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Teaching a Dyslexic Kid to Read Music


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Over the past year since we figures out that dd2 is dyslexic and changed teaching methods to accommodate that, we have seen her make slow but steady gains in learning to read.  She didn’t seem to progress at all before we found the right methods for her.

Dd started doing Suzuki violin casually with me as a preschooler, and is near the end of book one.  She plays entirely by rote, and cannot read music at all—we have practiced the different note lengths and she knows those, we have practiced with single note flash cards and she (mostly) knows those, but she cannot put them together.  Show her an individual note and she can tell you what it is and how long, but string three notes together and she bursts into tears.

We recently found out about a children’s orchestra near us that dd will be old enough to join after Christmas, and she is really excited about it—but that’s a situation where she’s going to have to be able to read the music.  I feel like she needs the all about reading of music.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

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Can she play *one* note on her violin when you show it to her on a card? My dd, not dyslexic btw, could read the note to you OR could strike the note when told what note, but she couldn't read and strike the note on the piano. This difficulty went on until about 13 when we did some metronome work using Heathermomster's instructions. In think in her case it was probably requiring both sides of the brain. After the metronome work, she went back and started working on it on her own, very tediously, very slowly, one note at a time, forcing her brain to make those connections. She can now do simple, limited sight reading. She will never be a virtuoso, lol.

So if your dd can even play ONE note from the card (vision to processing to fingers), that's really good! Like seriously, that was a huge hurdle for my dd. And if you've got one note, do one note. Play that one note, breathe, play another note, breathe. She may literally be making wiring in the brain.

You could see if you can get an OT eval or do some metronome work. It's all in the brain. You can do metronome work for free even. Someone just listed a newish app that is cheap that actually gives you the clapping feedback. 

How is her typing? My dd also struggled with typing. We ended up switching to Dvorak. I found it while googling typing options for dyslexics. 

Adding: Does she like the violin? She might consider percussion for the orchestra. It would eliminate some of the processing speed and fine motor issues. My dd tried percussion in the homeschool band, and it was fun for her. It wasn't as, um, out of reach as the piano was. It was more gross motor rather than fine motor. Just something to think about.

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My daughter started playing violin with a certified Suzuki teacher in second grade and then transferred to a regular violin instructor one year later.  She found the transition very difficult because she was used to hearing music and then imitating it. My daughter is a very quick study and was learning two to three pieces of music per month.  Learning to read music forced her to slow down, and she is impatient and enjoyed playing the Suzuki pieces better.  Overall, that year was very frustrating. 

Maybe enlarge her music pieces with a copier and incorporate color.  You may want to write down the finger placement above the notes until she masters correct placement.  For your daughter to speed up, you may need to work on RAN/RAS reading activities.  Be sure to sign your daughter up for the local summer orchestra camp if that option is available to you. My daughter did that last year and it really helped her to stay motivated as she pushed through.  

 

 

 

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I like the idea of hints for finger placement above the note for a while.  Also, maybe start with 3 notes and work on those until moving on, then adding a note at a time.

For example, you could work on c, d, and e.  First, flash c and have her play it, then a second later, e.  Then, a second later, at random, another note.  Keep working on this until she knows them well, then decrease the time between notes.  It might be easier to start with 3 notes that are much different instead, c, f, a for example.

You could pick note that make a simple song to make it more fun, and sometimes do random patterns and sometimes a song.

Once she can do 3 notes well, add in a 4th, etc...

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Music specialist who spent years working at a school with a magnet program for kids with reading delays. 

 

Color can help. Boomwhackers or bells can provide that color coding and be more obviously tactile. Start with just a few notes, and build up. This book is really good, but for a dyslexic, I would enlarge it and just give her one song/activity at a time. I’d work on a bell set or Boomwhackers and color code, and then move to the violin and play each exercise. Copy and enlarge familiar songs, from pre-twinkle on, and play find the notes in each-go though and find just the C, or D, or A. Color code and mark. Read, sing, play, one or two notes at a time at first. Sing the other notes on La and the letter names for the notes she knows, and then play (and sing the letter names while playing).

When she is in the orchestra, get the music in advance, and do the same thing. If she ends up going into orchestra with Music color coded, so be it. Ask for a recording of her part, and have her play along, using that ear that she has developed. I have had some kids who really, really did well as long as they had time to prepare. Ask that she be seated in the middle of a section or at the end of the row, so that the people sitting beside her are playing the same part. (This may not always be possible, but if you can do it, it can be a big help). I have had students who never really learned to read music, but if we prepared them in advance, had the music scaffolded at the level they could read, and tried to avoid surrounding them by contrary information, they did well and had a successful experience. 

