In a system under pressure to improve outcomes for SEND and disadvantaged pupils, understanding how rhythm shapes attention may help schools strengthen universal provision before difficulties escalate.

When Behaviour Signals Something Deeper

There’s a debate in education at the moment about learning and SEND. Every case is unique and everyone wants the best outcome for each child. Within this context, teachers and parents need to know how best to approach the apparent barriers to learning that children face. When I was in this role in a school, teachers would often ask me:

Do I differentiate or place them in detention?

Teachers do not give preferential treatment. And yet, a child with SEND must be supported so that they are able to access the curriculum.

When perception of phonemes is weak, we might notice a child presenting as:

• withdrawn through overstimulation, or

• highly distractible through a state of vigilance, or

• anxious and constantly seeking reassurance, by distracting others.

These behaviors tell us something about the experience of the child.

1. When a child is watching their teacher’s face, they cannot look at the board to assimilate the content. The teacher may be aware that this child is highly motivated, but might not realize that what they have seen is a coping strategy, compensating for weak phonemic awareness.

2. A pupil who is looking around the room and alert to every sound outside (but unable to focus their attention) is likely to anticipate changes in classroom as their priority. For them, directing attention away from the room onto the smallest sounds of language (phonemes) is like trying to hold a balloon under water. Their attention will revert straight back to 'reading the room' as soon as possible.

3. The child seeking contact with others is often attuned to facial expressions, tone of voice and other contextual cues such as gestures. These cues are meaningful signals that bolster communication and compensate for weak phonemic awareness. This student uses these cues to anticipate what others want or need from them. They place others’ needs ahead of their own as a way to manage their situation. This strategy ensures that they ‘belong’ even if their perception of sensory information is incomplete. This child will be among the first to help or contribute to a team effort.

4. A well-adjusted pupil is able to learn because the sensory input from the classroom environment is not overwhelming or confusing or threatening. Inhibitory networks have adapted to strike the perfect balance: they can dampen down the ‘noise’ and sharpen perception of salient sensory information, making the learning experience rewarding and effective.

Given the current challenges in education, is it possible to address these learning differences and to steer children away from withdrawn or vigilant or fawning behaviour, and towards well-adjusted more equitable states that are better suited to learning in the mainstream classroom?

Why Some Children Struggle to Perceive the Sounds of Language

Rather than chasing easy wins, gamifying learning through quizzes or dangling juicy incentives, we could instead fine tune the inhibitory system using rhythm.

When we learn any new skill, we begin with small steps and repeat them, (introducing rhythm) until they cohere into a coordinated movement. Further repetition and variation lead to mastery, as we build many versions of the skill, to ensure flexibility and adaptation. Repetition without variation leads to monotony and fragmentation of focus.

If we are learning to strike goals in sport we might practice delivering the ball to the same area of the net, but from many different angles. We discover the same principle holds if we move from the spatial skills of scoring goals to the auditory skills of conversation.

By refining the timing of our enunciation we can direct children's attention to the smallest sounds of language, phonemes. The distinctive quality of each phoneme is positioned right at the beginning of the sound. The front edge of the phoneme is 'salient' and the rest is ‘noise’. If a child misses the detail at front edge, then the salience of each sound does not register and might not be available to the child at all.

Rhythm, Attention and Inhibitory Control

Researchers established 50 years ago that the processes accounting for sensitivity to phonemic awareness and rhythmic awareness overlapped. Some years later, findings showed that the overlap was so close that it was difficult to distinguish between sensitivity to phonemes and sensitivity to rhythm. One explanation may be that the same inhibitory system governs the detection of salience in rhythmic and phonemic auditory processing

Although language acquisition takes place during a sensitive window of development in the first five years of a child's life, there is no such limitation on the refinement of rhythmic awareness. By developing sensitivity to rhythm we can build inhibitory control and do so within the curriculum by cultivating rhythmic precision. In this way, executive functions are deliberately nurtured at school. We can no longer assume that all children enter Key Stage 1 with effective levels of inhibitory control in phonological processing

What Teachers Notice Before Difficulties Are Measured

We must be careful not to underestimate what children can achieve, but also to acknowledge that a child or a group of children with little inhibitory control or phonemic awareness can disrupt the learning of other children. It’s necessary to strike the right balance.

