Effects of Music Education on Domain of Reading and Cognitive Abilities in Children With Reading Difficulties: a Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial

In order to form the sample of children with reading difficulties, the primary school teachers of ten public schools in the city of Sao Paulo were first asked to suggest names of children with below average reading abilities. From these suggested names, the teachers were given a "scale of reading skill" that considers the children´s silent and oral reading and generates a score that divides the children into four skill levels from which only children with the worst indicators were selected (i.e., students who read more or less and students who read poorly). Then, the second evaluation phase was conducted with these children with reading difficulties: in this phase a hearing and speech pathologist conducted a Simplified Assessment of Central Auditory Processing in order to evaluate the auditory function, an ophthalmologist evaluated the visual acuity using the Snellen Scale and a psychologist evaluated non-verbal intelligence using the Raven's Progressive Matrices. These three evaluations were done individually, in previously reserved rooms at the schools (in loco) and during school hours previously established with the administration and teaching staff. Only scores below the 25th percentile in the Ravens´s Progressive Matrices were considered as exclusion criteria; the others variables two cited above will be entered as control variable. It was decided to group these three initial evaluations together, because they are simpler and can be conducted quickly. In the next step, we evaluated the outcomes and other types of covariates in the children's level (i.e., musical abilities, socio-demographic characteristics, familiar background). At the end of this first wave of outcome evaluation, the intervention will initiate in the schools previously and randomly selected for the intervention. The study will provide block flutes, keyboards and two musical teachers per school (two teachers for 27 children in each of the schools that were selected for the intervention). The musical educators will follow the same syllabus program in order to avoid educational bias and to control the process of teaching, making the classes as similar as possible. Every two weeks over the intervention, the ten music educators will be called in order to review the educational and methodological plan and share the positive and negative experiences obtained during the teaching process.