Teacher Blogs

Amy Fowers, a Music Mind Games teacher in Utah saw Alsye's email S.O.S. (see blog entry "Great! I've Been Asked to Teach at a Student Workshop.  Now What?!) and offered some more helpful suggestions:

1. Michiko gave me some great advice at my last training; ask the parents which subjects they would like the children to be introduced to, or have learned by the end of the week.  The parents will probably say "note reading".  It is important to help the parents understand that while you can get students started, you cannot expect to make expert note-readers in one week.  Learning to read notes is a process that happens over time with repetition.

2. Ask the students what they already know: have them close their eyes and then raise their hands to answer questions that will help you assess where they are in their theory studies. (By closing their eyes, no one will feel pressured to raise their hand just because the rest of the class is.  Sample questions: Raise your hand if you know how many sharps are in the key of D Major.  Raise your hand if you know how many beats are in a whole note, etc.)  You don't want to cater to the highest ability but you can't to the lowest either, so keep it somewhere in the middle.

3.  Don't do all teaching games.  Do fun ones, too!

4. Use students to demonstrate games rather than explaining by talking.

5. Use the Rhythm Playing Cards as much as you can.  Kids love War, Suspense, Danish Zoo, and Slow and those are easy to learn.

6. Plan 3 games for each class.  Begin each day with "Daily Do", reviewing and adding to it each day and telling the students the musical terms for what they're singing (Major Scale, Intervals, Minor Scale, etc.)

7. You might also play Hello Jello each day.  It helps with their learning of the rhythm names and you can add more difficult ones each day (be sure to leave in the easy favorites!).

8.  Plan at least three other games.  You probably won't get to them, but it's nice to have a few as back-up so that if you get a vibe that one game will work better you can go to it quickly.

9.  Have fun!  Enjoy yourself (you know the kids will!).

Hello everyone!  As Chair of the Music Mind Games Workshop Teaching Committee I thought you'd find this recent conversation helpful.  Alyse (a new MMG teacher in California) asked:

"I'm starting to teach the theory class at a workshop tomorrow morning. I have four students, ages 6-8, four days and one hour each day. The students are book one/early book two cello students.
This is my first time teaching MMG/theory for strings at a workshop. How many games from each section should we play in the hour and what should I plan to accomplish over the four days???"

MMG is perfect for the community workshop or Suzuki institute but the approach is different from the classroom group class. Keep reading for my short list of suggestions to Alyse.

1. Don't rush through your daily greeting time.  Make eye contact with each student, help them feel quiet and relaxed before jumping into a game.  The theory games are loads of fun but the overall impression of the class rests on how loved and appreciated each student feels at the end of the week.

Apologies for my long absence, everyone!  I'm happy to be back.

It's a completely true cliche: teaching is learning, twice.  If you think you know something well, try teaching it to someone else.  The odds are ten to one you'll learn so much that you'll find it hard to believe you ever "knew" it before.

Which is a fancy way of saying I'm rethinking the order of games I've used for several years.  Here's the thing: Real Rhythm cards are absolutely ideal for initially explaining the relationships between notes and rests. They are yet another example of a material that teaches itself.  Unfortunately, they are not currently available (we're working hard to get a new version out soon!) but you can see an example in this video.  The old Warner Brothers version was very light blue with plain backs; the new ones are slightly darker blue and have pictures on the backs of Magic Note and Gold Coin values, in addition to tiny Blue Jello drawings.

As with any rhythm game, I start with the basic five notes: whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth.  "Can you find the longest note?"  I spread out the cards on the floor.  Since they're proportionally sized, even a three-year-old can find the biggest card, so it's a great success experience.

"Right; the whole note is the longest because it has four beats."  (The more you can repeat the terms, the better your students will learn them; just remember not to fall into the trap of quizzing them.  They'll remember on their own, in their own time.)  "And because it has four beats, we also call it fo-o-o-our."  Make the sign.  Then ask the student to find the next longest note, continuing the dialogue until the notes are all placed, one above the other. 

Next, repeat with the rests.  This is even easier, because you can just say, "Which rest matches the half note?  That's right, the half rest.  They're exactly the same size, because they have the same number of beats."  When you finish with these, you'll have a nice pyramid-shaped diagram; or, as I like to say, a Christmas tree.

"Now we can decorate the tree."  I like to start at the top, since teaching addition is easier than teaching division.  "This sixteenth rest is so tiny, it only gets one Magic Note."  It's a small note and we play it very fast. Can you say "huck?"  I say it with them, making the sign.  "Even faster?"  They always love to go faster!

