Sight Reading for a New Year
One of the big things I heard from the choir kids last year was that they wanted to learn to read note better. I appreciate their desires, but am also a little intimidated by the request because it takes time and effort to learn to read notes and part of me is worried about pushing them to work on it.
As I pray about adding it I can't help be feel that I just need to be honest with them, to tell them that at times it will not be fun to practice reading notes, but that if we stick with it we will be thankful. It's like memorizing multiplication facts, no one really liked it, but we all look back on it fondly because of where it brought us. That is my hope for learning sight reading, that there will be moments we can look back on fondly, because of what we accomplish together.
Having said this, I want to share some of the ideas I have found to help, ideas I'm exciting about and praying I can implement well.
Warm ups - Not only do I need to practice having the students find the next note for each new scale themselves. I also need to allow them to sing through the scales without me playing the notes for them as often. I need to let them use their inner ear rather than relying on the piano for all their notes.
Interval warm ups - these include singing each interval on numbers going up and down, ex. 1-2, 1-3...
Or creating a chord as a choir. One group sings the bottom note then the other groups take turns singing the 3rd, 5th and even 7th. Another great interval warm up is to write the numbers of the scale on the board having them sing up and down the scale with the numbers. Each time however a number gets erased and they have to thing the erased number rather than sing it. This is a great one for students to do on their during personal practice time as well.
As we learn the basics of sight reading before we thing about intervals we can look at the distance between notes simply. We can easily identify whether a note is the same, takes a step, skips a note or jumps. Learning to quickly identify if a note is taking a step or a skip is the first step in sight reading.
Interval practice will include singing a phrase of a song on numbers or reciting the intervals between each note of a phrase. Students can read the first phrase intervals of a song to themselves and then sing those intervals to themselves. The second step will be to have students will take turns telling their partner the intervals between each note of the first line of a song. Then they have to sing those intervals to their partner. The partner will take the next phrase. The final step will be to have the kids sing a phrase in their head rather than out loud. Weather it's a new phrase or one they have worked on and are starting to sing easily this will strengthen their inner ear.
Another great inner ear training exercise is to have the students create a chord then to ask different groups to flatten or sharpen their notes to create new chords. Not only do they have to be able to switch their note with the correct distance they have to hold their note while others do so.
These aren't necessarily easy tasks, but they will get easier with practice and they are great for learning to read music. My prayer is that I know how often to push sight reading, that I won't be afraid to push and that I can be consistent in teaching the kids how to read music.
As I pray about adding it I can't help be feel that I just need to be honest with them, to tell them that at times it will not be fun to practice reading notes, but that if we stick with it we will be thankful. It's like memorizing multiplication facts, no one really liked it, but we all look back on it fondly because of where it brought us. That is my hope for learning sight reading, that there will be moments we can look back on fondly, because of what we accomplish together.
Having said this, I want to share some of the ideas I have found to help, ideas I'm exciting about and praying I can implement well.
Warm ups - Not only do I need to practice having the students find the next note for each new scale themselves. I also need to allow them to sing through the scales without me playing the notes for them as often. I need to let them use their inner ear rather than relying on the piano for all their notes.
Interval warm ups - these include singing each interval on numbers going up and down, ex. 1-2, 1-3...
Or creating a chord as a choir. One group sings the bottom note then the other groups take turns singing the 3rd, 5th and even 7th. Another great interval warm up is to write the numbers of the scale on the board having them sing up and down the scale with the numbers. Each time however a number gets erased and they have to thing the erased number rather than sing it. This is a great one for students to do on their during personal practice time as well.
As we learn the basics of sight reading before we thing about intervals we can look at the distance between notes simply. We can easily identify whether a note is the same, takes a step, skips a note or jumps. Learning to quickly identify if a note is taking a step or a skip is the first step in sight reading.
Interval practice will include singing a phrase of a song on numbers or reciting the intervals between each note of a phrase. Students can read the first phrase intervals of a song to themselves and then sing those intervals to themselves. The second step will be to have students will take turns telling their partner the intervals between each note of the first line of a song. Then they have to sing those intervals to their partner. The partner will take the next phrase. The final step will be to have the kids sing a phrase in their head rather than out loud. Weather it's a new phrase or one they have worked on and are starting to sing easily this will strengthen their inner ear.
Another great inner ear training exercise is to have the students create a chord then to ask different groups to flatten or sharpen their notes to create new chords. Not only do they have to be able to switch their note with the correct distance they have to hold their note while others do so.
These aren't necessarily easy tasks, but they will get easier with practice and they are great for learning to read music. My prayer is that I know how often to push sight reading, that I won't be afraid to push and that I can be consistent in teaching the kids how to read music.
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