I have two year three girls who I have been teaching for nearly two years. Both are struggling to read music. They can play e,g,a,b,c and d but have failed to grasp the basics of reading notation. I have played lots of games and worked with them on flashcards. I have told them 'face in the space' and all the usual names for the lines. The penny hasn't dropped. I think that they struggle academically (both have tutors) and do not practice at all. Their parents probably have a battle to get them to do their homework and reading; recorder is obviously a low priority.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Can they look at the shape of the music, rather than working out each note individually are they able to distinguish up one, down one etc.. improvising within the notes that they know will help them to be familiar with the pitches to make it easier to do this.

This may help a little, but from the note reading point of view, what you are doing will twig eventually, unless, from what you have said they are not committed they will probably no longer be your problem anymore.

Hope this makes sense, I don't think my brain is in gear tonight

Thanks for your comments. I don't think that they will last the course but I hate being defeated. I have recently started a year two boy on Guitar and he seems to be having the same problems as these two girls. After recognising a B he couldn't grasp that another B next to it was also a B. He couldn't see that they were the same. It could be an eyesight thing;my neice has a problem with tracking and never managed to grasp notation. She often complained of the notes 'moving around'.

How about those books with large note-heads and the note name written inside them. Or course books where they use the same colours for the same notes to help differentiate them. Not forever, obviously, but it might get the message across until they're ready to cope with proper notation.

Sara

It might just be a lack of maturity. (I'm not sure how old exactly year 3 would be as I don't live in the UK anymore).

I know with my own daughter, who started playing the cello when she was six and a half, I was beginning to wonder if she'd ever learn to read music - she claimed she could see no difference between a note on a line and a note in a space and refused to accept that a "D" was still a "D" whether the tail went up or down. She was also struggling with learning to read at school (although this was through poor teaching). Then suddenly after about two years, everything clicked. She literally went from not being able to confidently identify one single note to being able to identify all the notes from the C two octaves below middle C to the D above middle C and her sense of rhythm also improved dramatically. She suddenly discovered she could sight-read, although she struggled for so long she still has a tendancy to think she must have made a mistake somewhere! At the same time (co-incidentally or not I don't know) her work at school also improved dramatically.

It's hard to advise what to do with somebody who doesn't practise! If a child didn't do its reading homework for school, you wouldn't expect it to learn to read very quickly! This is no less the case with reading music.

My younger son aged 5 has started the violin using the Colortrings method which is based on Kodaly's pedagogy. What I like about the introduction of notation is that it is done so gradually so that when "real" music is put in front of a pupil, they have grasped the rhymic content first.

I also teach a Year three student who is having problems learning notation for pitch. It's just something you persevere with. With a lot of patient encouragement she is getting there, and I am delighted with her progress. Even now though I have to resort back to the pneumonics for both treble and bass clef. But that seems to work too.

People learn things at different rates. I though my other son was a poor reader in year 1, but over the summer holiday he suddenly discovered books. Now he is one of the better readers on his class.

With your pupils it will click...eventually.

I also have a Year 3 child (P3 in N. I. - age 6 - I'm not sure if "years" are the same here as in mainland U.K.) He can read music in that he can see whether the notes are going up or down, and by how much, as in, line to line is two notes away, space to space is two notes away, etc. But he doesn't have a clue where to start! This is because he is struggling with learning EGBDF, etc. "What is that note?" and "Now, where is it?" is therefore rather difficult! He can do the "where is it" bit, but not the "What is it?"(I'm talking about the piano, by the way; I'm not sure how much "two notes away", etc, will help on the recorder.)

I think that some very simple written work will help. Give them some really easy note naming exercises to do, something from a beginner's recorder tutor perhaps, and ask them to fill in the note names in some of the first exs. If you begin with only two different notes and progress from there they should get the idea. I used to do a lot of recorder teaching in school until finishing at the end of last term and found that occasionally a child would have a problem with notation, when he or she had learnt in a small group. I think that you will need to give these two some one to one lessons, being full of praise if they make any progress. If they are struggling with the rest of their school work they might need to feel that they are making progress at something, however slow. If they have some fun in their lessons and are able to play some simple tunes, even by rote, or make cuckoo calls perhaps, (most kids will love the idea of fooling mum and dad that there is a real cuckoo in the garden and C to A on a soprano recorder is very easy) they might actually get their instruments out at home between lessons. Do they take their recorders home after their lessons I wonder? At my school I found that sometimes they were left at school ready for the following week's lesson and never taken home to use there. I think that slow progress is best until the penny drops. It will eventually I am sure. I had a little girl to teach for two years before she made some progress, but by the time that I left she was almost at the end of year three and was able to read and play simple pieces well.

