Episode Overview

In this episode of the Piano Pedagogy Podcast, hosts Jacqueline Beckoff and Arianne Lakra tackle the challenging yet rewarding topic of staff reading within music education. The discussion navigates through the nuances of teaching staff reading from the ground up, particularly focusing on the difficulties posed by transfer students and the strategies for effective learning. Throughout the episode, Jacqueline and Arianne exchange personal experiences and teaching techniques, offering a rich blend of anecdotal evidence and practical advice that illuminates the complex nature of music notation education. 

Watch it on Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcasting app.

Episode Notes

During the episode, the hosts referenced several resources. You can find them at these links. If you purchase products using links, Defined Music Teacher may receive a portion of the proceeds.

Music Escapades Magnetic Staff Whiteboard
Music Escapades Magnetic Wooden Keyboard

One of the key highlights of the episode was Jacqueline's discussion on the concept of Preparation Stage Learning. She credits her early pedagogy classes for introducing her to this transformative approach, which has since significantly enhanced her teaching of staff reading. Jacqueline emphasized the seamless transition it facilitates for students who are new to musical concepts, particularly staff reading. 

Integrating Preparation Stage Learning for Staff Reading

• Gradual Introduction of Concepts: Jacqueline utilizes preparation stage learning to gradually introduce musical concepts to her students. This method avoids the overwhelming experience that can occur when students are suddenly faced with complex new information. By integrating knowledge piece by piece, students build a solid foundation, each layer reinforcing the previous one.
• Customized Learning Experience: This approach allows Jacqueline to tailor her teaching to the individual needs of each student, making adjustments based on their progress and previous musical exposure. For students without any musical background, this method feels natural and intuitive, while it also provides structured remediation for transfer students who may have gaps in their knowledge or come from different methodological backgrounds. 
• Benefits of Preparation Stage Learning: The primary benefit of this teaching style, is its ability to make learning feel like a natural progression. Students perceive new concepts as extensions of what they already know, rather than abrupt challenges, which can significantly enhance their confidence and ability to grasp complex topics like staff reading effectively. 

Struggles and Strategies in Teaching Staff Reading

• Challenges with Transfer Students: Jacqueline shares her struggles with transfer students who bring different levels of prior knowledge and sometimes incompatible training, making it challenging to integrate them into her finely tuned teaching strategy.
• Innovative Teaching Methods: Arianne discusses the use of flashcards and other interactive activities that go beyond traditional quizzing to engage students more deeply and effectively in learning staff notation.

Philosophy and Approaches to Teaching Staff Reading for Piano Students

• Casual Evaluation: The hosts advocate for assessing students' knowledge in informal and supportive ways to prevent discouragement and build confidence.
• Integrating Various Teaching Tools: Jacqueline and Arianne emphasize the importance of using a variety of teaching aids from Music Escapades to enhance the learning experience and ensure students grasp the fundamentals of staff reading comprehensively. 

Personal Insights and Teaching Impact

• Teaching as a Dynamic Interaction: Both hosts reflect on their journey and growth as educators, recognizing the need to adapt and personalize their teaching methods to meet the unique needs of each student.
• The Reward of Lightbulb Moments: Arianne cherishes the rewarding experiences when students have breakthroughs in understanding, highlighting the profound impact of effective teaching on student progress. 

Episode Recap

This episode delves deep into the art of teaching staff reading in music education, with Jacqueline and Arianne sharing their challenges, triumphs, and the teaching philosophies that guide their approaches. They discuss the importance of flexibility in teaching methods, the use of innovative tools to enhance learning, and the rewarding moments that make teaching music notation worthwhile. Through their conversation, listeners gain valuable insights into making staff reading an integral and enriching part of their music teaching repertoire, equipped with strategies that cater to a diverse range of student backgrounds and learning styles. 

Join Jacqueline and Arianne next week for more enriching discussions and expert insights into the world of music teaching. If you have your own experiences or thoughts on the mnemonic debate or other teaching strategies, feel free to share them on the Defined Music Teacher Facebook page. 

Show Transcript Jacqueline: Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Piano Pedagogy Podcast. My name is Jacqueline Beckoff, and I own a successful music studio in Southern California. With me, as always, is Arianne Lakra, who also owns a successful music studio in Southern California. How are things going for you this week, Arianne?

Arianne: Things are going good, just the usual, working, coming home, and working around the house.

Jacqueline: I'm getting ready for my studio recital on Saturday, and then I have my audition for grad school on Friday. I'm super nervous about the audition; I haven't had a performance with consequences in like three and a half years.

