Teaching students to read music can be a simple task. There are so many great resources to help students learn to read music that we only need to get students excited about using these and they will begin to learn. I introduce students to reading music after they can successfully play pre-reading pieces while keeping their eyes on the music and counting aloud. Then I go into note reading gradually, a few notes at a time, using flashcards to introduce notes individually. The process is a combination of playing music on the staff, and studying the new notes in note spellers, theory books and other activity books to reinforce the concepts. Here is a list of books and other resources I find helpful for teaching note reading:
- Bastien Theory Boosters
- Bastien Wipe off Books
- Bastien Music Flashcards
- Bastien A Celebration of Notes
- Bastien Coloring Note Designs
- Bastien Dot to Dot Notes
- Bastien Sticking with the Basics
The key to using these books is to do a lot of the work at the lesson. Take time to let a student color a page or do a whole page in a workbook during a lesson, in the waiting room, or during a sibling's lesson. When a student asks to finish it at home, sometimes I say yes, sometimes, no. What seems like fun in a lesson can feel like a task at home, so sometimes I have students leave the workbooks with me and they continue to be excited about working on them during lessons. If siblings have lessons back to back, students can do workbook pages while in the waiting room or at the back of my studio during their brothers or sisters' lessons.
Completing an entire theory book is worth $50 of music money in my studio. If a student is the type who is highly motivated by this goal, I may choose to let him take the book home.
Comments