Comparisons are easy: "The eighth note is twice as big, so if we added two sixteenth notes together we'd get -- right!  Two magic notes."  The students love to turn over each card and painstakingly cover the Magic Note drawings on the back with real Magic Notes.  When we reach the quarter note and rest, I emphasize the idea of a beat: "A blue is one beat, right?  How many blue kids are on the back?"  (Or, in case of the rest, "How many mice?")  They understand instantly and intuitively that a half note is two beats and a whole rest, four beats.  And at the end, their Christmas tree is twinkling with colored balls and glinting with gold coins.  They will gaze and admire and beg to do it all over again.

When these concepts are firmly established, I add in the dotted notes, again comparing sizes. If the child is old enough, I'll explain what the dot means -- half again as long as the original note.  Finally, we add the multi-note cards: jello, huckleberry, etc.  I add a few at each session, making sure to reinforce both the Blue Jello words and the musical terms, so that the students learn that they're interchangeable.

Once they know the Real Rhythm Cards well, they're fun to use for other games.  One of my favorites is Making Measures.  We start with 4/4, the most basic time signature, and create measures of music using the whole note and rest as guides.  If students try to make a measure with too many or too few beats, it's immediately obvious, because the line of notes is too long or too short.  They quickly learn to group eighth and sixteenth values together for more easy playing.  When the measure is complete, we sign and clap the rhythm, and sometimes even go to the piano and make up a melody.

There are many more games, of course, as for all of the Music Mind Games materials, and I'm sure you have your own in the works!  If you're fortunate enough to have a set of Real Rhythm cards, I'd love to hear how you're using them.

Every once in awhile, I run into a skeptic -- someone who just isn't sure about all this fun we're having at piano lessons:  "Isn't reading music supposed to be hard work?  And how do you know those Blue Jello words are really helping them learn rhythms?  You know, real rhythms like you see in real printed music?"

When I hear comments like these, I try not to get too ruffled, and as soon as I can, I bring out the Music Symbol Cards.  No other set of cards is more obviously effective in teaching the basics of music theory.

I group the Music Symbol Cards into a few different areas.  The first is dynamics.  Michiko's game for learning the dynamics, which can be found in Chapter 11 of the book, is brilliant: students go from curled up on the floor, whispering "pianissimo," to leaping in the air, crying, "FORTISSIMO!" and return, in stages, to the curled-up position (an important caveat for any teacher who wants to retain control of her class . . . )  Similarly, I teach crescendo and decrescendo by sitting cross-legged, curling up and then slowly stretching out my arms and neck as far as they'll go as my voice rises: crreeeeeeeSCEEEEENDOOOOOOO! 

Another group is the notes and rests.  This is a snap for students who have played Puzzle Notes and Rests, a game I won't go into for now since the Blue Jello Puzzle isn't available yet.  (But it will be very soon, and I promise you will LOVE it!)  The only difference here is that they're shown on the staff, so students get a sense of scale and placement.

The third group is cards that can be learned through the Grand Staff song: everything from clefs to lines and spaces.  The students are VERY interested in the alto and tenor clefs, too (a sure sign you're teaching Music Mind Games properly: students want to do the "hard" things first!)

Finally, I teach the odds and ends that are left over: ritardando, measure and a few others.  There are some great hints in the book for these, too.

Once the student knows a fair number of the cards (it's even more fun if they don't know them all) we play a game I call Foursquare: I arrange the cards face down in a 6 by 6 grid and we take turns turning over cards and identifying the symbols.  If the student doesn't know an answer, the card is turned back over to be chosen another time.  Cards that have been turned face up remain there until someone completes a block of four, at which point he gets to keep all four cards.  I usually try to let the student be the first to do this, and I don't explain the rule until we're at that point in the game, since I want to start as simply as possible.  After they learn this, strategy becomes an important element in the game!

The cards are perfectly numbered for this game, but if we're short on time I may only do a grid of 16, possibly only including cards the student knows.  And I'm not very strict about rules; sometimes I'll prompt the student to help her remember.  (Which is, after all, the whole point of the game.)

Music Symbol Cards convert even the most hardened skeptics.  They show clearly that all teaching methods are not created equal; given a relaxed atmosphere, challenging and fun games, and positive reinforcement, students learn more quickly and take more joy in their learning.

Compared with my last pair of posts, this one will be much simpler, though the material is just as useful for musicians of all types!

