Fact: A Canadian music teacher has developed a system to help severely dyslexic kids read music: she uses colors instead of black musical notes!
We read about this amazing story here. High schooler Daniel is so dyslexic and dysgraphic that he cannot read or write in English, let alone try to pick up a musical score. He wanted to pick up the clarinet and join the band, but couldn’t do so unless someone helped transform musical notation into something he could understand.
Teacher Andrea Blair dreamed up a solution. At first, she layered colors over the existing musical notation, which worked in simple pieces. But as Daniel improved and the notation grew more complex, he needed an even more visual method.
So she did away with the black musical notes altogether.
In an interview, Daniel said: ” ‘When I would play a note, I wouldn’t see it’s position on the staff as the key to knowing which note to play, I’d see the color. I don’t have time to think about the position of each note on the staff. The colour tells me where to put my fingers. When I was able to communicate that to Mrs. Blair, we got to where we are today.’ ”
While we hope he finds his way to Easyread to help unlock his literacy in English, we think what Blair has done shows remarkable insight into how best to work with the visual learner’s mind. Just as Easyread uses colorful visual images to represent the phonics sounds in words, she has used color blocks to represent pitches on the musical scale.
Does your struggling reader have a hard time learning to read music? Let us know!
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Sarah Forrest is a Reading Specialist for the Easyread System, a ground-breaking online program for struggling readers and dyslexics that uses highly visual imagery to represent phonics sounds. Find out more at www.easyreadsystem.com
