Nils,
I have used an imaginative method for a long time and it seems to meet the
children and is effective in their learning the treble staff. There is the
opinion that it is too "cutesy" and not the "real world" but I have found it to
be very well-received. I tell a story about Gardener Gregory and his garden. He
has a fence around it with fence posts and five wires strung between them.
These of course, evetually become the bar lines and staff lines, respectively.
But at this stage, they are just a picture. Then, I explain how he has designed
and made a beautiful gate that has his inital (G) on it. It is, of course a
very fancy, stylized 'G' and this becomes the G clef. All of this connection is
not spoken of just now, it will come up naturally later on. Then, I proceed to
talk about the different flowers he grows in his garden, some of which only grow
up to a certain fence wire or perhaps between them. The bachelor button, for
instance, only grows up to the middle fence wire, the foxglove grows up to the
top fence wire, and so on. You can make up your own flowers, as long as the
first letter corresponds to the line or space (carnations grow up to between the
3rd and 4th wire, etc. I have the children draw this picture many times,
drawing the different flower heads on the line or space with a (plant) stem, and
practice the beautiful garden gate design; we do wire flowers one day, "space"
flowers another day. Then we just shorten the names to the beginning letter and
then drop the stem. We do little word games to see how many words we can make
with just the letters found in his garden (a-g). Eventually, someone ALWAYS
says, "Hey, that's music writing" or something like that. You can then praise
their sharpness and go from there. I have them continue drawing these things
to practice correct music writing, just as we do with penmanship. Staying
between the lines in the space or centering a notehead over the line, for
example, are practiced skills. I also make a large staff on the floor with
masking tape and have the children actually stand on the lines or spaces. Then
sometimes we "sing" them standing there. I also make large note heads for them
to place on given spaces or lines, or we make words or they guess the words I
have put there. We practice sight reading two notes, then three and SLOWLY
progress from there. We sing the note names and we also play them on our
flutes. Later, I tell a different story to start working with note values (the
stems on the heads). There is a lot more that follows but I hope this gives you
a little taste of one person's experiences in teaching note reading. It is one
of my most favorite times in the curriculum.
Hope this helps! Andrea

----- Original Message -----
From: nilfred
To: anawme@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 9/23/2006 10:23:47 AM
Subject: [anawme] music reading


hello everyone.
i'm in the process of figuring out effective ways of bringing the
musical staff to my 4th graders...thinking of it as a journey and not
something to be hurried, i'm going to begin with a treble clef form
drawing and move forward from there. any dynamic ways that have
worked for you folks that you'd be willing to share?
nils




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