"The treble clef spaces are easy, you see, 'cuz space rhymes with face and spells F-A-C-E!" Are you humming along to this catchy tune? That means you and your 3rd year Let's Play Music student are on the way to note reading!
Why did we wait?
This is the final year of the program; are you surprised that we haven't drilled notes yet? In our post on learning to read music the LPM way, I explained that students thrive when they find meaning in the notes they read, understand how notes work intervallicaly, and are learning to audiate as they read before they knuckle down to the abstractness of notation. Not surprisingly, laying a solid foundation takes two years of ear training and pre-reading skills.
Where are we going?
The goal this year is for your child to read notes with fluency. He will look at the notes and instantly know them. This skill is note-spelling. "That's F. That's A." Any given individual note on paper can quickly be matched up to its given individual piano key.
The sad news is your child will shortly graduate from LPM. The glad news he'll begin learning lots more interesting and challenging pieces of music. Note-spelling is an important part of learning new music, and we want your child to master it. In the article on reading music, I explained that being a fast note-speller does not guarantee fast sight-reading of new music. Musicians use note-spelling to identify key notes in a chunk of music. Then they use patterns, intervals, and chord shapes to fill in the remaining information for the chunk. By now your student has had lots of practice with those skills, too.
This is the mix of spelling and intervallic skills I hear from my brain when reading music: "Let's see…the first note is a D and I jump down a 5th…and then I do a run of baby steps going up…and jump down a 5th again. Then I have to play.…treble E, and then down a 3rd and baby steps up." So, I don't actually spell out very many notes but they are critical to know.
If you suspect your child is trying to spell out every note of every new song, put a stop to it! Encourage identification of patterns, skips, steps, intervals, and chord shapes supplemented with a touch of note-spelling to hold it all together and keep it in place. Some kids are gifted note-spellers, but that skill cannot stand alone.
Do Flashcards Help Reading?
A parent once asked me, "Why do we use flashcards, anyway? When we read music, notes are not singled out and jumping all over the place. Why should we learn to identify notes like this?"
I sat down with a piece of new music and vocalized for her HOW I WAS READING IT as I played through. As I revealed my brain's processing of new music, she realized that the few individual notes that I note-spelled actually DID jump around randomly. Unlike the flashcards, the note being spelled was sometimes embedded into a chord or at the beginning of a run of melody. I took a highlighter and marked only the notes that needed spelling for successful reading of the song and challenged her (and the student) to quickly spell and play them. Now they knew almost everything they needed to play this new piece of music, too! The exercise looked slightly different but felt very much like using flashcards.
Want to try it with some new music? Here is a free copy (link) of Bach's Minuet in G and I marked the notes I want you to note-spell in the first 2 lines. The rest of the notes will be discerned from intervals, steps, and skips. Just do one hand at at a time to begin. As you move from one note to the next, ask "What interval do I need to jump? Am I going up or down?"
Let's Get Fluent
How fast is fluent? How quickly should students be able to identify notes? If a student is sight-reading and takes more than 1-2 seconds to play a note, she is going to struggle.
We divide the process into two steps. First is saying the alphabet name of the note and second is playing it on the keyboard. This year I challenge you to identify (say) all 27 note cards in one minute!
To be fair, you may find this to be way too easy for your child, or incredibly tough. Teachers value the learning process and focus most on the process and continued success. 1:00 to 1:30 is still the reference to aim for, but the real goal is for students to shave a few seconds off their own personal best time at each practice. Most teachers have an incentive club, like "In A Flash" club, to motivate students to improve their time each week. Your teacher might even offer a prize if you can improve your time by 0:05!
At Home
Most progress with note memorization will be developed during at-home practice. Here are some ideas to help you make great progress:
*On the Road: Like so much of what we're working on, daily work is best. Flashcards are special because they don't need to be at the keyboard! I keep a set in my car and my daughter knows that every time she gets in the car, she runs through the cards once before we turn on the radio. Maybe you can put a set in your purse and find a way to plant flashcards into your daily routine.
