Invest in these sight-reading skills in your studio

Imagine cliff

diving blindfolded into unfamiliar waters without knowing what is

below. Are your students feeling cliff diving like fears when asked to

sight read?

Sight reading can feel scary, but adding fun to the

process and equipping students with skills by engaging them in sight

reading games can help tackle their fears of on-the-spot playing.

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This is the vibrant music teaching podcast.

I'm Nick . And today we're talking about the skills you need to invest in to

have great sight readers in your studio.

Welcome back.

Lovely teachers.

Great to be back with you again.

This week's episode is inspired by an article written by Heidi Neal called five

sight reading games for beginner pianists.

There's great details on all of these different games, as well as more ideas for

resources you could use in Heidi's post.

Her games and her choices actually uncovered for me.

A set of five different skills.

I believe we need to develop in our students.

For them to be great sight readers.

In other words, the question I want to answer today is if we want our students

to be great sight readers in the future.

Aside from practicing reading.

What do we need to do now?

To reap those rewards later.

If we were choosing.

Investment funds.

For our students.

What would they be?

What would we bet our money on now?

That we're sure we'll go up in the future.

Unlike real investing.

These strategies are more sure things.

So it's going to be a great investment of your time with your

students to develop these skills.

And I think some of them.

Maybe at least one today will be something you feel you're not investing in enough.

Now.

Some of them will be obvious to you.

One of them would definitely be obvious to most people.

But there are definitely five different areas.

So as you go through, as you listen to this episode and listen to my five

chosen areas, I want you to ask yourself.

Do I invest in this?

Do I put enough money into this investment fund that my student can use this later?

Am I saving up enough now that there'll be able to buy their first

home or retire on their sight reading.

Skills.

Does that analogy work?

No, I don't think it does, but bear with me.

Before we get to my list of five.

I'd like to welcome aural our new listeners.

So this is your first time.

Let me know how you get on with this episode.

Hit the subscribe button.

If you haven't already.

In your favorite podcast app or wherever you're listening.

If this is not your first time.

And you've listened to a previous episode and loved it.

And gotten something from it, learn something new, had something to

fight with another teacher about.

Hopefully, not that last one.

Then I would really appreciate you leaving a review for this podcast.

So you can leave a review anywhere you listen, apple podcast, Spotify,

wherever you're listening right now.

Please hit the review button.

I know.

It's something that's hard to remember to do, who we all know that there's

so many things we meet to review and then we don't get right into it.

But it really does make a difference.

And if you think that teaching should be moving this direction, Including

improvisation and games and fun stuff and more thoughtful teaching strategies.

Like we teach here on the podcast.

Then this is you doing your part for spreading that.

This is how you get more teachers involved, because if

our podcast gets Reviewed more.

Then those podcasts apps will start to show it as an option for

other listeners who might like it.

If you want to go one step further.

What I would really love is if you would tell a teacher friend about

the show, Pick one favorite episode.

And one favorite teacher friend and bring them together, do some matchmaking.

Now without further ado, let's get into these five skills.

I've done them in order of kind of a sequence of learning.

More than importance, although they sort of fall in order of

importance in the same way.

The first skill that I think is essential for great sight reading

later on for great reading skills.

Is scanning and tracking.

This is one that I think for many of us, we don't invest

enough in, or we don't even see.

It's kind of an invisible skill that many of us have.

But if you sit down, if you consider yourself a decent site, Raider.

Sit down on site, read a piece of music.

And try, this is difficult, but as you're doing it, try and pay attention

to where your eyes actually are.

Or.

Take a video.

That manages sort of looking.

Three-quarters over your shoulder.

Or a quarter over shoulder, depending on how you want to see

that so that you can see where your eyes are on the music as you play.

Or you may have noticed this before, but you may not have your eyes will

not be on the bit that you're playing.

Often for people that are kind of level your eyes will be several

bars or several measures ahead.

Of where you're actually playing.

That's how we keep it all moving.

That's how we stay in time and in rhythm.

It's not that we can read super fast.

we can read fast.

But it's more that we can.

Play something.

That we have read before and be digesting the next part so that we can

move efficiently through the music.

Without having those helps at bar lines.

Compare this to many of your students who read one box at a time, right?

One bar wouldn't measure you.

You surely have seen students like this.

Who they have a chunk?

And then they stop and they read the next junk.

And those bar lines provide that Eve easy way to divide up the music.

But we all know we don't want students to stop there.

Do we?

No.

No, thank you.

That's not the most pleasant sand.

So scanning and tracking are a big part of the skills of reading.

And yet we don't teach them explicitly possibly because we don't notice it.

And possibly because it's actually quite hard to teach these things.

So I do want to acknowledge that.

It's not like some other skills that we're going to in a second, where you

can easily see how a game or a flashcard drill would help them with this.

Was scanning and tracking.

It's harder to see how we would game-ify that however, we can

work on developing those skills.

As a little test.

If you have a student who you feel might be lucky in this scale, or if you have a

beginning student that you just want to make sure they're okay in this area of

scanning and tracking the music across.

I want you to.

Have them play something.

And then have them play it again.

But you point along to the notes.

Not specifically to the notes, right?

Rather you move your pencil in time with the music fluidly

across, pointing down from above.

So you're holding the pencil, pointing down at the staff.

On the page.

And you're moving it in time with the music.

Or where the music should be.

Now does this improve their plane?

Or not.

This isn't a foolproof method, but it will give you some idea.

If there issue.

If they're having issues with reading and their issue is

actually with tracking the score.

They see the wheel reveal that because they will get so much

better once you're pointing.

Right.

So it might be that they're looking up and down from their hands too much,

nothing wrong with doing that a bit.

We all know that, but too much too often.

And that's causing them to lose their place.

Or you might notice that their eyes are simply darting all over the place.

Now that you've revealed the issue.

You might watch them reading in general without you pointing.

And their eyes are just moving everywhere.

And you realize they're not able to scan directly across the music.

Now, if you identify this issue the best way to work on it.

Is more of that pointing because the more you train them to follow your pencil.

The more, their eyes will get practice moving the right direction.

So you can alternate doing with and without, and if you do this for quite

a while, I've noticed most students just clear it up on their own.

They find a way to start tracking the music.

If they really don't after a long time, let's say a year of you

doing this and they're still no better at tracking left to right.

I would approach the parents and see about an eye test just in case.

Many teachers, myself included have been nervous about

bringing this up with parents.

It feels like you're saying there's something wrong with

your child or something.

But I always, and you can use me as an example, if you like, if this helps you.

I always bring it to them as, Hey.

I'm not sure if this is an issue.

But I wanted to bring it up because personally.

I went without glasses for maybe three to five years before

re realizing I needed them.

And I know that now, but at the time I had no idea as an adult.

So if I had no idea as an adult, It's definitely hard for

you to realize when your kid.

Needs glasses.

It's really hard for them to know that they do.

And I mean, my older brother was the same way as a kid.

My mom didn't realize for ages.

It's really common.

Because that's the way they see the world.

So they don't know they're supposed to see it more clearly.

the next stage of the scanning and tracking skill is that

they're looking ahead.

So this is where a little game where you cover the previous

bar can be really helpful.

So you get a piece of paper.

preferably kind of a piece of card or card stock as Americans would say.

So a heavier weight paper.

And you have it in a strip that will cover a bar.

At a time.

And you can move it across.

So I like a long strip.

That's about the height of the staff.

And you move that along as your students playing and you move it to cover the

bar that they're currently playing so that they have to look at the next

one at first, they'll be like, what?

Whoa, I can't do this at all.

And then.

For many students quite quickly, they'll go, oh, huh?

I don't need to look.

And doing this a few times will be enough for them to realize that,

Hey, I can just move my eyes forward.

It was, I'd like to talk with students who get stuck at the end of a line of

music about consciously move your eyes quick, more quickly to the next line.

It needs to be conscious sometimes before it becomes just

in intuitive or instinctive.

That was skill number one.

Now I spent a while on scanning and tracking because I feel it's something

I haven't talked about a ton on the podcast and that many teachers

haven't thought about in depth.

Skill number two is more frequently talk to it.

And certainly very frequently talked about by me.

And that is intervals.

If you're not currently teaching your students to identify intervals

seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths.

Et cetera.

In their music, please start doing it.

That skill is one of the most foundational to great sight reading.

And if you start it earlier, You're going to be much less likely to

have a student who wants to stop and figure out every single note name,

which is just too slow as a method.

Unlike scanning and tracking.

There are many, many ways to work on intervallic reading.

You can do it by having them color in the music, on the score.

Just having them point and say the intervals as they go through

and by playing lots of interval games, like nimble neighbors

from vibrant music teaching or.

integral sprint Interval.

Or many, many, many others.

We have loads of interval games because I love teaching using intervals.

Skill number three is finding shapes.

So this is about your student finding the contours of the music.

Really great way to have them practices is to join the dots.

So get a piece of tracing paper, or if you want.

Baking paper.

Uh, greaseproof paper.

Anything that's a little bit C3 will work great.

Even some really cheap printer paper.

Is kind of see-through so that'll work too.

And put it over there.

Score.

And then joined the dots, meaning joined the note heads to each other

as if it was a join the dots picture.

It's a really fun exercise to do, and it will help your students see the shape.

In the music.

If you do this a lot with new pieces or sight reading exercises, students will

start to see these shapes in general.

Uh, great.

Next step then.

Is to then take that shape and try and vocalize it.

Other than saying it.

I prefer just vocalize it.

Just.

Oh, you know, kind of sliding up and down, like siren style.

And following the shape so that they start to get a sense of.

Does it go up and then down.

And what does that feel like in my voice and sound like roughly in

sand, not in any particular key, not with specific notes, but just

the rough contour of the melody or.

The pattern.

My next skill is the one that may have been obvious to everyone from the start.

And that is note names.

no names.

Are often the first thing people jump to, especially new teachers.

Especially people who come from a certain tradition or use certain method books.

Or just people outside of music, they know about note names.

They know you're supposed to drill them.

They maybe even know the mnemonics.

And so they jumped right there.

No names are important for sight reading.

But there are much less important than those first three.

I mentioned.

And I believe they should come later.

Not because I don't want my students to see a note and instantly name it.

That's great.

I want that, but I wanted, after the intervals.

After the shapes after the scanning and tracking.

The reason I want to actually put that off a little bit.

I do teach some landmark notes in the beginning, but I want to put off

really practicing note names until they've gotten comfortable with

seconds and thirds or steps and skips.

The reason that's so important to me is if I teach note names too soon,

Students end up defaulting to that.

They want to use that.

It seems like the thing they should be doing.

And it also to some students seems easier than the patterns.

Now it's not easier.

But it seems more logical to them or not even logical, but more familiar

because they're so used to work on letters and stuff in school.

And so they gravitate towards that.

as I've seen with many, many students, especially adult students who come to

me after teaching themselves a bit.

This makes you a terrible reader.

It really does.

It slows them down so much.

Eventually they get to a stage where they've done enough

reading that they instinctively.

Look at the intervals and play them without identifying them.

You know, maybe they can't tell you it's a fifth, but they do just jump for it.

And it's not because they've seen that it's a G to a D.

It is because they've seen that it's a fifth.

But I prefer to escape all that mess of them working at the individual

notes and going super slowly.

And jump right to using intervals, which is why delaying note

names works better for me.

Once we do get to working on note names.

I like to do lots of note naming games.

Of course.

And do the 62nd challenge.

Which has three different levels in my studio, bronze, silver, and gold.

So there's, um, different ranges on the staff so that they get

really comfortable with those.

And they achieve that challenge level in my studio.

And the final skill.

Is anti perfectionism.

This is something that isn't really part of my sequence there.

I mean, if you identify that a student has a perfectionist tendency,

you're going to want to address that pretty early on, to be honest, but.

I put it last because it kind of applies the whole way through.

If students are really perfectionist, they want to get it perfectly right.

And they want to get it the first time.

Perfectly.

Right.

It does stand in the way of them sight reading.

Well, You have to be able to just do it.

You have to be able to just go for it.

And have a guest and have a go.

And this is where, what we talked about in the last episode.

With the stubborn Jewett secret.

And ensemble skills for sight reading.

This is where that comes into play as well.

That helps to get rid of some of the perfectionist tendencies.

In students who lean that way.

What also will help is lots of improv.

Working on improvisation is great in its own, right.

It can teach them other skills as well, but it can also help with perfectionism

because you just try something and it'll basically work no matter what.

And maybe you'll like some things more than others, but it's not

a bad having a right answer.

So there you have it.

Those are my five skills.

We've got scanning and tracking the music.

Intervals.

Finding shapes or contours.

Note names.

And anti perfectionism.

You're one thing this week is to think about which of these skills you are

not investing in, in your studio.

And make a plan to include one game one activity this week that puts some beans

into that pot that invests in that fund.

Let me know what skills you think I should have included today or

which one was a surprise for you?

I'd love to hear from you on Instagram at colorful keys or in the Facebook

group, vibrant music studio teachers.

I'll see you there.

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