The Tempo Cards are lots of fun.  For one thing, if you've never heard a three-year-old pronounce "Prestissimo," you're missing out.  It is really amazing how quickly they pick up the words, even with lots of syllables in a foreign language!

As with any new knowledge base, it's important to start slowly.  I usually begin with five cards: the two slowest (Largo and Lento,) the two fastest (Presto and Prestissimo,) and the one in the middle (Moderato.)

For a much older student, I might use linguistic hints ("largo" means long in Spanish, and "lent" means slow in French; "moderate," of course, means centrist in English.)  For a younger student, I just use letters: "M for Middle, and M for Moderato.  Moderato goes in the middle!  Now, can you find the two slowest tempos?  They both start with L . . . "

It's very important that the student see there is a fairly large space on either side of Moderato -- large enough for three cards.  This way, they know that we will continue to add cards to the list.  And a little suspense is fun for everyone. 

Once they seem to have those five, we play games, usually Fine and War.  War can get tedious with only five cards, so I make it more interesting by changing the winning card every time there's a war.  For instance, we may begin by saying the fastest card will win, so Presto beats Lento and Prestissimo beats Presto.  But then we both throw down Largo, so after the war is completed, we switch to the slowest card winning.  Now Lento beats Presto and Presto beats Prestissimo.  It sounds a little confusing, but the students catch on quickly and it keeps them on their toes (and also keeps one person from capturing all the cards quickly, prolonging the game and the learning!)

At the next session, I usually introduce Vivace and Adagio, which add to the pairs at either end.  We repeat the learning process, playing a few rounds of Fine and War.

Finally, I introduce Allegro, Allegretto, Andantino and Andante.  These pairs go on either side of Moderato, and it can be tricky to grasp the meaning of the suffixes "ino" and "etto."  Both mean "small," so "Allegretto" means "a little bit fast," hence, closer to Moderato.  Similarly, Andantino means "a little bit slow," so it goes closer to Moderato on the other side. ("Andante" actually means "walking," a fact that older students find interesting.)  Students will nod and say they understand this, but then they'll put Allegretto above Allegro or Andante above Andantino.  Make sure to take plenty of time practicing with just these five cards -- playing Fine, Five Hiding (where Moderato is zero points, Allegretto and Andantino one point and Allegro and Andante two points) and War.

Once the student knows all the Tempos, he may be ready to play Fine and War with all 11 cards, but more likely he will need more practice with smaller sections of the list.  I usually pull out four or five cards at a time, mix them up, and have the student add them back to the list in order.

That's really it!  The only other thing I strongly recommend is to incorporate these words into the music lesson as much as possible.  "I love your Largo tempo, but maybe we could try Adagio this time?"  Or have a child play a very familiar piece, and as she's playing, vary the tempo by putting different Tempo Cards in front of her.  The more applicable the knowledge, the better the chance of permanent retention.

As stated in my original biweekly plan, I use the Staff Slates and Grand Staff Cards together.  However, I use them at almost every single lesson in the beginning, so we make progress quickly.  After a month, even the youngest children can usually remember where the C's and clefs are located on the staff.

The next step is to connect the pretty, colored, movable magic notes with the more ordinary, black, static notes found on printed music.  To do this, I have the student play a quick game of Fine, and while the pieces are still in place, I take out the deck of Grand Staff Cards and place one next to the Staff Slate. 

"Anything look familiar on this card?"  The student is always eager to tell me all he knows about the staff: the clefs, the brace, the lines and spaces.  He can also usually point out the note, which is probably not one of the Five C's.

"Is this a C?" I ask.  There might be some hesitancy, so I encourage him to just try his best.  If he says yes, it's a C, I put it in a pile.  If he says no, it's not, I put it in another pile.  We go through the entire deck in this way.  I never tell him whether he's getting them right or wrong; he's never done this before, so it's a new experience anyway. 

When we finish, there's lots of "C's", but lots of non-C's too.  (Some students think anything with a ledger line is a C; some think everything on the bass staff is a C.  It varies greatly from person to person.)  I congratulate him on doing such good work.  "Let's go through this C pile again, and you explain to me why you picked each one."

(I don't mean to sound didactic here.  Word choice is SO important to a child, who feels vulnerable and fears failure no matter how well he may hide it.  It's so important that we help him to learn without making him feel foolish for simply not knowing something we happen to know already.)

The cool thing is that during this process, the student is able to see why all the other notes aren't C's.  I ask questions, like "Which C is this?" and "How many ledger lines does that C have?" and "What part of the bass clef is next to that C?"  As they look for the answers, they discover on their own that many of the "C's" are actually not C's, and they feel proud of themselves for having eliminated another choice on their own.

