The Effect of Music on the Mathematics Achievement of Third-Grade Students

Julia Young

Date of Graduation

Spring 2004

Degree

Master of Science in Education in Elementary Education

Department

Childhood Education and Family Studies

Committee Chair

Cynthia Wilson

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the effect of music on the mathematics achievement of third-grade students. The control group consisted of 14 third-grade students in a rural school district and the experimental group consisted of 13 third-grade students in a second rural school district. The subjects in both groups received 30 minutes of mathematics instruction over the multiplication facts for numbers three and four every day for 10 days, using manipulatives and worksheets. Within the 30 minutes, the experimental group also learned the multiplication facts through Times Tunes (Miller & Lee, 1998), a collection of songs about multiplication facts zero through 12. Data were collected through a pretest and posttest consisting of 20 multiplication facts created by the researcher. The data were analyzed using a Paired Samples and Independent t-Tests at a .05 level of significance. There was no significant difference between the posttest scores of third-grade students who received multiplication instruction with songs and third-grade students who received multiplication instruction without songs; however, there was an actual positive difference with music in the experimental group.

Keywords

mathematics achievement, multiplication facts, music, posttest, pretest

Subject Categories

Elementary Education and Teaching

Copyright

© Julia Young

Citation-only

Dissertation/Thesis

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