and their actual "invented tunes," then move toward direct instruction in learning a song and developing perceptual discriminations among different melodies.

Techniques for teaching a song should take into account how children actually acquire a song. One approach involves "chunking" or breaking songs into segments, as is often done in rote song teaching. An effective sequence for teaching might be to:

#1 - ask children to focus on the words first, then,
#2 - focus on the general direction or contour of the melody, then finally,
#3 - draw attention to individual pitches and the relationships.

At all times some form of pitch or tonal reference should be given.

Because contour is a particularly robust component in children's melodic perception, processing, and acquisition of song, activities incorporating a variety of different modalities, such as kinesthetic or the use of graphic representations, that draw attention to and show the direction of pitch movement should be used.

Children's melodic development is highly dependent upon their perceptual and conceptual understanding. Lack of performance does not necessarily indicate lack of understanding. For the most part, children's development and education work hand-in hand, with improvement in their perception, processing, and performance marked by age, maturation, and cognitive development.

Summary

A general principle for helping children understanding melodic ideas involves providing opportunities for children to abstract a principle or concept across a variety of musical contexts, especially composing, listening, and improvising, so that it can be applied to new musical learnings. Abstracting melodic ideas works best when perception, processing, and performance are integrated and are couched in complete musical ideas.

More Resources on Melodic Development:
OutsideShore.com