How Can Aearning Disabilitypetdon Learn Yo Ay Piano

Teaching / 04/07/2016

Music and Specific Learning Difficulties - by Karen Marshall

How it started

In the year 2000 I started to teach a pupil with dyslexia. Unusually his parents brought him to me with a wealth of information on what dyslexia was and how it affected him. As a teacher I was very lucky to be given data because, the only affair I knew about dyslexia was that it caused spelling difficulties. Subsequently spending time with this student I noticed other students – who had not been assessed as dyslexic – displaying some of the same traits. Over the next couple of years, some of these students were as well assessed with dyslexia or another specific leaning difficulty (spLD).

It became quickly apparent that my usual education style was not being particularly effective. I read equally much as I could merely found that this information described many of the problems but gave few applied solutions. I contacted the British Dyslexia Clan who referred me to the late Margaret Hubiki (Emeritus Professor from the Royal University of Music). Over the last few years of her life – by telephone – Peggy Hubiki taught me how to multi-sensory music teach. I will never forget her words. Try to focus on three questions with a student: What do y'all see? What do you experience? What practice you hear? The results using this style of teaching for these students and others accept been quite boggling.

What are specific learning difficulties (spLDs)?

Dyslexia – difficulties with processing words (can be seeing and hearing)
Dyscalculia – difficulties with processing number
Dysgraphia – difficulties with the process of writing
Dyspraxia – difficulties processing movement
ADHD / Add together – difficulty with concentration
Asperger'southward Autism – difficulty processing emotion

In addition to these problems, many of these difficulties are as well accompanied past memory problems, short term and working retention.

What is multi-sensory music educational activity?

Multi-sensory music educational activity is just what information technology sounds, using all the senses to teach music. The main 3 employed are visual (seeing), auditory (hearing) and kinaesthetic (doing). I'd also add in reading and writing (text) as the literate nature of our world shows, many people observe this useful (even those with dyslexia). Multi-sensory music teaching can be seen in some of the most respected music pedagogy approaches in the world such as Dalcroze, Kodály, Suzuki and Orff. It can benefit all learners, simply peculiarly those with specific learning difficulties similar dyslexia.

Sheila Oglethorpe in Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook (Whurr, 1996) states: "The foremost communication that is given to teachers of dyslexics in the classroom is to teach in a multi-sensory way. They are exhorted to employ as many of the child's senses as possible in the promise that the stronger senses will compensate for the weaker ones and a pathway into the brain and the retention volition be found."

How tin can we teach music in a multi-sensory way?

Multi-sensory pedagogy (MST) is regularly employed when teaching a child to read. My ain daughter was shown pictures of the letters (visual), listened to how the letters are pronounced (auditory), and drew the letters in a tray of sand (kinaesthetic). Learning to play and read music can also be taught using all the senses. As already mentioned it's one of the most effective ways to teach a educatee with learning difficulties. Here's an instance, pedagogy C major scale on a piano.

These exercises can be adapted for instruments other than the pianoforte. If you are educational activity the flute allow the student come across, hear and feel, the fingering on the pads, if the trumpet, the position on the valves, the violin, the fingering on the strings.

Auditory

• Sing to 'la' the C major scale with the educatee.

• Sing the ascending scale again for the student to mind to, using the letter of the alphabet names C D Due east F K A B C, and then sing them descending while the student follows the progress on the keyboard (or fingering on another instrument).

• Sing the scale over again to the student but this time using the finger numbers 123 12345 etc. as you sing upwardly and downwards.

• Play the intervals of a major 2nd and a semi-tone. Help the student aurally identify these intervals within the scale.

Visual

• Provide the pupil with a flick of the keyboard with the finger numbers of the scale on it. Some students do not remember in terms of finger numbers: if this is the case, try some other way.

• Show the student the scale written out as notes on the stave.

• Go the student to look at the keyboard and see the shape of the scale in relation to the white and black notes.

• I have a educatee who always remembers the D major scale as the one with Fish and Chips in – the Fish representing F sharp and Fries reminding them of the C precipitous.

Kinaesthetic

• Finger numbers need to be learnt. This can be done with a simple song (similar 'One time I caught a fish alive), doing the actions of the finger numbers at the same time.

• Invite the student to use the right mitt and depress the first 3 notes of the scale (notes CDE) together on the keyboard, then place the thumb on F and depress the next 4 notes with fingers 1234 (notes FGAB) – ascending up the keyboard.

• Become the student to close their eyes and experience the fingering of the scale.