Arianne: A performance with consequences, I like that way of putting it. Well, I think you're going to do great. Just give it your best, and at the end of the day, you are super familiar with the professors who will be doing the judging, so things should go smoothly.

Jacqueline: I'm pretty sure it will go okay, but I haven't been in this mindset in a good long while. One of the things I tell my students to help them with their performance anxiety is that their performances have no consequences. It's not as if a job is riding on their recital or they're getting into school with it. There really is nothing to actually be anxious about. But that doesn't apply when there are actual consequences to how a performance goes, whether it's a jury performance for a grade or a senior recital, or if you're auditioning to get a job.

Arianne: Didn't you already get into the program once?

Jacqueline: I did, but that was with my senior recital. I was at the highest point of my performance career, and I didn't even have to audition. I just used my senior recital as my audition to get into grad school. Since I got out of the program, I haven't done a lot of practicing; I was focusing on teaching.

Arianne: Got it. Well, that's a cool thing. I didn't know you could use your senior recital as your audition.

Jacqueline: Yeah, they told me I could do it. I had all those pieces memorized. I haven't memorized a piece of music in three years because I just haven't had to. I'm good at teaching memorization, but it's never been a super strong skill that I've had. So, this is the first memorized performance in three and a half years.

Arianne: Wow, and you feel good about it? Have you memorized everything?

Jacqueline: Some of the pieces I already had memorized because they were from my study at the university, but there was one new one, Melody Number 3 by Fanny Mendelssohn, that is a completely new one, and I didn't have that one memorized previously. I've been doing a chord map since it's so heavily chord-based and it's overwhelming. It's basically a rondo with three A sections, two B sections, and a C section.

Arianne: It helps that you happen to be very interested in Fanny Mendelssohn and her work.

Jacqueline: Yes, I read some research about three and a half to four years ago that one of the best ways for students to have better outcomes with memorized music is to play music that they are passionate about. Some of these pieces that our students just brute force their way through, like Fur Elise, they manage to memorize because it's something they are very excited for. I found that the music by female classical composers like Fanny Mendelssohn and Lili Boulanger, which I did for my recital, was much more passion-driven, and I had a much easier time memorizing it.

Arianne: Same goes with me with my Florence Price pieces. Something just really resonates with me when I play her work.

Jacqueline: It's interesting because I'm excited to go back to grad school, potentially. I still haven't actually applied; I'm waiting on the outcome of this audition. This is just going to be so much work, but I'm excited because there's just so much that you learn and so much that you read. You're just immersed in that environment where you are learning so much about it. But our topic today is one that we are all probably very familiar with, staff reading. We're all very interested in the best way to teach it to our students because it is probably the least intuitive thing that we do. None of it just makes natural sense. Have you found that to be one of the stumbling blocks for students?

Arianne: Definitely. Some students pick it up instantly, while others need a few exercises, games, flashcards, and note spellers tend to help a lot. On the topic of note spellers, that kind of brings me to our hot button issue of the day, which is to teach the mnemonics or not. That is the question.

Jacqueline: For those of you who have heard us in our previous episode, you know my stance on mnemonics. I absolutely despise them. They are such a bad way to teach. What is your opinion on mnemonics, Arian?

Arianne: I like them.

Jacqueline: Here we go. So we're going to be at odds then. I would say there are four different approaches to staff reading: mnemonics, positions, intervalic, and a hybrid of them. Some teachers don't teach any of that and just use flashcards repeatedly to really get students in. I am a big fan of the intervalic method with guide notes, which is the method Faber pushes in Piano Adventures.

Arianne: Mnemonics are my favorite.

Jacqueline: Oh, I wish Faber didn't.

Arianne: I wish.

Jacqueline: They use guide notes, but personally, I was taught using mnemonics and positions. Can we agree, at least, that positions is the worst approach?

Arianne: Meaning? So can you explain to the audience what you're referring to here?

Jacqueline: Positions are when a book will say, "Okay, this is the position we're learning: middle C position," with both thumbs on middle C, and then we do C position, which is when we are in the C scale, and then we have the G position, and the F position. Students are taught to identify the position that a piece is in. They don't often move outside of that position generally. The progression from one position is that a piece will have one position, and then they'll be doing pieces where they move from one position to the next. But all of the transfer students I've had that have been taught on positions, you put a note on a board, and they try to contextualize it within a position. And if you give them a note outside of that position, they'll get it wrong because they're just going to try to fit that into their position. So if you put them in the C position with right hand number one on C, and you test them on a couple of those notes, and then you throw an A at them, they might say it's an F because they're trying to fit that into their position. I think the technical term for that is called multi key.

