Stop for a moment.
Imagine you're a child.
You are looking at this set of flash cards for the very first time.
Notice how challenging it is to focus in on that one little tiny note. The changes from card to card are so slight. There are many skills that need to be taught before trying to teach note names. That's when I use flashcards.
Here are five non-traditional ways to use traditional flashcards:
First, create a small deck of ten cards. You can use any set of notes you like, but it works well to have five pairs of notes. If the notes are wildly different, it makes it easier. More similar notes are harder to differentiate.
I used Middle C, D, E, F and G in treble clef.
1. Lines and Spaces - Simply Sorting
Ask your student to sort the cards into space notes and line notes. If you're starting with off-the-staff reading, (as we do in Piano Town)it's a great time to get some of the basic skills of staff reading solidified. If you find that your student has trouble distinguishing between line notes and space notes, take the time to make it clear. It's not as easy as it looks. Sometimes it helps to say "In the space between the lines" or "With a line THROUGH it."
New readers often have trouble with the terminology. It's not intuitive.
2. "Being" Lines and Spaces
- Hold up a flashcard and have the student SHOW you whether it's a line or space note.
Lines: Put their arms straight out to their sides and say "Line!"
Spaces: Put their arms in a circle over their head (like a ballet dancer) and say, "Space!"
- You can also reverse the roles and act out the lines and spaces yourself. Make mistakes. See if they can catch your errors. Same learning task, a silly way to do it! Students LOVE to catch their teacher's mistakes. This is especially fun in groups.
3. Making Pairs
- Ask your student to match up the pairs of notes. (The cards are much easier to compare if a student slides the cards together. Students may need some help sliding them at first.)
- Create a miniature "Concentration" game. Mix up the flashcards and place them face down. Try to make matches by turning over only two cards at a time. It's interesting to watch the difficulty change the learning taking place. This forces the student to internalize and remember what each note looks like. If you must, you can introduce letter names, but it doesn't really make the learning any more substantial. What you're trying to teach is the ability to distinguish between the way different notes look.
Remember to cover up the note names on the back with post-it notes.
5. Going Up, Going Down
- Have the student arrange a few flashcards in ascending or descending order.
- Reverse the order
- Mix them up and see if they can find the one that's out of sequence.
This is a great way to solidify the way notes are printed higher and lower on the staff.
You can combine this with playing the notes, or keep it as a flashcard exercise. Adjust the level of the difficulty by adding more cards.
You may need to start with as few as two or three.
Variation: Start with only space notes or line notes. Using a larger selection of cards, have your student line them up in order. You can do this behind the keys, as pictured. The skips up and down the staff make the differences larger and easier to see.
You can also do this with random cards, as shown in this video. There's plenty of learning going on. Notice the mistakes Nadia makes, and how she corrects HERSELF.
Learning to "see" the skips can be followed by learning to "feel" the skips on the keyboard. All of this can happen before the child has been asked to actually read any music.
If you still enjoy using flashcards in their more convention ways, please continue to do so. But for me, I'll be hopping around with kangaroos and yelling, "Space!"
The flashcards I pictured are my favorite, the TCW Student Flashcards. They're small and sturdy. They come with LOTS of cards - multiples of each note, so I have almost unlimited options to use them creatively. If you prefer to use cards that coordinate with a method, there are flashcards made by Faber, Music for Little Mozarts, Bastien, Hal Leonard, Alfred, and even "Right Brain" cards that come with the notes turned into characters like the "Evil Scientist." (I am not vouching for these strange cards - check them out - but I want you to know all your options.) The benefit of having a pre-made set that coordinates with a method is that it comes pre-sorted. You won't have to spend quite as much time putting together groups of cards. (You'll still need to put together specific groups of cards for individual students.) This is also a drawback as your students move in and out of methods and Literature Books. I prefer a less specific set of cards that give me more options. I also like a tough card that is laminated and won't fall apart. (Yes, I could laminate my own, but who has the time? I'm too busy taking pictures of little animals on piano keys and writing new Attention Grabber pieces!)