Once we have the six C cards separated, we play Fine, putting them in order (as on a keyboard, left being the lowest) and transferring them to the piano (they stand up perfectly just behind the keys!)  Once they are familiar with the C cards, we play Slap the C's, a wonderful game invented by some students in Amy Fowers' studio in Salt Lake City.  Basically, the teacher (or parent or other student) lays down the cards one at a time, forming a pile.  When a student sees a C, she slaps the floor ("Not the cards, please," I say; "They're not invincible!") and takes the C.  It's fast-paced and teaches instant recognition, which is invaluable later and much better than trying to remember a jingle or acrostic.  A fun variation for more advanced students is to penalize them if they slap on a card that's not a C; I take one of their C's and put it back in the pile.  Then they have to watch even more closely to get it back.

The C's are the foundation for everything else we'll do, so I spend a lot of time ensuring the students know them backwards and forwards.  Once they're very comfortable with them, I'll move on to D's, laying out the six C's and going through the deck to find notes that are one step above C.  We play Slap the D's to learn them well and then move on to Suspense and Five Hiding, where I make D's more valuable than C's.

Next we learn B's in the same way.  And after that . . . well, you might not believe me, but after that, they basically know the notes.  All of them.  It's really that easy when they're having fun, getting constant reinforcement and learning instant visual recognition.  Yesterday I told one of my students, "You're a much better reader than I was at your age."  It was the understatement of the year: at his age, I was hiding my books and wailing about how much I hated reading music.  He'd just played a round of Slap the C's, D's and B's (yes, simultaneously!) and gotten 17 out of 18 right, all the while cracking jokes and carrying on a conversation with his father.

Every teacher should have the gift of a student who reaches higher than she ever could.  It gives you the feeling that somehow, the world really is getting to be a better place.

What's the goal of learning an instrument?  Enjoyment and enrichment, yes; proficiency and technique on the instrument, of course.  But beyond that, most musicians want to acquire technical skills that will help them if they ever decide to sing in a choir, learn another instrument, or (best of all) teach someone else.

Hence, sight reading.

When I was a student, I hated sight reading.  Mostly, probably, because I had been playing pieces (via the Suzuki Method) for long enough that I knew I had a great ability to listen and imitate.  Why did I need to learn the notes?  Who cared about them?  I dug in my heels, screamed and cried, hid and ripped up my theory books, and generally made life miserable for my mother, my teacher and myself.  Eventually, grudgingly, I realized what a useful skill it was, and I am now very grateful for the ability to read and sing music I've never heard before.

For this reason, I am especially sensitive to students who resist reading.  In fact, I don't even use the word reading.  We start with a picture and a song.

The picture is the Staff Slate, and the song is one included in the accompanying materials and written by Lidia Usami, a teacher from New Jersey.  As you sing up the scale, you point to and trace symbols on the staff: treble clef, lines, bass staff, brace.  Then you sing back down, more quickly.  The students hang on every word, and they love doing this.

Once they're familiar with the symbols, I play These Five C's, which can be found in the book in a slightly different form.  (The main difference is that I'm playing with one student on a smaller board with Magic Notes.)  I show them Ledger Lines and place the five C's on the staff, one or two at a time, emphasizing the symmetry of their locations.  They copy me.  We play Fine over and over to ensure the student knows where all five C's are located.  Throughout the process, I use the terms continuously: "That's right.  Treble C goes near the treble clef.  Yes, Low C has two ledger lines and goes all the way at the bottom of the bass staff."  This is better than testing them, because they feel less pressure, but they are just as likely to remember the word.

At the same time, I'm teaching the five C's at the piano.  We place the same magic notes on the keyboard, also emphasizing the symmetry.  I have some Magic Notes onto which I've glued Kid Counters (bottom center of the photo) which fit perfectly.  I will be forever grateful to Sharon Su for giving me that idea; they fit perfectly, and the kids love them so much that one year I gave them all their own set of Five C's for Christmas!

From here, it's a natural transition to Tap Tap, Plunk Plunk.  Originally a game for the violin, played with the open strings, it works well on the piano too.  We place the Staff Slate on the piano bench and bend down to touch Middle C.  "Tap Tap."  We tap the magic note.  We move the magic note to Middle C on the piano and play it twice.  "Plunk Plunk."  We repeat that with all five C's.  This step in the process is vital, because I've found that many intermediate and even advanced students have trouble with the correllation between keyboard and staff.

