There are some piano students who just “get it”. Note reading just clicks for them and with some guidance on your part they’re off to the races; breezing through their primer-level books and on to bigger and better things.
But there are some piano students who struggle. The exact same strategies that you employ with other students just confuse and frustrate. Progress is slow and understanding is sketchy.
All children learn at a different rate, and while your struggling note-readers will eventually catch on with enough assistance and varied teaching methods… their confidence can really suffer in the process.
Here are 7 ways you can give your struggling note readers confidence as you help them piece together the understanding they need to read music fluently.
7 Ways To Boost Note-Reading Confidence in Piano Students
1. Focus on just 3 notes at one time per lesson – For struggling piano students, a sea of notes on the staff can be overwhelming. Whether you teach note-reading in the context of their current piece, using flash cards or even iPad apps, be sure to focus on no more than 3 notes per learning session.
Once those 3 notes are mastered, keep track of them on a sheet of paper in your students’ binders. You can add 3 new notes at the next lesson, but first review the previous week’s 3 to be sure they’re still understood. If not, don’t move on until they are.
This doesn’t mean you need to choose repertoire that only uses 3 notes! Rather, as you work on recognizing notes at sight, choose just 3 to hone in on and continue with the rest of your lesson as normal. With a smaller set of notes to learn your students will experience more success, more frequently.
2. Ask for your students’ input – We all have silly rhymes or acronyms or stories that we use to assist students in recognizing notes at sight, but the most effective way is to ask your students for their input. Ask “How would you like to remember that this note is F?”. You’ll be surprised at their creativity… and often these little gems can be offered to other struggling students.
For example, one of my silly giggly students always mixed up bass clef C and D. After I asked her how she could remember which one was C, she came up with “Ssssssecond sssssspace is ssssssseeeee“ (meaning C) and hissing like a snake. She never mixed up these notes again (and I’ve used this with her friends who all now remember Kiara’s “snake note”).
3. Make note reading into a game – I’m not a huge fan of flash cards as my students seem to tune out after about 4 or 5 cards, but when flash cards are a part of a fun game, they’re desperate to flip over and “solve” the next one. Whether you’re using a fun-themed piano teaching game or whether you make up your own flash card rules, game-based note reading will result in better understanding (due to heightened motivation) and with less perceived pressure.
4. Slow Down – Sometimes we feel pressured to push our students forward… new repertoire, more difficult concepts. This can sometimes result in students who find themselves playing music that is above their current level of true reading ability. If you have a favorite method book series, then seek out supplementary resources that you can use to continue your students’ motivation (so they’re not playing the same pieces for months) but that allow them to remain at their current level of note-reading ability until they’re truly ready to move on.
Searching for method books that support note-reading in a way that is scaffolded, step-by-step and free from surprises? The WunderKeys Primer books have been designed to introduce note reading in a way that makes perfect sense! Find out more here.
5. Compose! This is just one more lovely by-product of including composing in your lessons. Giving your students ownership over their learning by creating their very own piece (and then notating it) is a fabulous way to really make meaningful note-reading connections.
Set boundaries while composing that mean your students are using just the notes with which they are familiar (add in a duet part if needed to make it sound fabulous) and then using either good old staff paper (or a program like noteflight or musescore) help them notate their masterpieces. If you keep the composition short and simple, the note-reading connections they will make in this process will be valuable. Check out this post for a fun composition activity.
6. Continually make a clear connection between visual note and piano key. Some children have such difficulty actually connecting the note they see on the page with the key on the piano. Their frustration often comes from being able to name notes at sight… but then not connecting those “known notes” to the piano. One of my favorite little games to play involves mini-micro cars. See below for how to play.
Using the 3 “focus notes” you’ve chosen for the lesson, show the cards one at a time to your student. Have her first name the note and then place a micro-car on the corresponding key on the piano. Repeat for each card. Once finished, place the 3 cards up on the piano. Pointing to one card at a time, have her remove the corresponding car from the keys. It’s a simple activity, but it really helps to make the note-to-key connection (and the little cars are a great attention-grabber and make this into a game rather than a stressful “test”).
7. Target the problem. For both you and your students, having a clear idea about what exactly is causing the issues with understanding can be really helpful… and getting feedback from your students on their own observations can be even more valuable. Is it only bass clef? Is it notes out of the familiar 5 finger positions? Is it ledger lines? Is it a mix up between just 2 or 3 notes? Is it discomfort when notes are not simply stepping or skipping? Knowing exactly where to focus your attentions will avoid overwhelming your students and will speed up the learning process significantly.
Flex Those Teaching Muscles
Obviously it’s easier to teach students who just “get it”. But it is often with our struggling students that we have the opportunity to really teach… and it is in these moments when we learn, grow and become better. These struggling students need our support and our willingness to adapt. But we also need these struggling students to continually improve our teaching! It’s a symbiotic relationship that requires a whole lot of patient guidance and a keen understanding of how to preserve our student’s self-esteem.
Monica Tessitore says
Great work on these posts! Keep it up and thanks!