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8 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Can she play *one* note on her violin when you show it to her on a card? My dd, not dyslexic btw, could read the note to you OR could strike the note when told what note, but she couldn't read and strike the note on the piano. This difficulty went on until about 13 when we did some metronome work using Heathermomster's instructions. In think in her case it was probably requiring both sides of the brain. After the metronome work, she went back and started working on it on her own, very tediously, very slowly, one note at a time, forcing her brain to make those connections. She can now do simple, limited sight reading. She will never be a virtuoso, lol.

So if your dd can even play ONE note from the card (vision to processing to fingers), that's really good! Like seriously, that was a huge hurdle for my dd. And if you've got one note, do one note. Play that one note, breathe, play another note, breathe. She may literally be making wiring in the brain.

You could see if you can get an OT eval or do some metronome work. It's all in the brain. You can do metronome work for free even. Someone just listed a newish app that is cheap that actually gives you the clapping feedback. 

How is her typing? My dd also struggled with typing. We ended up switching to Dvorak. I found it while googling typing options for dyslexics. 

Adding: Does she like the violin? She might consider percussion for the orchestra. It would eliminate some of the processing speed and fine motor issues. My dd tried percussion in the homeschool band, and it was fun for her. It wasn't as, um, out of reach as the piano was. It was more gross motor rather than fine motor. Just something to think about.

Yes, she can play single notes.  I hold up a flash card, and she plays that note while saying it.  Some notes she knows from looking, others she is counting to figure out.

She hasn’t done much typing yet, as we do not own a device with a keyboard.

She does like the violin.  She gets frustrated at times, but overall she likes it a lot.

 

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4 hours ago, Heathermomster said:

Maybe enlarge her music pieces with a copier and incorporate color.  You may want to write down the finger placement above the notes until she masters correct placement.  For your daughter to speed up, you may need to work on RAN/RAS reading activities.  Be sure to sign your daughter up for the local summer orchestra camp if that option is available to you. My daughter did that last year and it really helped her to stay motivated as she pushed through.  

 

Thanks for these suggestions.  Unfortunately, we can’t afford any summer camps (our charter pays for the kids’ extracurriculars during the school year).  What are RAN/RAS reading activities?

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24 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

Color can help. Boomwhackers or bells can provide that color coding and be more obviously tactile. Start with just a few notes, and build up. This book is really good, but for a dyslexic, I would enlarge it and just give her one song/activity at a time. I’d work on a bell set or Boomwhackers and color code, and then move to the violin and play each exercise. Copy and enlarge familiar songs, from pre-twinkle on, and play find the notes in each-go though and find just the C, or D, or A. Color code and mark. Read, sing, play, one or two notes at a time at first. Sing the other notes on La and the letter names for the notes she knows, and then play (and sing the letter names while playing).

 

Cool, I’ve never heard of boomwhackers before.  What book was that?

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Oops! https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Use-Music-Reading-Activities/dp/0893281565

Boomwhackers are awesome. This pack looks like the best deal currently available. https://www.amazon.com/Boomwhackers-BWPP-Percussion-Effect-Power/dp/B00AMKGMNW/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1525307656&sr=8-9&keywords=boomwhackers

There are more octaves and chromatics available, too. The bass ones are hard to manage, so I tend to use the octavator caps instead. 

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1 hour ago, dmmetler said:

Music specialist who spent years working at a school with a magnet program for kids with reading delays. 

 

Color can help. Boomwhackers or bells can provide that color coding and be more obviously tactile. Start with just a few notes, and build up. This book is really good, but for a dyslexic, I would enlarge it and just give her one song/activity at a time. I’d work on a bell set or Boomwhackers and color code, and then move to the violin and play each exercise. Copy and enlarge familiar songs, from pre-twinkle on, and play find the notes in each-go though and find just the C, or D, or A. Color code and mark. Read, sing, play, one or two notes at a time at first. Sing the other notes on La and the letter names for the notes she knows, and then play (and sing the letter names while playing).

When she is in the orchestra, get the music in advance, and do the same thing. If she ends up going into orchestra with Music color coded, so be it. Ask for a recording of her part, and have her play along, using that ear that she has developed. I have had some kids who really, really did well as long as they had time to prepare. Ask that she be seated in the middle of a section or at the end of the row, so that the people sitting beside her are playing the same part. (This may not always be possible, but if you can do it, it can be a big help). I have had students who never really learned to read music, but if we prepared them in advance, had the music scaffolded at the level they could read, and tried to avoid surrounding them by contrary information, they did well and had a successful experience. 

