My teacher says that its holding me back.

Please I would appreciate (spelling?) any help (Piano)

Is your teacher giving you some help then?
The only way to improve is to do it. Some people use the various sight reading books but you can also just try to play something you don't know every day.

i just found some music that i had played for my grade one, and just played it, it inproved my sightreading for my exam

a sightreading book for your grade and maybe the one below as well can help, because there are exercises which develop different skills if you work through them. If you find it difficult to get rhythms right, counting out as loudly as you can will sometimes help, though it is hard for wind players. If you find it difficult to find notes, and keep stopping, then having a willing helper to hold a piece of card over the music, covering it as you go, can be surprisingly helpful - it helps you to learn that a mistake is not the end of the world. The main thing about sightreading is getting across an impression of a piece, even if some of the notes are wrong. Les Dawson used to play the piano with fistsful of wrong notes on purpose, but everybody knew what it ought to sound like. If he'd stopped and re-played everything until he'd played all the right notes, his audience would have gone home, bored stiff.

basically, you've just got to not worry about being note perfect - the main thing is that you have the rhymthic structure right. when you have sight read a few pieces, not worrying about the notes, you will become used to the different structures of notes. then you can start to worry about notes. make sure you dont keep 'practising' the piece you're meant to be sight reading, just sight read it, and move on! even if it goes really bad..

when it comes down to it, all you have to do is practice practice practice practice practice practice... and more practice!!!

before you sightread a piece.
look at the general dynamic shape, key and time signature.
play or sing the first few bars in your head.
Start playing really slowing.. even thought the tempo might says "allegro".
you'll rather be "slow and steady" than "fast and nervous".
look at the next bar when you're playing a previous.
picture how the next note will be played.
for that, your brain cells must work really fast.
;-}

To start off with, buy yourself lots of those "play easy tunes from the movies" type books - where you'll know what the tunes go like and start playing these. You'll aready know how it's supposed to sound, but you'll start to feel more confident about playing unknown music.
Then get yourself loads of easy music that you don't know to sight read.
Also, do some kind of sight reading every single day.
Don't forget, in an exam, you've got a little bit of time to try out any tricky bits before you actually "perform".

The most important thing is to keep going, don't stop and start, try and get across the general feel of the piece you're trying to play.

Keep looking ahead - and never allow your eyes to backtrack to see what you've just done wrong. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Don't make it doubly wrong by repeating it.

how far ahead?


ps

i had a break though. i am using any books that i can get my hand on with a metronome (is that spelled Right)

I used a combination of three things:

I did 10 minutes EVERY day of material that was at a level I could handle.

I used books "below" my grade until I could master them and then moved up a book at a time, keeping the rhythm dead steady, and using a metronome to make sure I did and to make sure I keep moving even with a mistake. Sometimes I would even set the metronome to 32nd notes. Anything to keep the beat and hit all the notes. VERY Slow and steady........ (I think I started in sightreading books 2 grades below what I was playing at, so in gr. 6 I was using a gr. 4 sightreading book, so the material would have been taken from gr. 2 originally).

Besides the 10 minutes, I also spent time a few times a week working through pieces a couple grades ahead of where I was playing at. This was the fun part. I didn't worry about keeping the rhythm, but just focused on taking in all those "hard" notes and playing them slowly, but not skipping any no matter how scary the chord. (I usually used pieces that I planned on learning for exams in the future - this kills 2 birds with one stone).

Step 1 to ensure progress, step 2 to learn rhythm, step 3 to learn notes.

Just my 2 cents though.

As far as you can! My eyes would be about half a bar ahead of my fingers. But my friend's would be about 2 bars ahead! (Like reading a book aloud; your eyes need to be ahead of your voice for you to sound like you're making sense of it and get voice intonation right.) Get someone to whip your music away from in front of you at a surprise point, and see how many more beats you can continue with without it; that'll show you how far ahead you're looking, and train your eyes to take more in at a glance.

Best way to learn to sightread is to sightread.