▼ For band directors, the retention of students during the transition from junior high school to high school is a very important issue. At a time when high school graduation requirements are rising and elective credits are decreasing, directors must be focused on the reasons students decide to remain in band. For these reasons, a survey of band directors has been completed that attempts to gauge what they perceive as the most important factors in student retention. While all of the questions in the survey were important with regards to retention, the most important aspects dealt with the parental, musical and social aspects of band. The survey also seems to indicate, from the directors' point of view, that students have a wide variety of needs. Directors who can adapt their teaching philosophy to meet student needs will be the most likely to retain students during the transition to high school. Advisors/Committee Members: Brakel, Timothy.

▼ With the advent of the Common Core Curriculum, teachers will be asked to embed literacy into their lessons regardless of their content area. Fortunately for music educators, research indicates that music promotes literacy. Music is also a useful tool for regular classroom teachers. Compound words are an area of difficulty for Emergent Readers, English Language Learners (ELL) and students with learning disabilities. Jean Berko Gleason (1958), a psycholinguist from Boston University, found children were not always aware of the separate elements of compound words. While some children noticed the separate elements, they often assigned meaning to these parts that were inaccurate or merely personal. While many music and literacy researchers agree that music promotes literacy, there is a gap between scholarly theory and useful classroom tools. This project focuses on approaching this gap by creating new modules that are easy to use in the elementary general classroom. Each module contains multiple compound words piggybacked onto well-known melodies. In addition, a newly created index of high-quality folk songs containing compound words is located in Appendix A. Advisors/Committee Members: Brakel, Timothy.