*Less Singing: You'll quickly notice there isn't time to sing "All Cows Eat Grass" or some other verse for each card. Like all the best mnemonics, the song lyrics will slowly fade away from the mental processing as the notes develop a meaning of their own. Students will start to only use lyrics on tricky notes, and eventually they have learned the note and stop needing lyrics. If your child is hanging on, encourage him to say only one word of the lyric ("grass", "boy", "apart") instead of singing the whole verse. Eventually just say the letter. The song is a means to an end.
*Tricky Pile: When I practice with my daughter, I give 2-3 seconds for her to say each note. If she cannot, I put that card in a "do-over" pile, which we go through a few extra times that day. This way, she's not focused too much on being timed, and the tricky cards get extra attention.
*Favorite Four: Some days we will pick out a small group of cards and really master them, flipping through the small pile over and over. Of course you can use lines or spaces, but I find other groups, too. For example, F is a note that my daughter always knows well, so we sometimes pick E, F, G, A and drill on just those for 3 minutes. She learns the notes well by learning how they relate to her well-known F. We might do the same with treble B,C,D,E since she knows treble C so well. In the bass clef, we pull out F,A,C and learn to recognize them as the parts of the well-known F-chord, then we pull out just E,F,G,A in the bass clef. You can choose any small groups you like, and take some time to really see relationships in the notes.
*Pick A Card: Hold the cards facedown, fanned out. Let your child pick each card to read.
*Road to Success: Lay the cards out in a long line. The student walks along, picking them up and reading them. You can make your own tradition for what lies at the end of the road. It could be the road leading into our out of the practice room, or leading to snack time! For another variation, have a student at each end of the road, coming toward each other very quickly. When they get to the middle, see who read the most cards!
*Memory: You will need both octaves of cards to be sure you have 2 of each letter. When flipping over two cards, shout out the letters as quickly as possible. They won't look the same- kids will actually have to read them to see if they are the same letter (from different octaves).
*Searching for… Lay the cards on the floor face-up. Say "I'm searching for….A!" and have her find it as quickly as she can, or have two children race. Or give harder clues like, "the note a third above C!"
*Quiz Mom: Have your child quiz you. Get some wrong on purpose to see if she can corrects you! if she doesn't correct mistakes, say "oh no! I tricked you!" and you earn a point for each time you trick her.
*Sorting: First decide how to sort. I take a sheet of paper and write ABC, and on another DE, and another FG. As quickly as possible, have her put the cards on their correct piles. You can change this game by writing words with bold letters, like "GinA is Cool" should collect only G,A and C cards and "Boy BAnD" would collect only A, B, and D cards. The goal is to get the cards into place quickly!
*Wild Card: Beforehand decide one letter is a wild card, and decide to do something crazy when you get to it. It's fun to anticipate when it's coming. We like to say that when we get to the wild (say, D) whoever notices it first gets to tickle and kiss the other person!
*Duck Duck Goose: This is most fun if you get other family members to play. Spread the cards in a circle. Everyone walks around them while you say "Duck, Duck…Goose!" Everyone drops down and reads the card in front of them as quickly as they can. Don't be the last one to say anything! Laugh about it, cheer for the fast kids, then stand up and move again. Try to make Dad always sit at the card he can't seem to remember. That's always funny.
*Online Fun: You can drill with MusicTheory.net's online flashcards here or drill play a variety of music games at Tonic Tutor or try the easy-to use topics at Musicards.net. I'd love to hear about other online games you found useful!
*Ipad Fun: Practice with phone and iPad games like Music Tutor or Noteworks. What are your other favorite apps for practicing note reading? There are dozens out there!
I hope you have some fun working on flash cards and learn to read them in a flash. Please tell us about which games you like, and share photos of your kids playing the games or practicing!
-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher
It's March, and if you live in a snowy place you might be feeling the effects of cabin fever by now. Your family needs to have some fun and movement- the good news is you'll get it this week in Let's Play Music class!
At Let's Play Music, we value PLAY. We believe that fun, spontaneous experiences heighten enjoyment and create magical discoveries.
Play is how children figure things out; play is HOW they learn. Fred Rogers states it perfectly: "Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the 'work' of childhood."
Four Reasons to Play
Kids learn best when they're playing, but why? Here are my top four reasons with an explanation of how you'll see play shape our classes.
