Date of Award

5-1982

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Nancy Polette

Second Advisor

Jeanne Donovan

Abstract

This study addresses the question : Will the use of music activities to t each locational skills in library use to third grade students be more effective in helping students to acquire and retain these skills than a more traditional multi-media approach?

Locational skills in this study include: alphabetical order, correct use of the card catalog, location of fiction and non-fiction books, recognition of different types of reference materials and their uses and the ten Dewey Decimal classifications.

The music activities include folksongs and original songs and coordinating activity worksheets. The multimedia approach uses sound filmstrips, charts and catalog cards and a lecture by the librarian.

The subjects in the study were sixty-seven Caucasian, third grade students representative of half of the third grade students at a year-round suburban elementary school . As a random sample was not possible, the thirty-three boys and thirty-four girls were selected from existing classes, Sex and IQ were used as variables to correlate the two groups . Prior to any instruction, students were divided into experimental and control groups and given a pretest on library skills: Gullette and Hatfield, Test of Library/ Study Skills Level 1, a reliable and valid diagnostic group test. Following their respective group instruction, students were given the same test again as a posttest.

The thirty-one students in the experimental group were given five hours of instruction with a music activities curriculum developed and taught by Nancy Karl. The control group of thirty-six students were given five hours of instruction with the multi-media method from the school librarian.

Results indicate no statistically significant difference in the two methods of instruction. An analysis of variance was done on the pretest and posttest scores of both groups with E ) . OS level of significance. At-test on comparison of pretest and posttest scores of each group showed that each group improved significantly due to their respective instruction. Differences in the two types of instruction were noted in the mean scores of the pretest and posttest . Girls showed greater improvement with the music activities approach , whereas boys showed greater improvement with the multi-media approach,

These results indicate that more research should be done in the field of library skill instruction in the elementary school. It is believed that music activities can be used effectively to teach content areas such as reading and locational skills. The curriculum used in this study is included in the appendix.

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