RT Conference_Proceedings
T1 The didactics of singing and intellectual disabilities:  How to teach warm-up exercises
A1 Casal de la Fuente, Lucía
K1 Learning
K1 Teaching
K1 Singing
K1 Warm-up
K1 Exercises
K1 Voice
K1 Intellectual disability
K1 Disabilities
AB Everybody is entitled to all the rights that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set. The EuropeanConvention of Human Rights and the European Social Charter are considered the most emblematicinstruments of formal support of this level of the Council of Europe. These rights are protected by theEuropean Court of Human Rights and the European Committee of Social Rights. But vulnerable groups seemany of these human rights broken with too much assiduity. That is why through laws, educational policiesand day-a-day practices we must go on trying and helping these people to develop their quality of life,fighting for this cause to make their rights come true and respected. The work we present in this paper takesthe reference of the II Action Plan for People with Down Syndrome in Spain for the period 2009-2013 (DownEspaña, 2008), which promotes the right and the duty to participate in social life, the autonomy and the socialcompetence.The action of music on living beings has been demonstrated from the most faraway olden days (Bence &Méreaux, 1988), for being a means of communication and expression that becomes appropriate especiallywhen working with people with learning disabilities (Boltrino, 2008). An especially sensitive group to musicis people with intellectual disabilities (PwID).The voice is a natural resource of the human being, through which we can communicate. It has been provedthrough magnetic resonances that, when we sing, the neuromotor rehabilitation and the reactivation of specificbrain interconnections are facilitated. This is because these specific brain interconnections are basic in theproduction of neurotrophins, which are indicators of brain plasticity (De Fonzo, 2012), and which are veryimportant for the minimization of the effects of the structural and functional injuries of the brain.Although the acquisition of the language in PwID is not different to the acquisition that present peoplewithout intellectual disabilities (Lenneberg, 1975; in Casal, in press), they differ in the rhythm ofdevelopment, which is slower in PwID, but the followed stages are the same. Therefore, more than analteration, following Carroll (1986; in González-Pérez, 2003), the language disorders constitute a delay. PwIDnormally present difficulties when using their voices. The glossopharyngeal motor disorders and the muscularmouth discoordination generate little fluent verbal expression, without rhythm and with an unsuitable tonality(González-Pérez, 2003). The plans of work to help them in language disorders are normally centered onarticulation, vocalization, and expression? of the spoken word. The voice impostation and the most primitivework of the voice, its warming, are usually pushed into the background. Warm-up exercises are significant forthe development of PwID because they are the basis of voice work, for example, when doing speech therapyor singing. When singing, apart from working purely musical facets, we indirectly impact on the diction,vocabulary, self control, self-esteem and socialization (Llamas, 2012).So, how can we train PwID in warm-up exercises? Which would be a good way to do it? Can the activities,included in the designed workshop, be followed by the participants? To what extent?The objectives of this study are to know if the participants can follow the proposed warm-up exercises, whichchanges are necessary to do in them and consequently, to find out which would be a good way to teachwarm-up exercises to PwID, and to present some instructions to do it.So in this paper some considerations and guidelines based on a practical experience realized in the line of thedidactics of warm-up exercises, included in a vocal technique workshop with PwID, are presented.
YR 2014
FD 2014
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15505
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15505
LA eng
NO ECER 2014, The Past, the Present and the Future of Educational Research
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026