SING FOR SUCCESS!:

Overview

This program has ended, but data continues to be gathered. The original text appears here in its entirety.

This program does not require an audition or placement interview and is only available in Hagerstown at Rockland Woods Elementary School.

Does music really make you smarter? Well, yes and no. Current research shows that if you play an instrument, you tend to get better grades in school, but if you sing in a choir you may not.

But before you go rushing out to take your child out of choir as a waste of time, stop to consider the big difference between singing in a choir and playing a musical instrument. Traditionally, you have to read music to play an instrument. You don’t have to read music to sing in a choir. And that may be the big difference.

The fact is, if you treat the voice as a musical instrument and teach the singers to read music, the members of the choir start improving their grades, too.

CCM and Sing for Success! founder, Betty Bertaux, with children at Rockland Woods Elementary School in Hagerstown, MD.

The thing that makes us smarter may not be so much in music itself, but in learning to read music or becoming musically literate. Being musically literate means using the brain to process musical sounds in complex ways. It’s like doing mental push-ups. Brain scans show that the whole brain is active when reading music or when listening as a musically literate person. Reading music exercises the brain and keeps it strong and active. It even seems to condition the brain to learn better, especially in the areas of reading, math, and analytical thinking.

The Sing for Success! program is proving that daily music literacy training for young children helps them get better scores on their standardized tests and better grades on their report cards. What is the musical instrument? The least expensive of all: the voice.

It will be rewarding to follow these kindergarten children through the fifth grade and get the whole picture. Once the results are in, the next step will be to show every school in the nation why they would want to build daily music lessons in vocal music literacy into their curriculum.

All children, regardless of music talent or I.Q., can achieve more academically when they “sing for success!”

This program has ended, but data continues to be gathered. The original text appears here in its entirety.