I am excited about my Skill Builders page to my website! I have added worksheets and activities to help students with basic music skills. These skills vary from keyboard identification, rhythm, music symbols, note-reading, to chord and scale building. I will be adding new content as I go (my goal is weekly), so keep checking back regularly to see what’s new!

I have a lot of students who are in the beginning stages of learning to read music. I am finding that even though I point out the lines and spaces to them during the introduction to the staff pages in their method book, they are either on another planet while I’m speaking or they are not comprehending what is being said including the visual aspect of it all. All the information could be overwhelming them too. As a teacher I try to remember what it was like to be on the student’s side of learning these new concepts. (Sometimes it’s hard to remember that far back!) I have been finding myself dissecting the elements of the Grand Staff with these students. My magnetic staff board that I talked about in my previous post has come in very useful with this. I have discovered that the concept of a step on the staff is not being understood by a lot of students. When I ask them to put a note on a line or space (after they have grasped what a line note and space note are), and then another note that is a step up (or down). I see them struggle with where to put it. In their mind they do not yet understand that a step is just the next line or space on the staff. They also have to make the connection that a step is just from one piano key to the next.

After students seem to understand the concept of the step on the staff, then I ask them about skips (3rds) on the staff. I first demonstrate on the keyboard what a skip is. Then I ask them to put a note on a line or space, and then to show me what a skip up (or down) would look like on the staff. Usually once the concept of the step is grasped, then the skip is then more easily understood.

I then explain to students that each line and space on the staff is a specific key on the piano, and that we learn what each of these lines and spaces are to know which piano keys to play. I then talk about how each hand has a staff. Treble Clef staff being for the RH, and Bass Cleff being for the LH with Middle C being the dividing note between the two staffs. I talk about how Middle C is the note that has a special line through it called a ledger line, and that Middle C is special because it can be written for either hand. (At this stage that is all I explain to the student. We talk about ledger lines used as extensions of the staff etc. later on.)

After the initial introduction to the staff it depends on what method you are using as to how and which notes you teach students first. I have used the guide notes system for a long time, and there is some usefulness to that in helping the students remember certain notes. Lately, I have been wanting students to understand the use of the staff as a whole. I tell them to think of the staff as their map to the piano keys. I hope that will open up their minds to the concept of reading music.

Music Class! by Priscilla Kjorlaug

I said all of that to help you understand my passion for teaching kids to read and understand music! Here is my most recent skill builder! (Click the link above!) It is for a student who already understands the concepts of the notes on the staff, and who needs practice remembering some of the easier notes in the treble/bass clefs. They can identify the notes and their place on the keyboard! I hope you can find these Skill Builders useful in your teaching or studies too!

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