1. Play gives children the opportunity to try out new ideas in a safe environment. When "it's just a game", a student has freedom from evaluation and judgement. During games, it's easy to embrace mistakes with a laugh, because they are a built-in expectation. (Read the post on the learning process to see why embracing mistakes is so necessary!)
I think of many games, like Frog in the Middle. I am secretly giving students practice finding and matching a beat, aurally identifying melodic patterns, and matching and singing pitches. The students love this "practicing" because it's so silly! They are excited to take a turn showing off their dance. They don't worry about performance tests, but they DO strive to master their moves and hand signs so the game will be better each week.
Every LPM game has a secret agenda, but to avoid damping the fun, I don't tell students about it during class. (Watch for next month's post on being sneaky.)
It makes sense that all of us are willing to try new things when we're unafraid of punishment for not being perfect. In making music, we have to start somewhere, and it's far from perfection.
2. During play, children practice human values: cooperation, sharing, turn-taking, and conflict resolution. I recently heard a lecture from a child psychologist who would gauge these skills by timing how long children could sustain a group game. One child would invent parameters for the play, "Let's play house", but others would inevitably add suggestions, "no, superheroes!" When the children could compromise, resolve conflicts, and be flexible, then they could keep the game going instead of giving up ("mom! we're bored!") or losing participants ("forget it! I'm not playing with you!"). Play time is an opportunity to practice interacting with others. "Okay, let's be a superhero family and we can pretend to go on a trip."
By now you've caught on that Let's Play Music classes are about more than just teaching your child to do something. Let's Play Music is about teaching your child to become something. Our game-oriented class gives opportunities to practice these skills.
When I play the games like Circle Left, with my class, they work because everyone participates in making the circle rotate. I offer each student a turn to decide how we will march/fly/skip/dance. I remember one class when a student flopped to the floor during a game, upset about some offense. Another classmate also stepped out of the game and gently went to him. "Oh, are you sad? Will you come back to the game? We would all like if you come be part of our circle. Will you come with me?" My heart swelled as Sylvi reached out to her classmate. Her focus on considering everyone showed that she was practicing these skills.
3. The child at play is self-motivated and actively engaged. Too-common are the stories from adults who took a few piano lessons as kids but for some reason didn't stick with it. Was practicing drudgery? Were lessons like a lecture? Were you wondering when it was going to start being fun? Did you wish going to lessons was as fun as going to Let's Play Music!?
I know your child will practice every day if it's part of your daily routine, and if he's looking forward to a weekly prize, or if he knows he doesn't get screen time until it's done. Each of these extrinsic motivators has a definite place for establishing the practice habit early on, but what will happen when you take those motivations away someday? (I, for one, am planning on having my kids move out someday.)
Our long-term goal is to help students discover the fun and joy and playfulness that can be found in making music, so they will eventually be self-motivated, intrinsically-motivated, to continue with practice and music studies when they graduate. Yes, making music takes focus, effort, and WORK (so does mastering the final level of Super Mario Bros). This brings us back to the fuzzy line between work and play: when your child can find the PLAY within the WORK, he'll have the motivation to stick with the training.
We don't pretend music-making is not hard work, but we do find every opportunity to highlight the silly and fun potential. The process of finding joy in the work of music is sometimes a long, slow, road. So we keep our eye on the goal and make sure to help students recognize the joy whenever we can.
4. Play provides opportunities for fine and gross motor development. This truth applies to all of the playtime activities your child enjoys. I'm thinking about the countless hours my own daughter spends dressing and undressing her baby dolls: definitely lots of fine motor practice there!
Moving around doesn't just improve motor skills; mounting scientific evidence from neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists teaches us that movement is crucial to learning. Experiential, active instruction is most likely to lead to long-term memory of new concepts. Playing a game in which you run to the magnet board, add your skip or baby step, and dash back to your seat helps you internalize the concept more strongly than if your teacher just showed it to you.
Not surprisingly, physiological stress reactions can negatively affect learning. When your mind is in "playtime" mode, you are physiologically relaxed and ready to learn at your best. Physical movement helps the brain perceive events and information in a non-stressful way so is learned more easily. Teaching via physical games is a winning strategy we use in Let's Play Music class!
