As it is the beginning of the new school year, I usually use the firt two or three lessons for revision of notes. Especially for the beginners of the prevous year. Yesterday I had the strangest experience and would really appreciate it if someone could explain it to me and offer some help!

I have a beginner flute pupil that I took over from another teacher in July last year (she began lessons that February before). Now I have not had any big problems with this child in the past. She is a average player, with average technical and reading problems (like leaving out accidentals etc.), but it was never really anything to worry about. Apart from that, everything was fine. Her biggest problem at the end of the school year was breathing properly and I set myself out to train her better in this regard come 2008.

For het first lesson a week ago, I gave her some breathing exercises to do at home along with some theory. Yesterday I mark her theaory and gets a 10 out of 10 for everything. These exercises include naming notes as well as writing notes on tthe stave. We proceed to playing some songs to test her breathing, more than checking notes. After full marks for theory, that is the least of my worries!

We start playing and it takes us about five minutes to get through one line of music! I decide to quickly do a exercise with her, where I write all the notes learnt on the board, and then pointing at one a time so that the pupil plays random notes as quick as they can. I have found this to be a good exercise for testing knowledge of notenames and for the changing from one note to the next outside the context of a melody. To my absolute shock and horror she could not play a single note correctly! I asked her to say the notenames as I point to them, thinking that she might just be rusty after the long holiday. Again, she coul not get a single note right!

I then gave her another writing notes and notenames test, thinking that someone helped her with her homework at home. To my suprize she got 100% for both naming and writing! She does, however, manage to play the majority of notes corrctly when I call the notenames out.

Could someone please explain to me what could possibly be the reason for this? I don't even know what homework to give her that could help her! And it clearly doesn't seem to bother her! This child has a lot of potential and I am training her to play for the senior band in a couple of months, but how can I recommend a child for the band when she can't even read two notes after another?? I have only been teaching for about three years. Maybe this is a more common occurance than I think?

I hope that somewhere there is someone who can help me.

Does she have any known history of dyslexia or similar reading/short term memory difficulties?

Are you sure she did her theory herself ?
just a thought.

Eyesight? As in, she can see clearly when she's reading/writing notes on a bit of paper right in front of her, but if it's on a music stand or on the board, it's too far away to see clearly (though you'd think in that case she'd get some right just by chance - as in 'it's down the bottom, could be an E or an F, I'll go for F'

I'll check. She's never said anything about her eyes troubling her (doesn't wear glasses either). I think she does quite well academically, but will speak to her class teacher and see if the have anything to add.

Children don't necessarily know that it's a problem. It's what they are used to and can go unoticed for a surprisingly long time. Sometimes it takes the observation of a teacher to notice something and to suggest to parents that a sight test may be a good idea.

A similar topic cropped up a little while ago. I remember somebody saying that as a child, they never complained about their eyesight because to them, it was normal. I also remember somebody saying that one eye was better than the other, and the optician always tested the good eye first - they could then remember the letters for the second eye, so got that eye right as well. So the child's eyesight went uncorrected for years. Maybe because it's called an eye "test", a child thinks it's good to give the "correct" answers rather than the truthful answers!

Perhaps you could try writing the notes on the board at twice the normal size to see if she can read them if the lettering is bigger. Or get her to stand closer to the board!

Now that you put it like that, I will definitely make an appointment with her teacher!

That was me! Why do you think I pop up on these topics and say 'Eyesight' all the time

This is very true. My son didn't know he was short-sighted until I noticed him standing too close to the music stand; he had just accepted it as normal.

I noticed elder son was having problems learning to read at school, and having dealt with "hearing" I took him to the opticians and hey presto he was in glasses with in a week. Suddenly all his difficulties melted into thin air.

Even now as a teacher I've been known to look at the way pupils look at their music and say to a parent "when was the last time your son/daughter saw an optician? - You do know it's free onthe NHS" Within a fortnight the pupil arrives with their new glasses.

It's working!!

When my daughter first started playing the cello, she kept saying "how do you know if a note is in on a line or in a space" which I found a very strange question. She had a lot of trouble finding the right note to start on. It was only when she kept moving the music stand closer and closer that I eventually had her eyes tested and she got glasses. The first time she looked at a piece of music with her glasses she was amazed by how easy it was to identify individual notes accurately. Her teachers had not picked up on it and were surprised when I picked her up from school a bit early for her eye test. Since having glasses her school work has also improved considerably.

I usually make my notes quite big when I write on the board. My pupils are also usually close to the board, because they have to write the answers the board itself.

I wear varifocals, and was playing in an orchestral workshop. Trying to get the balance of the music in the right bit of my glasses and the conductor in focus was an interesting aer, that someone immediately commented on it.

It was frustrating, and I've been able to read music for over 30 years.

Now if it was that frustrating to me, just think how "bash your head against a brick wall" frustrating it is to a child who is trying to learn this for the first time, and the notes are wandering off the lines, and the beams are blurring together, and you can't tell if a note is coloured in or not, or if there is a dot after it.

Don't take the inability to focus lightly, especially when trying to read music. I would suggest this child has a sight test. If you are writing things on the board and they are short-sighted, then they could well be living in a complete blur.

Apart from the eye sight potential (even with my glasses, my sight is so poor as to make sightreading tricky, so its definetly a possible cause) it could be the she is using something like Every Good Boy Deserves Food, for the theory exercises, but then finds that this takes too long when playing. As a consequence its possible she panics and guesses any old note.


Elsewise it could also be that she simply finds it harder to link up note reading with getting fingers in the right place and blowing correctly. So much more multi-tasking to do...

I went for years before I got glasses. Approx from age 12 to 17. I think that I did realise I needed glasses, but - typical kid - there was always something more important to think about and things like glasses were way down the list.
It was a combination of having to sit closer to the board and being terrified at cricket (couldn't see the ball!) that made me finally say something!
I still remember the feeling of wonder, walking home from school with glasses on, and seeing the town around me as if for the first time!

Steve

I still remember my son's amazement when he wore his first pair of glasses, as I drove him home from the opticians. He was around 12 years old and none of us had realised that he needed them, although the optician said he didn't know how he'd managed without them. Like you said, it was a whole new world for him!