Arianne: Yes, I would say typically my students, maybe transfer students, might get along better with that approach, but it's pretty rare in my experience for a student to really flourish on only the multi-key approach, not that I've tried it extensively. Because my philosophy around staff note identification on the staff is to just give a student several different ways that they can reinforce their knowledge of notes on the staff and the positions of the notes on the staff. I lean heavily on the use of flashcards, note speller workbooks that they take home and do work each week, and mnemonics as a reinforcing mechanism for students who already are familiar with things like guide notes.

Jacqueline: Gotcha. So my distaste for multi-key and mnemonics is from my education from a very early age. Pedagogy, even just 20-25 years ago, was much less developed. A lot of it was just throwing all the information at the student: "All cows eat grass," "FACE," "Good boys do fine always," "Every good boy does fine." First of all, why are there two different slightly different mnemonics that are both about boys? Can we not be a little more diverse here? Girls start with G. Anyway, it took me a very long time to be able to look at a note and just identify it without having to go through all the mnemonics. I have a student who has been with me for almost two years, and I have never once used mnemonics with him, but he will still look at notes and go through the mnemonics, still using something to help him figure out his note rather than just knowing the notes.

Arianne: Yeah, it kind of goes back to, I was looking at a TikTok recently. This is going to veer off just a tiny bit, but I promise it's related. I saw this TikTok about math class where in one country, they teach that 5 divided by one third is 15, because you do 5 times the reciprocal of one third. So, 5 times 3 is 15, easy, right? That’s how I was taught to divide a number by a fraction, just times it by the reciprocal of that fraction. But then, in the US, what they do now for common core with kids these days, they have them draw five circles and divide each circle into thirds, like a pie that's been divided into three equal slices, and then count all of the slices and say, "Oh, okay, it's 15," because there are 15 total one-third slices when you do 5 divided by one third. In the comment section of this TikTok, people were really hating on the US common core method of having the students do it the long way. Other countries are so much faster; all the kid had to do was go to the board, write it, do their multiplication. But these American students stayed there for like five times the amount of time drawing everything out. Why are they doing that in the US? And I was like, well, I can understand the merits of this common core method. Even though it takes longer, they're teaching the students how to reason through why dividing something by a fraction is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal, so you're not just memorizing something and not questioning it. You're being taught to question it, work through it, reason your way through a solution.

Jacqueline: But sorry, go ahead.

Arianne: So, in the same way with these mnemonics, I think it's important for the student to have some critical thinking skills and be taught these critical thinking skills, like, why is it 'every good boy'? Oh well, because ABCDEFG, we’re going in alphabetical order. But only after they know that, will they be allowed to use the mnemonics in my class, because they need to know the reason why we're using the mnemonics first. And if they can do that already, and they can think critically, the mnemonics are just a way for them to arrive at the same answer faster. So it's like employing the approach used by both countries for that math problem I was talking about earlier.

Jacqueline: I think it’s interesting, because dividing a whole number by a fraction and ending up with a larger number is very counterintuitive. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense until you realize that you’re asking how many times the fraction goes into the larger number, which is what the first approach teaches. Common core is not a teaching method, it's a universal set of standards across the entire United States. It's about standards, not methods. So, in this example, we’re trying to get to staff reading. That is the standard. We would all agree that we want our students to get to a point of fluency, with staff reading, just like we do. And whatever method you get there. But I'm not going to go on a rant about common core. There’s a lot of misinformation about common core. I just don't like it when people say things that aren't quite true. But back on topic, using the shortcut instead of the long way helps to teach the process. We need to be focused on processes as teachers instead of results, because it doesn't matter if your student can show the results if they have no idea how to form the thoughts and go through the process needed to arrive at that answer. Right? Going through the processes can be painful, especially with transfer students, to sit there and take 5, 6 minutes to walk them through processes of arriving at the right answer, when it would just be so easy to just be like, "That's a G," and explain why. It’s important for us to focus on that process so that they can understand it. Teach a child to staff read versus giving the child the answer to the staff reading.

Arianne: Yeah, and of course, when a student gets older and more able to reason through things like, why the lowest line of the treble clef is E, and then the second line is a G, it doesn't make any sense. You can teach someone the memorization approach and they'll get it really quickly. But if you begin to ask questions such as why, you will find that if you've taught your students to memorize certain answers, they won't necessarily be able to tell you why. Some will, because they ask themselves why already; they're self-motivated, critical thinkers. Others will just accept what you teach them. They'll comprehend what you're saying and retain it, but that's just the first stage of being able to learn something, analyze it, evaluate it, and then create, which would be the highest level of learning.