Stages of Play
Finallly, one more big difference between Let's Play Music and other options is our group class format. Parents sometimes wonder if their child would be better off with a private teacher right from the beginning. Now that we know children learn through play, classes are formatted to accommodate the style of learning and playing at this age, and that translates into playing with friends.
How do children play at each age?
Ages 0-2 : Solitary Play: Plays alone, starts to interact with adults.
Ages 2-2.5: Spectator: Observes other children and copies them, enjoys repetitive motions.
Ages 2.5-3: Parallel: Plays along-side other children (not necessarily with them), copies actions of other adults and children. Play is imaginative.
Ages 3-4: Associative: Starts to develop cooperative play, starts to develop friendships, shows interest in 'why' and 'how' things are done during play.
Ages 4.5-6: Cooperative: Thrives in small-group play, enjoys cooperative games, enjoys learning and applying rules and demonstrating mastery.
When music theory is taught via silly group games, our students are set up for success. Learning with a group of 5 friends is easier and more engaging for them than having a teacher one-on-one.
Our Teachers Model Play
Check out these Let's Play Music teachers using playfulness to enhance teaching:
Sarah McKay in Marietta, OH, introduced the song BINGO to her class, and realized they needed a few moments to treasure the joy of pretending to be doggies. After a moment of play, they had laser focus for learning the rhythms.
Michelle Bellingston in Pittsburgh, PA, helps her daughter find easy and playful ways to make practicing fun, like putting on a show for her stuffed animals.
Marie Guthrie in Mesa, AZ, finds ways to sneak learning into playtime with her family. During the popular card game, Sleeping Queens, they sing melodies from our Royal Problem puppet show when a dragon card is drawn!
Ann Cue in Madison, WI, makes sure parents have fun and play along, because kids love it! When it's time to put on silly "root-finding glasses," moms get to dress up in style! Finding the roots of the chords has never been sillier or more successful.
The Results are In
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has identified the importance of playful learning in supporting children's development. They also note the importance of joyfulness in learning- not typically assessed as an outcome of programs, but identified for its importance. When children find something fun, they learn more effectively.
If you are excited about PLAY and its role in your child's education, be sure to register for Let's Play Music classes, and then perhaps enjoy some additional reading:
The Power Of Play: Learning what Comes Naturally, by David Elkind.
Smart Moves, Why Learning is Not All in Your Head Carla Hannaford
Play=Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive Growth, Dorothy Singer.
Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Stuart Brown
A Moving Child is a Learning Child, Gill Connell
Playful Learning: Develop Your Child's Sense of Joy, Mariah Bruehl.
Stay tuned as we focus on one of our CORE VALUES each month. Our classes are patterned and structured differently from other programs; you'll understand why as we explain what we value.
-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music teacher
At Let's Play Music, We Value the Learning Process. We value the entire process of learning, including acknowledging mistakes, having courage to try, and embracing opportunities to increase confidence.
A Happy Musician
One reason you chose Let's Play Music for your child's first musical adventure is because you want him to come to love music; you know that love is going to motivate him for years to come! Students (hey, and parents too) will inevitably hit a moment when you may hear yourself saying: "I'm not doing it right! I'm not good at this! I just can't get this right!" But here at LPM, we embrace that not doing it right and making mistakes are vital steps in the process of learning! The struggle is part of the process, and the process doesn't make us sad!
Four Stages of Learning
Having an awareness of the stages of learning is one vital step in remaining happy even in the tough times. When they hit you, you won't be surprised; you'll be able to get through it, maybe even with a smile!
1. Unconscious Incompetence: "I'm unaware that I don't know how to do this." This is the stage of Blissful Ignorance. Your youngster taps on the bells and doodles on the piano and he thinks he's awesome! And he is! (Don't' spoil it).
2. Conscious Incompetence: "I realize I don't know how to do this, yet." This is the hardest stage, so please use compassion. Your child has now seen other pianists and realized he can't play like that. Or his LPM teacher has introduced some new playing skills and he realizes, this is tricky! This stage causes many musicians to give up- but not you! You'll say, "I knew that this would happen, and it's okay! I know we're normal for experiencing this. I know we can get through it."
