The subject of teaching dyslexics has cropped a few times recently, and I'd like to hear some views on my approach. Ought one, as teacher, struggle to teach note-reading, or is it better to cut your losses and encourage memorising, which my profoundly dislexic pupil seems well able to deal with, and who plays with great expression, once he can remember the notes. (He's pre-Grade 1 with sight -reading, but plays Grade 3+ pieces extremely well once he has memorised the score.)

I struggled with this one too Patricia. One of my pupils, whose been coming to me for several years plays beautifully if I let her memorise, yet in the past when I've made her read the music, the lessons for her have been quite miserable and very very hard work for me. (I might add that I don't mind hard work if it benefits the pupil, but in this case it didn't seem to). This girl has been to festivals and won many trophies for her playing, which has been an enormous boost to her confidence, as needless to say, at school she feels a failure. I came to the conclusion that if I allowed her to play most of her pieces from memory she felt an enormous sense of achievement. Also, her Grandma who bring her and pays for the lessons, has commented several times to me that she believes the success in her music and the one to one tuition has had a knock-on effect at school, in that she is gaining confidence academically.

Please forgive me ABRSM, but I have found the London College of enormous benefit for pupils like this and Adult Learners (mainly the ones over 60 yrs), as they cater perfectly in their syllabus in cases like this. For this girl, who hasn't a hope of passing the sight reading section of the exam or remembering all the scales, I enter her and adult learners for the Leisure Play exams. This involves playing 4 pieces instead of 3, but they are excused from the scales, sight reading and aural, but at the end of it they get a certificate to say they've passed an exam, with the usual pass, merit or distinction. The only difference is that instead of calling it Grade 1 they call it Elementary, Grade 2 would be Preliminary etc. They much prefer this to a performance assessment

I also look forward to what others have to say about this

Thanks for your reply, Glass Mountain; you obviously feel the same way I do, and I look forward to other replies too. I'm concerned that pupils may ultimately feel that I've failed them somehow if I don't weigh in heavily on the sight-reading bit. But with a dyslexic pupil it's far from enjoyable for either of us!

Unfortunately in our culture being able to read music is hugely helpful even for jazzers who are often given notated parts to learn.

However, I believe being able to memorise and play by ear is far more indicative of musicality than being a brilliant sight-reader, for which no musicality is actually needed, just an ability to decode notation and put fingers in the right places.

We functioned for many years as a (jazz) band playing quite intricate material and me being the only one who could read music because of my original classical training! The others learnt their parts by ear and we play everything from memory anyway so nobody has written parts on stage.

Recently however the guitarist has learnt to read music and admits he now learns his parts more quickly.

If the London College let you play pieces by ear good on them! However, you can play AB pieces by ear if you want though I see no extra marks are awarded. And you still have to do the sight-reading which takes 21 marks, so if you're no good at sight-reading you're virtually disqualified from getting a distinction in an exam.

Perhaps this is something the AB needs to look at, although perhaps their 'special dispensation for dyslexics' takes care of this?

Anybody know any hopeless sight-readers who've managed to get a distinction?

Fortunately my weak sight-reader who just managed a distinction at Grade 1 managed to get 14 out of 21 for her sight-reading-phew! But that's because we worked very hard on her sight-reading to bring it (just about) up to scratch...

Violinia

I know that it can help some dyslexic people to have colored rulers which they put over whatever they are reading. Would this work for reading music?

All my dyslexic students bring coloured overlays to their lessons for their sight reading practice AND their pieces.

Remember too that sight reading does not have to be at the standard of the pieces played for a particular grade, but at a level around two grades below. I've found it useful to teach sight reading as a separate skill sometimes, using material that develops note reading gradually in stages. I've fallen into the trap in the past of expecting students to be able to sight read their exam pieces, which is asking them to do rather more than is necessary or appropriate.

It might be worth looking at the new Trinity Guildhall syllabus, where sight reading is optional up to and including Grade 5, and scales can be replaced by technical exercises or studies.

My take on this is that if your pupil was blind you wouldn't try to get her to sightread. Having dyslexia is another disability that affects sightreading and if it makes everyone happier and allows her to enjoy her music to memorise then why not?

Good point - and so obvious it had completely escaped me!

One of mine has just gained a Distincton in her Grade 2 - despite getting only 11 for her sight-reading! She is in no way dyslexic but learns in a group of 5 for 30 minutes a week. She has such a good ear that she picks things up instantly and so manages to disguise her poor reading to some extent. It is mostly laziness and she has now reached the stage where she realises that it is becoming an issue. I'm hoping she will now finally set about doing something about it...

W

My understanding is that the coloured sheets help by stopping the text jumping around on the page, so I imagine that it would also be useful for reading music. Can you imagine trying to sight read a C, when you actually see an A?