The class teacher might notice that:

1. A pupil struggles with coordinating their handwriting: Weak inhibitory control can impede the development of fine motor skills. Rhythm offers precision in timing, which assists the coordination of fine motor control in handwriting.

2. A child cannot follow instructions or retain information: A 'salience' versus ‘noise’ imbalance may be playing out. The detection of 'salience' over 'noise' is governed by inhibitory control and impacts working memory (the capacity to hold and manipulate information ‘in mind’). Rhythm increases the detection of 'salience' at the front edge of the sounds of language and improved sensitivity to phonemic awareness lightens the cognitive load as an added benefit. When ‘noise’ in the sounds no longer absorbs attention, there is increased capacity in working memory and a feeling of ease when following instructions and when reading.

3. A student lags behind when the class sings or reads aloud or perform physical actions as a group: No matter how many times the class rehearses, the lag never disappears. And yet, in a rhythm-based intervention, the same pupil spontaneously corrects their timing and synchronises with others. The principle is the same, with too much ‘noise’ the child remains in a state of overstimulation and cognitive over-loading. But in a context designed to optimize rhythm-based processing, the same child self-corrects.

In the Classroom: Refining Rhythm for Learning

Taken together, these illustrations show why popular ideas around rhythm in the classroom (shaking a jar of rice, chanting nursery rhymes or placing an emphasis on poetry) do benefit pupils in different ways, though they are not specific enough to support children with weak inhibitory control and weak working memory (two of the core executive functions).

By the same token, integrating rhythm or movement into phonics lessons is a great idea because an embodied, multi sensory approach can strengthen encoding, especially in young children. However, children experiencing weakness in inhibitory control, working memory and phonemic awareness are likely to perceive ‘noise’ over ‘salience’ to a greater extent, even in this context.

I’ve seen the benefit of prioritizing a rhythm-based approach in mainstream and special schools, in KS1, KS2 and KS3. The findings of research on this approach have been through peer review and the statistically significant effects in reading are robust.

Building the evidence-base - the early days.

I will never forget the day I analysed my first pilot study data in 2001. The pilot took place in a school in Hertfordshire. I had worked there for ten years as a visiting music teacher. As well as assessing Year 7 pupils’ perception of rhythm and reading abilities, I had also tested their fine and gross motor skills. I brought these data to a quantitative analysis class on regression analysis. I entered the data means for the group and had expected rate of reading and gross motor control to improve, because I thought that rhythm would make reading more efficient and refine an overall sense of orientation in space and time. I was surprised when the software package produced the results.

Reading comprehension and cutting out an elephant were highly statistically significant. Our lecturer peered over my shoulder, saying,

That’s a very rare outcome. But why?

I admitted that this was unexpected and in every subsequent assessment whether for a school or for research, the effects on reading comprehension have been robust, and accompanied by gains in reading fluency. For early stage readers, there are significant gains in phonemic blending.

Reflective note

Now, twenty years later, it is becoming much easier to interpret the positive effect of rhythm on reading and learning for children who are not meeting age expectation. We now know so much more about executive functions and the importance of inhibitory control for learning and I now understand that the significant gains in the cutting an elephant test and reading comprehension can be explained by improved inhibitory control.

Rhythm-based learning and reading demand precision. An increase in precision requires a gain in inhibitory control and strengthens executive functions.

Rhythm-based intervention is effective among children who:

• are not reading fluently, or

• have gaps in phonemic awareness, or

• who do not follow instructions in lessons, or

• have poor impulse control.

They may be withdrawn or easily distracted or anxious, or neurodivergent. To explore how rhythm-based strategies can strengthen inclusive phonics teaching, download the free resource or join the upcoming webinar.