By the way, how are your recent New Year's resolutions coming!? This phase of learning catches most folks by such surprise that they give up their resolutions! "Be strong! Keep working at it and I know you can get it. It's okay that you aren't good at this, yet. You are being brave to try this- I know it's scary right now. Everyone who IS good at this was once in your shoes and had just as much trouble. You're on the right track, and this is part of the process…it's a hard part, but we just gotta take it slow and get through it!"
Yes, Mom and Dad, this is my pep-talk for you and your resolutions (or perhaps your commitment to parenting through LPM), and it's the same type of pep-talk you'll want to deliver to your musician when they get stuck in this step of the learning process.
3. Conscious Competence: "I know that I know how to do this." By now your musician has improved at the skill he's working on, but he still has to think about it; it's still a little uncomfortable, it still takes awareness. Nevertheless, success! Watch out, because many musicians are tempted to stop here. "Yeah, I know I can learn to play songs with some effort…but should I learn another one already?" The only way to get from competence to mastery is practice, practice, practice. Don't stop learning.
4. Unconscious Competence: "Well of course I know how to do that." Right now your Yellow Arrows child sweats bullets trying to get his left hand to make a Yellow chord. Imagine when he's a graduate of Orange Roots: he'll be able to sight-read music composed of the 3 main chords with ease. And imagine LPM grads in high school…well of course they can play those chords without a thought. It has become automatic: that's mastery! Now you can add this task in your next pep-talk, "Remember when you first learned to play chords? It was hard! But you stuck with it. Now as you're learning to (insert new task), you have to go through the process again. I've seen you do it before! You'll get it if you don't give up."
We value the learning process at every step along the pathway to mastery.
Modes of Learning
At Let's Play Music, we respect what educational psychology and neuropsychology have to tell us about how children experience the learning process. The fact is, teaching with a multi-sensory approach stimulates and enhances the entire learning process. The four broad modes of learning are visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. Children often have a preferred learning mode, but can improve at learning via other modes with practice. LPM gives them that opportunity with activities in each mode that complement each other.
In our classes, we'll use the magnetic staff, puppets, and hand signs (visual), singing, ear-training, echoing and listening (auditory), strumming, keyboarding, tapping, clapping and hand signs (tactile), and dancing, moving, skipping, jumping, stomping and conducting (kinesthetic) to teach!
Research also tells us that play is the first form of learning, and enhances learning and motivates students. Watch for our next post all about play.
We value the learning process in every mode.
Product vs. Process
Observable change is a product of learning. If learning were defined as nothing more than the product, our classrooms would operate very differently. We would ensure that every child could play a set of piano songs amazingly and perfectly. Period.
At Let's Play Music, learning is a process. It is the act of acquiring new knowledge, skills, and values, building upon what we already know. Learning is more than just a collection of facts and songs mastered.
Because each student enters with a different background knowledge and strengths, each child will have a unique experience. When we pass off songs in class, each student may have a different competency level- LPM is designed for that! Assessment is for encouraging growth and improvement, not for comparing one student to another (this is particularly important to remember when siblings are in class together!). Especially in composing, students are able to individually choose what they find meaningful and are interested in doing.
We value the learning process as an individual experience for each student.
A Three Year Process
We value meaningful learning: when a learned concept is fully understood to the extent that it relates to other knowledge. Meaningful learning implies a comprehensive knowledge of the context of the facts learned. The LPM curriculum is intentionally sequential: skills move from simple to complex, building on what is already known, allowing students to construct the meaning.
I often say that experience precedes learning with musical concepts: students experience input, THEN form conclusions, THEN create a reference. For example, students learn to audiate note patterns with mastery before learning the symbolic association (reading notes on the staff.) See our post on note-reading.
Every concept is repeated and reinforced before we eventually label it. Much labeling (think about note naming, rhythm terminology, and chord numbering) comes in year three, after students have internalized the meaning and use of the concepts.
It is important to complete the entire three-year program, so the experiences the child encountered can translate into solid musical understanding as he is guided in building connections. The specific activities planned for each class over three years were carefully scheduled to provide a tidy conclusion to the basic concepts developed.
We value the time, repetition, and experience needed to allow for meaningful learning.
Stay tuned as we focus on one of our CORE VALUES each month. Our classes are patterned and structured differently from other programs; you'll understand why as we explain what we value.
-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher
