BRIK launches DRUMS AND POEMS™"

BUILDING RESILIENCE IN KIDS LAUNCHES DRUMS AND POEMS™"
Can Drumming Together Teach Relationship Building?
Can making Poems Improve Literacy?

An experiment at Plympton School, Waltham.
This article was written by Rajashree Ghosh in April 2010. See follow-up as of Dec. 2 2010, below:
Georgia Sassen is an avid advocate for the power of drumming together and making poems as way to build relational and writing skills. Neuropsychologists find that rhythm helps children self-regulate, she says, and in her experience making art together helps children get along.  Dr. Sassen is testing her new playful method entitled "Drums and Poems".  She predicts that the use of rhythm in a communal way via drumming (creating melodies on drums made from recycled cardboard and rubber) and via writing poetry (working together on communal poems) will help children connect with each other and build literacy skills.

Earlier this year Dr. Sassen and her nonprofit Building Resilience in Kids (BRIKontheweb.org) offered the Plympton elementary school in Waltham a free  weekly after school  program of Drums and Poems for  third graders..  On Febrary 3, Dr. Sassen, her Intern Rachel Katz, and Brandeis undergraduate Amy Lemelman conducted the first session.

"It worked!" reports Dr. Sassen.

"Our first session of drums and poems at the Plymnpton school was a great success. Third
graders were excited and clever, giggling and attentive ­ all at the same time. Children on
one team jammed on drums made of recycled materials, and found a rhythm they liked. The other team created poems to the rhythm. The children played with words, the sounds of words, and asked some really good questions.  From one child's comment, "that doesn't sound right", we learned about the number of beats or syllables in a word. Then another child brought up a much more sophisticated question: 'this word sounds longer than that word, but they both have only one sylllable'. WOW. This is the beginning of talking about phonology -- how some sounds are long, and sound slow and watery and some sounds are short and they make for lively funny poetry. It's the difference between 'low and slow, where mosses grow' and 'Hop on Pop! We like to hop!' Hear the difference? This boy did."

"If this isn't just beginner's luck, we've created a great new method!"says Dr. Sassen.

Follow-up: After ten sessions, every child wanted to come back this year for weekly drumming and poetry. Nine of them did. All nine want to be peer leaders in this spring’s program. For more information contact Building Resilience in Kids at Brikontheweb.org.