Myra Carden says
Thank you! I teach in a “piano lab” and sometimes I get so frustrated I want to quit……thank you for this! I am going to apply it asap 🙂
Andrea says
Glad to hear it helped Myra! Don’t quit! 😉
H.G. says
This has come at the absolute perfect time! I have a student who struggles with her notes, and her coping mechanism is to hop off the bench and pretend to be an animal! This is a very nice reminder to recognize her struggle and employ different methods!
Kristi Negri says
H.G. Thanks for your post. It reminds me to make a link between the onset of a behavior and what we are currently doing, rather than just assuming that there’s a general focus problem, or that I’m being boring. Now if you could just get her to do animals that correspond to note names. Say it, play it, be it!
Andrea says
It’s very true H.G. – often these behaviours that we pull our hair out over are coping strategies or distractions that come from a root problem that needs to be addressed. It’s in both of our interests to find out what it is (frustrating for both student and teacher!) Thanks for sharing.
Teresa says
Thank you for this awesome reminder to slow down & work on the problem in fun, engaging way! A note- finder is another tool for making note learning fun – my students love to turn the handle & make the note move up or down the staff.
Cheri says
What is a note-finder and where can I get one?
Kristi Negri says
http://www.grothmusic.com/p-13781-wright-way-note-finder.aspx I’ve never thought about using one of these. Would love to hear if others have used them with success.
Heidi N says
I love your student’s Second Space See (C) memory aid!
Andrea says
Isn’t it cute Heidi! I love her inventive personality 🙂
Mary Vandersteen says
I have had great success teaching the bass clef notes since I asked students to learn them from Middle C down. The first line below Middle C is A – first letter of alphabet – middle line is in middle of 2 black keys – last line at bottom =last letter of music alphabet – G. All other notes are up/down a step/skip from these 3.
Val says
Tenuto is a great app for students who struggle with note-reading. Since it is an IPad app, students can practice with it anywhere, anytime! What I like best about it is that I can customize it to just the notes that the student needs to work on the most. Here is a link http://www.musictheory.net/products/tenuto…it is well-worth the $3.99…also has loads of other tools & learning activities.
yvonne says
fabulous ideas-I give them ‘note’ exercises right away where they have to play the note and name it out loud. Some students are great with notes, and some are great with rhythm. These are great new ideas to try also! Thank you!
MaryAnn Vandenberg says
Glad to see others struggle with teaching note reading , some days I feel like despairing I have taught for years but it seems to be increasingly difficult, any ideas why! I teach a lot of a French immersion kids who seem to really struggle wonder if any one else has this issue? Thanks for all your suggestions !
Rachel says
This is wonderful, thank you! I have a 6th-grade student who has been playing for 3 years and is playing by ear rather than reading. Shamefully, I am not sure if this is a new development, or if I’m only noticing it now :/ Will definitely try some of these to boost his note reading.
Harold says
Thanks for the great tips. I incorporate some of your suggestions along with an app called NoteWorks available for iOS and Android. The iPhone version is, ironically, more flexible than the iPad version. When students are having a hard time learning notes, I limit the range to 3 notes and have them play the game and gradually add notes to the range as they own the notes we’ve worked on. It is a clever game that my students really enjoy and the results are dramatic. I then have them play the game and play the keys on the piano as I press the buttons on the game.
Christi says
I have a 9 year old student who is a struggling learner (in third grade he also needed help to read the lyrics to songs in his lesson books or simple instructions I would write for him) who also frequently misses lessons – I taught him since last fall, and when we stopped for summer break in May, he was just in the first pages of reading on the staff in his Faber Piano Adventures lesson book. We worked on just the very FIRST TWO notes the book presents – middle C and treble G, and after several weeks, he still had trouble understanding that any note on the second line of the treble staff was a G and any note on that ledger line below the treble staff was middle C, regardless of whether it was a half note, quarter note, etc. I definitely want to work more with kinesthetic activities with this student when we return to lessons in the fall, in hopes that the concept of note reading will finally “click.” I like the ideas of the cars on the keys and of composing. I also promised him that when he came back we would do some activities with Legos. Any more ideas for activities reinforcing the very most basic level of understanding that each line or space represents a specific note would be appreciated!
Christine says
Christi, I have been teaching twins using the Faber Piano Adventures Book. For one of them, who has been diagnosed with ADHD, note reading has been a significant challenge. I finally moved her into a book called ‘Note Reading Made Fun by Kevin and Julia Olson. The book introduces notes more slowly and has several songs to emphasis the learning. The staffs are larger as are the notes. It also names the notes by animals and has illustrations and lyrics to match the note’s ‘animal’ name. After about three weeks, the student was able to consistently read the notes. I also asked her to pick one of her songs that she had already learned in the Faber book to review each week. Both her mom and I were excited when she started sight-reading tunes on her own! Moving her into this other book was the right decision for her, this improvement all happened in about a month or so, after some time of making hardly any progress and having tried flash cards games, etc. All best, hope that you are able to help this student learn to read!
Karen says
Thank you . Great post