Different people find different colours work best for them, so make sure that your pupil has their own best colour.

Not on the dyslexia topic, but on the subject of good ear and good memory.
In some ways these "advantages", paradoxically, can be a hindrance to musical chidren. It's really important to address this at this level, if there's any hope at all of the pupil making it to Grade 8. I've just lost a Grade 5/6 student because she came all this way through playing by ear and memorising, but suddenly found there were just too many notes on the page at this level. And rather than put the work in where required she threw the head up and isn't coming back. There was much upset all round, because I'd say she was one of my most talented pupils in many ways. She did get a distinction at Grade 1, but the sight-reading held her back after that. We did it every week in lessons, but this is not enough; she categorically refused to do it at home. I tried persuading her to keep the piano up in some way - playing duets, entering recital exams, playing fun pieces, but to no avail. My only hope is that she'll come back in later years - or go to somebody else.

EDIT - Incidentally, do you think there is an absolute rock-bottom mark that AB examiners will give for sight-reading? I've never had a pupil get less than 10 from AB - I'd have given about four in that particular case - but had a pupil get 7 out of 32 in Guildhall (Grade 3). I was just wondering whether AB put a lower limit on what they will give...?

P.S. Just in case you're all now thinking, "OMG, this one can't teach sight-reading to save her life" - these are the exceptions!!! Honestly! The Guildhall one has now improved enormously and the AB one is unlikely to improve too much as he's dyslexic.

My reluctant reader had her lesson today.
She is 13 and has been learning since January.
She has a good memory and prefers rote learning to reading (picks up tunes from friends).
She pays so little attention to the page that she often part learns things and then practices from memory complete with errors.
This also means that she spends an awful lot of time looking at her hands instead of the music and still has a slight dependancy on doing this when playing something that doesn't move out of a 5 finger position (most of what she plays because of the note reading problem).
It's a bit tricky getting the balance between letting her learn partly this way to keep her interested and pushing the reading skills.

She is happy enough with the repertoire so far but keeps on saying she wants to play 'things from the TV'.
Two problems with that..... finding the sort of things she wants in an easy enough version that still sounds reasonably as expected and the reluctance of her mother to buy music anyway (it's not easy sticking to mostly one book).
It's more a matter of can't be bothered than any difficulty.

I think my next plan is to send her off with something short and easy each week with the instruction to perfect it by the next lesson. We already do note drills and rhythm reading excercises.
She is a sticker fiend so the promise of stickers might help.

I should think for a dyslexic pupil it would be a relief!

My two cents: see what dispensations are available in exams for dyslexia, and try things like the coloured overlays (I am certain this is mentioned somewhere in the AB's exam bumph, I think that also for sight-reading it's possible to ask for extra time in the exam etc).

Personally I think abandoning it completely is a shame, but I think that doing just a little and working at the pace the pupil can cope with (and just not worrying about it if the sight-reading is lagging behind the playing, after all it's only to be expected) whatever that is seems sensible. Her SR may never be at a standard to compare with her playing, but if you start with really simple stuff and progress as slowly as necessary/make it as fun as humanly possible/don't let her get worked up over it, then I'd think it's a good thing if she can improve even if it's never a strong point. Let her learn pieces off by heart and encourage her in her strong point, which is learning aurally, but in the long term I can't help thinking that encouraging her to read what she can, and become as fluent in reading as she's capable of, will stand her in good stead. It isn't always possible to learn pieces completely by ear, it would be great even if she just got to the stage where the music was at least a helpful prompt for her in longer or more complex music, rather than a hindrance.

By the way - no I have never taught someone who's dyslexic. So feel free to ignore this completely . I am just thinking from the point of view of yes, working from her strengths, but also, in a non-pressured way, trying to see if any compensation/improvement is possible in that very weak area.

I've just realised I've said "she, she, she", and am now totally not confident that it was a girl you're talking about


I believe from the criteria in "These Music Exams", an attempt at the sight-reading however bad will get between 7-10 - off the top of my head.

Thanks, Sarah. I had some success last night with touching the boy's fingers whilst saying the names of the notes and the finger numbers while he played - or, rather, a split second before each note. The touch seemed to trigger his memory and he seemed to relate this in some way to the sound, in a way that he never would with the score. Playing from music involves visual, coordination and aural factors - maybe the touch can replace the visual bit? It seemed to make him more able to do it on his own immediately afterwards - I remember from psychology that there are different types of memory; I wonder if this more physical approach tunes into his resources better than looking for patterns on the page...?

You could also try colours on the keyboard (if you don't mind marking your piano). Eg. a small green sticker on all the As, blue on all the Bs etc. This would be especially helpful if you could somehow coordinate with colours on the sheet music.

My parents do this with their computer keyboards at their school for dyslexics, but I'm not quite sure how it works.