Sorry to sound a bit negative but have you considered the age of these children. I tend to think that year 2 and year 3 CAN be a touch young in terms of a child's academic development to be able to grasp the concept of reading music. After all, many children this age will still be learning to read and may only know the letters of the alphabet phonetically.

obviuosly this is not the case for all children (I started a child who is very bright on cornet in year 2 and he has just won a music scholarship to a highly regarded private secondary school in our area and is in the NCO on trumpet) but surely a child should be able to say haere alphabet forwards and backwards (certainly up to G) at speed if we want them to be able read music in such patterns.

You could try flashcards with the notes on.....

K

Hal leonard do a set of flashcards with phrase shapes on them, for example 3 notes on the same line, so they can start to grasp - same line = same note. Notes going up in seconds etc.

Where do you get these? I haven't seen them. I devised my own flashcards for the younger children, but after hours of drawing and cutting, the damn things were tattered and wrecked after the third pupil took them home!

I find the problem with children this age is that there maths is just not far enough advanced, so they don't have any concept of time and value of notes. I've got several 8 year olds who can barely add up.

David

I got mine from musicroom.co.uk a search on 'flash cards' brings up 2 sets for hal leonard, they have everything from basic - advanced rhythms, italian names intervals and basic phrase shapes. I find set A invaluable for little ones, then we have sticker competitions for how many they get right. Set B has more complex rhythm patterns and terms and instead of the phrase shapes has the start of recognising keys and chord progressions.

The rhythm ones are great for teaching the 'spot the difference' section of the aural as you can get them used to tapping out rhythms and memorising it then do another similar one.

Thanks. They look good. I've just noticed that you can get a 10% educator's discount if you spend over £25 - maybe it was there before.

I encounter this problem frequently in my recorder classes of years 3 & 4. IF they suddenly get really motivated and start practising properly, it can suddenly "click". I had a girl I'd basically given up on who after 2 1/2 years was barely reading the notes, when she decided she wanted to do her Grade 1. I was rather reluctant as you can imagine, but she did loads of practice and it all came together. She's not bad, now.

I think there is a general problem that children are not taught to be fussy about details - and therefore don't register that it actually matters what line the note is on. It's not that there's anythig wrong with their eyesight (although that can be a problem too) but that their brains just aren't conditioned to notice the relevant details. Something I have found helps a lots is to draw a big stave on a board (I use the whiteboard because I teach in a school classroom) and then make a large cardboard crotchet with the note head about an inch in diameter which is just the right size fo rthe stave lines. Then physically move the note from one place to another and ask them to name the note. After a while on B A G they start to see that it DOES matter where it is - but I think the physically seeing it move somehow connects it all in their brains.

Hope this helps. Must go now - will be late to pick up from school!

It sounds to me as though learning an instrument is rather a lot for them if they are struggling with school work anyway.

It will require a lot of patience and perseverance on your part, and an ability to smooth things over with parents in order to keep teaching these pupils. I have had similar experiences. Sometimes it clicks - one girl was in year 6 before light dawned and then she left me for another teacher! In other cases, progress was very slow and eventually either children, or more frequently parents decided that enough was enough.

Is this harder to teach and to understand for non keyboard instruments?
Is it harder to teach intervals?
The reason I'm asking is that recently I was playing with a wind player friend who has not been learning for too long and she didn't seem to have grasped the concept of notes going up and down on the stave by step (line space etc.). She does know what note to play by it's position on the stave but doesn't see the shape of the music the way a piano student would. For a keyboard player I see the score as almost a graphic representation of where the notes are.... line to space is next door etc.

As a beginner on clarinet I'm aware that I look at the printed score in a different way than I do when playing piano and the shape of the music isn't quite so useful.

I teach recorder in a First school. Due to an administrative error by the school, I've ended up with several Year 1s this year (aged 5 when they started playing). After 4-5 months they can all read and write B A and G, and know which notes are 'quick quavers', 1-beats and 2-beats. For the first few weeks I kept drawing a stave on the board and getting them to draw Bs on the correct line, then got them to write me a line of Bs for homework, or identify which notes from a selection I provided were Bs and which weren't. With time and patience, they all got there, even a boy who isn't reading well yet.