Once the students really know their five C's on the Staff Slate, we're ready to move on to studying the Grand Staff Cards!

Teaching is hard work, but every once in awhile, you get the rare gift of a material so well-designed, it teaches itself.  This is why I love the Blue Jello cards.

It's important to know them yourself first, so that you can be confident and have fun while teaching them to your students.  This and other videos can help, or you can use the keys included in the packet (one with photos of hand signs, the other with the symbols found on the cards.)  You should be able to sign and speak at the same time, following a steady beat.  And, like many games, it's good to know how to play upside down, so your students can see right-side up.

The fun part comes when you introduce these cards to your students.  The less said, the better: just explain that you're going to play a rhythm game, and they can join in whenever they're ready.  They will be eager to follow along almost immediately.  I have seen the most wiggly boys (and girls) get calm and focused almost immediately when Blue Jello is in front of them, and the more experienced students are just as interested in going over them yet again.

Go as far as time allows you -- ideally, all the way through the stack.  Even if they drop out and just watch you, as long as they're interested, keep going.  Often they need to watch several times before their fine motor control catches up with their brains.

That's it, really!  Just signing and saying the words is a game in itself.  But here are a few options to liven things up, once you're a blue jello aficianado:

• Make a snake with the cards, using as many as you want.
• Clap or tap the rhythm instead of signing.  Use your hands or a rhythm instrument.
• Go more slowly for very young students, pausing first to examine the card ("Oh, my!  How many jellos are on this card?" or "What's this new symbol?  Can you help me find it in the key?")  Be sure not to overload them; stop while they are still begging for more.
• Take turns.  "You do all the jellos and I'll do the blues."  For more advanced students, switch off with every beat, so they have to pay close and constant attention.
• Have a student play a blue jello card on her instrument, choosing notes as she goes.  This is a great introduction to composition.  She can start using just one note and branch out as she feels comfortable.
• Play bingo: lay the cards out in a grid and clap or sign one pattern.  The student claps or signs back to you, then looks for the pattern on the cards.  He places a magic note on the card to mark it, then claps or signs one pattern to you.  You play together, not against one another, and you're both happy to get bingo.
• Apply it: count Blue Jello rhythms as a preview for their next sight-reading piece.  You will find it a thousand times easier -- for example, "one-ee-and-a, two-ee-and, three-and four" versus "huckleberryberrygoose jello blue" -- as well as lots more fun!

Next week I'll talk about the Grand Staff cards and Staff Slates.  This is a great way to introduce note reading.  Stay tuned!

As much as I appreciate the careful and beautiful design of the more complex Music Mind Games materials, the simplest ones may just be my favorite.  That would be the Alphabet Cards.

Well, to be honest, I don't have a favorite; I love all the materials for different reasons.  But these cards are my favorite place to start for any student.  They're so wonderfully simple!  All you need to know are the first seven letters of the alphabet.

I use most of the games from Music Mind Games to begin, especially for my youngest students (2-4.)  Chapter 1 has a wonderful progression that takes the child from identification ("What Letter is This?" and "Learning Letters") to ordering and categorization ("FAT SNAKE," "Fix the Order".)  All of the games are designed to teach and test simultaneously, enabling the teacher to assess progress instantly.  They're also very simple and intuitive; if someone tossed you a set of Alphabet Cards and said, "here, teach the class these," you'd probably start out with something very similar.

Chapter 2 reinforces the concept of the "circular" keyboard, which can be tricky for young minds.  It starts with SNAKE, a simple chain of letters that repeats over and over.  Students love to make snakes in all forms; it's one of the Classic Games, a concept that's applicable to many MMG materials.  FINE, another Classic Game, is also a great choice if time is limited; the object is simply to put your cards in order and call "Fine!" when finished.  You can build backwards or forwards, vertically or horizontally, and starting with any of the letters, for an almost limitless number of variations.  The chapter concludes with Alphabet Scrabble, which is always fun to teach (silently, of course, as in this video.)

After that (or right away, if the student is more advanced) we move to Chapter 8.  We repeat all of these games with thirds instead of seconds, and games like Solitaire and Speed, which are not too challenging with seconds, become a lot trickier and more fun.  Even games like Before and After give students pause when they're learning thirds.  You can really sense the effects of all the repetition sinking in here, and they're thrilled when they finally make a breakthrough and begin to think of the musical alphabet as a fluid progression.

Those should be enough for at least a month's worth of games, but I'll check back in next week with some ideas for the Blue Jello Cards!