• Ask the student using their correct hand to put finger 3 on the E and then tuck their thumb under onto the F.

• Walk the pattern of the tones and semi tones one the floor, a tone (large step), semi-tone (small step).

Hither are some more than general hints and tips for educational activity dyslexic students:

• Teach in a multi-sensory mode and use colour, pattern and music recordings to aid your education if helpful to the educatee.

• Be aware that dyslexic students may confuse left and correct. Avoid using these terms: discover other ways.

• Sensitively encourage students to say things out loud what they need to acquire. This is a practiced way to check their understanding.

• Produce well-structured lessons. It helps to employ a regular format so that the pupil knows in what club yous do things.

• Watch the body language to see if "Yes I understand" really means "No I don't but I don't want to say". Test the understanding without challenging the pupil and so teach the concept in some other way.

• E'er OVER-TEACH data. Poor short-term memory is a detail weakness for dyslexic students. Utilize mnemonics if they help.

• Beware of sequencing bug. Many dyslexic students can detect it difficult to sequence note names backwards.

• Build the student's cocky-esteem: focus on strengths.

• Practise not speak besides much or too fast, and try to use brusk sentences.

• If the dyslexic student complains most the notes dancing, produce enlarged or simplified copies of the music, try covering the music with coloured acetate, or copy the music onto coloured newspaper.

• Set realistic goals and ensure all results are rewarded.

• Aid with personal organisation. Attempt highlighting things to be practised by putting a modest bookmark in the music, with no more than three things to practise listed on it. Even better, use pictures.

• Work in partnership with the parent.

• Exist flexible and persistent. If something isn't successful, continue on trying new things.

Boosted resource

Get Gear up Piano! – Karen Marshall and Heather Hammond, A&C Blackness: These tutor books incorporate MST teaching throughout. Suitable for beginner pianists, Book 1 takes the student to prep test and book 2 to Grade 1.
Eastward-MusicMaestro's new Piano Sight Reading Grades 1 - 3: online sight reading practice with a huge number of examples, all of which can be viewed large on a dyslexia-friendly, cream background.
My Beginning Theory Book and Theory Made Like shooting fish in a barrel for Little Children by Lina Ng - these include stickers which are very popular with young children.
Life size stave: Create using masking tape on the floor or an onetime piece of carpeting with black carpet tape (this is then transportable). Get the student to sing the letter of the alphabet names of the dissimilar pitches as they stand up in the correlating space on the stave, play musical twister, marking and singing different words on the stave, stand on the note pitch and play the corresponding annotation on an instrument (apply a motion-picture show of the keyboard for pianists).

Internet resources and apps

East-MusicMaestro Aural Test Preparation at http://www.due east-musicmaestro.com/auraltests
Pamela Rose's video-based Form 5 Theory programme at world wide web.learngrade5theory.com
Rhythm in Reach app
www.musictheory.cyberspace
Music Sparkles app
Garage Band
Notion 3

Courses

The British Dyslexia Association run a course, Music learning and dyslexia, delivered past Karen Marshall. Contact the British Dyslexia Association's training department. The course runs yearly in the Easter Holidays.

The British Dyslexia Association – visit their website, call their helpline or contact BDA Music (see below).

http://www.bdadyslexia.org.britain/courses-and-events/training/music-learning-and-dyslexia.html

Expect out for Kodaly and Dalcroze courses too.

BDA Music - a commission of the British Dyslexia Clan dealing specifically with music. Their electronic mail address is world wide web.bdamusicdyslexia@gmail.com

Additional reading

Music Teacher & British Dyslexic Clan (2012), Teacher Guide to Music and Dyslexia. Available: http://world wide web.rhinegold.co.uk/downloads/magazines/music_teacher/music_teacher_guide_music_and_dyslexia.pdf

Daunt, South. (ed.) (2012), Music, Other Performing Arts and Dyslexia. Bracknell: B.D.A.

Oglethorpe, Southward. (2002), Instrumental music for dyslexics, a pedagogy handbook. (2nd ed.) London: Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (eds.) (2001), Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors. London: Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Miles, T.R., Westcombe, J. and Ditchfield, D. (eds.) (2008), Music and Dyslexia A Positive Arroyo. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Some last thoughts

Multi-sensory music instruction is a wonderful tool to accelerate learning in all our students and especially those with learning difficulties. It makes lessons more varied, memorable and fun! It tin can expand our learning and develop u.s.a. equally teachers in ways nosotros could never imagine.