Kindergarten and Grade 1 children spend a lot of time learning what are called “sight words”; words that they can look at and recognize immediately without having to employ any sort of reading strategy to figure it out. Words like “the”, “and”, “where” etc. Without knowing these words at sight, learning to read is a pretty arduous task; every single word on the page would have to be individually decoded. It tires me out just thinking about it… and when you’re 6 years old it is that much more daunting.
My daughter’s kindergarten teacher called these sight words “popcorn words” because they continually “pop up” in everything you read.
Sight Words On The Piano
Did you know we have an equivalent to sight words when teaching piano? If piano students learn to recognize these things at sight, without having to spend any time figuring them out, then their sight-reading and fluidity increases tenfold. What are piano students’ sight words? What keeps “popping up”? Intervals!
If your piano students can learn to instantly recognize both melodic and harmonic intervals, then half (maybe even more than half!) of their work is done! Your students will no longer need to mentally work out each and every note on their page. And before you know it, they can even use their “sight interval” knowledge to decode chords too.
Make it Stick… With Fun!
The best way to teach children to increase their speed and accuracy in learning something by sight is with games! Many of our unique and quirky games from www.PianoGameClub.com focus on building this all-important melodic and harmonic interval recognition. The best part? Students won’t even realize they’re building amazingly valuable sight-reading skills in the process! Get 4 games for $8 every month and build an amazing library of games that includes the “perfect game” for teaching interval recognition to every “type” of student in your studio!
What great ideas. Let’s hope that teachers have the time to play these. A 30 minute lesson doesn’t leave much time. Although, a 30 minute lesson would be well spent playing one of these games.
I agree. Sometimes we need to throw out our lesson plans and spend an entire lesson on games. It makes my teaching easier because it reinforces what I have been teaching sometimes for months with minimal progress. My students are coming to lessons more prepared and enthused because they have learned something that was so abstract before. They seem pleased and have more confidence.
I agree that it is well worth it to make time for games like these in our lessons. I totally agree with this post – our students should know intervals and notes by sight, not by employing silly memory devices that take time and effort to remember – thus never allowing our students to become good sight readers. (I’m not a proponent of flash cards, though – accomplish this through games! Make the learning fun and it will stick.)