Effects of rhythmic bodily movements on the rhythmic achievements of eight- to nine-year-old children

Abstract: This study was designed to assess the effectiveness of rhythmic bodily movement on the rhythmic achievement of primary school children. The bodily movement group received training incorporating bodily movement and songs while the nonmovement group received teaching involving only percussion instrument and songs. Thirty eight- to nine-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of the two groups. Each group was given a weekly half-hour instructional lesson. Thackray's Tests of Rhythmic Ability were used to evaluate the rythmic achievement of the subjects. The t-test of significance and two-way analysis of variance were used to analyze the data obtained. Analysis of data concluded that systematic rhythmic training could improve the rhythmic abilities of eight- to nine-year-old children. Although gross bodily movement did enhance rhythmic understanding, it was not a statistically more superior method of teaching than the counting skills with the rhythmic movement group obtaining a higher posttest score, the results for all the other tests revealed no statistical differences between the two methods in rhyhtmic training.

Keyword(s): Rhythmic-bodily-movements, rhythmic-achievement, children, songs, percussion-instrument, counting-skills, Thackray's-tests-of-rhythmic-ability, systematic-rhythmic-training, gross-bodily-movement.

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