 

So my dd who was recently diagnosed with dyslexia just got told by her violin teacher last week that we should not have enlarged and color coded her music for her to help her read it. Instructor said that the music only gets smaller and more difficult to read and we'll just be creating a crutch that makes it harder to figure stuff out down the road. I can sort of understand her point, and yet this week dd refuses to practice violin. All out refuses. We had a screaming, crying tantrum over here today when I tried to force the issue. Instructor is well-known in town and seems to be very good and says she's taught dyslexics before... Could you recommend any good resources that we could print out and maybe take in to have another conversation about the issue?

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 Yes, it will get smaller and harder. You know what else does that? Book text. We don’t hand an early reader small, compressed text without any form of visual assistance and ask them to read so that they will be ready for college. We give them big, clear text with illustrations and support.  And if you look at most Piano method series that teach reading from the start, they follow the same pattern, where the first books have big Music print, very spread out, and often start with iconic notation and introduce the pieces separately. It’s a similar process. And I have rarely seen music reading really “click” for a student before they get to the “read to learn” stage in print. 

For my students with reading delays, yes, that means using crutches, like marking Music, enlarged print, writing in note names, or teaching the parts by rote so that they can fully participate in the group and learn music at their level while teaching music reading at the level they can manage it, just as you might use strategies such as large print readers, immersion reading, a simplified version so a child can participate in discussion, audiobooks, etc so that the same student can participate in science class at a 4th grade level even if they read on a 1st grade level. And if that child never gets to the stage of reading small print music completely fluently, my job is to teach them how to use their own methods to make it work for them. It is not a failure on either of our parts, any more than it is a failure for a student with low vision to learn to read music Braille. 

 

I’ll see if I can find any public journal articles. 

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She May be thinking of the Rogers study, which shows that color coding music for beginning instrumental students speeds learning and retention,, but has a negative affect on sight reading non-colored Music down the road for a transition period. However, for children with learning challenges, it was noted that not only did children in the experimental group benefit greatly from colored notation, to a much greater degree than children without such challenges, but it enabled them to score at or above the level of their peers without these challenges.  The Wikipedia article is a good summary. The actual journal is behind a paywall.  The links are in the citations. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_music_notation

 

There are lots of blogs that support use of color in music teaching for students wirh Dyslexia, but the Rogers studies are probably the most authoritative. 

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6 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

 

She May be thinking of the Rogers study, which shows that color coding music for beginning instrumental students speeds learning and retention,, but has a negative affect on sight reading non-colored Music down the road for a transition period. However, for children with learning challenges, it was noted that not only did children in the experimental group benefit greatly from colored notation, to a much greater degree than children without such challenges, but it enabled them to score at or above the level of their peers without these challenges.  The Wikipedia article is a good summary. The actual journal is behind a paywall.  The links are in the citations. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_music_notation

 

There are lots of blogs that support use of color in music teaching for students wirh Dyslexia, but the Rogers studies are probably the most authoritative. 

 

Thank you so much. That's very helpful for me. We started enlarging and color coding just because it seemed like a good idea to us. We had no idea it was actually a "thing." I'll read through the Rogers study summary and think about how to talk with the teacher. I'm not sure how receptive she'll be. She's really nice, but very much has her own system of how things work, and I need to think about a way to revisit this topic in such a way that it doesn't seem I'm challenging her expertise or instruction.

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She would still be reading note by note.

Though music is actually read as 'patterns'.  Where each arrangement of notes, is represented by a unique pattern.  So that once all of the notes well learned, then they can be instantly recognised in a pattern.  The width of the pattern, grows with experience.  Starting at 1 or 2 beats.  Up to where a whole 'measure' can be read as a single pattern.

This is where color coding can be helpful initially, just to highlight the patterns.  But the main thing, is to move past reading 'note by note'.

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For my dd2, she was fine with color coding and single note things, but eventually-nothing helped. She just could not do it without massive, massive effort. All that effort needed to go into reading and other things (she also has slow processing), so we dropped music and never looked back.

It is not that it was impossible for her, it was just that EVERYTHING connected with the written page was hard and we had to prioritize reading and math. Everything cannot be hard for a kid-they have to have something that comes easily. For dd2, that was swimming which easily expanded to fill all her free time.

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I also found these resources:

 

 
 
 
I think I'm going to print the last, at the least, and take it with me tomorrow to discuss with the teacher. Fingers crossed!
 
ETA The first article here is actually most interesting I think. And the full text is available as well. Apparently, increasing the size of the music had very strong positive effects, the coloring the notes actually had slight negative effects, despite being preferred by the students. Super interesting!
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