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think the question of why is an important one, and some of us may not have that answer immediately because we haven't had to ask ourselves why this note is the way it is, depending on how you teach. The answer has to do with the clef. When I teach staff reading, I always focus on the clef, and Piano Adventures makes that very easy because the first three notes they teach are bass F, middle C, and treble G, so you can focus on why they are associated with those clefs. They give it a very brief mention that it has to do with the way the letter F used to be written and morphed into the bass clef over time. Same with the treble clef. You can highlight where the letters are and have students draw a G on a whiteboard to emphasize this. Going into the why is paramount. If they can't tell you why something is the way it is, then they really don't know it.

Arianne: Right, at that point, they're just memorizing things that are way easier to forget because there's a lot less reinforcing happening in the brain for that particular student.

Jacqueline: Yeah, and in a previous episode, our very first episode, we talked about preparation stage learning. One of the examples I provided was how I prepare a student for staff reading. First, preparation stage learning involves seeding information, planting little nuggets that culminate when they turn the page and see the grand staff for the first time. Instead of turning that page and having about 5-10 minutes of explaining brand new things they've never seen before, such as the treble clef, the bass clef, the lines and spaces, we introduce these concepts early. Even before some students know the letters of the white keys, for me, treble clef means high sounds and bass clef means low sounds. We practice drawing them, and every piece they play, they draw in a treble clef for the right-hand notes above middle C, and a bass clef for the left-hand notes below middle C. Once they are on the white keys, we use a whiteboard with the staff on it, write in a letter name, like G, on the second line of the treble clef staff, and practice identifying what's below G, practicing reading in this new way without clefs. Eventually, we arrive at Middle C and draw another line if needed, which they find amusing. When we get to the grand staff, they see familiar elements like the lines, spaces, treble clef, and bass clef, culminating in a bunch of information they've been using for weeks or months at that point.

Arianne: Nice. One thing I like to do to communicate why we use this notation system instead of something like Synthesia is to take a flashcard that has both clefs on it, the whole grand staff, and turn it to the right at a 90-degree angle. I set it on the bookstand on the piano and explain that each line and space represents one white key. If the student is old enough, I'll go into the music history of why we use a vertical system of notation, which has to do with the history of Gregorian chant and how, as a function of time, we write from left to right. This tends to clarify, especially if someone asks why we use this vertical notation system when the piano keys are laid out horizontally.

Jacqueline: Yeah, that visual element of Synthesia, the falling notes that light up, have a length, and move to the right is higher; they fall down on the keyboard. That is what we're discussing. It is intuitive, whereas staff reading is counterintuitive.

Arianne: Yeah, relatively very unintuitive.

Jacqueline: Yeah, I mean, it contradicts the direction they're moving on the piano. So would it be fair to say that staff reading is unintuitive?

Arianne: Yeah, relatively, because as long as you have a strong understanding of the XY relationship, it is totally intuitive, but it just takes a lot of time to learn. It's intuitive to us.

Jacqueline: I use these whiteboards from a website called Music Escapades. Are you familiar with them?

Arianne: No.

Jacqueline: I'll include them in the show notes for this episode. For those of you who can't see, it is a grand staff with two ledger lines above the treble clef staff, two ledger lines below the bass clef staff, and the Middle C ledger line. At the top of the page, there is a piano. It's a whiteboard, magnetic, comes with a set of different letters, numbers, and colors, just a bunch of different magnets. It's something that I sell for students to take home so that, with the guide note strategies we learn in our lessons on the big whiteboard, when they get stumped on a note at home they can use the same method of puzzling out those notes just like we talked earlier, with the one-third going the long way to get to an answer. Music Escapades also sells this magnetic keyboard, the full 88 keys, and when you put it on the whiteboard and situate it just right, the lines and spaces will line up with the notes from the keyboard. The magnetic board here, like the low C is a C, and it's a great visual representation. You can have the staff the way it is, and then you can rotate it for the piano, and then you can rotate it back for the staff, so that they're looking at it the way they will be. It's a very good visual explanation.

Arianne: Brilliant.

Jacqueline: I don't know if we can call something intuitive if we have to work very hard to explain it. There is a relationship, XY, left, right, up, down, but it is not something you can just look at like the YouTube videos with the falling notes and make the connection.

Arianne: That.

Jacqueline: By having them physically rotate the object and see, okay, now the piano is laid out the way it is. Okay, now I rotate it back, and now the staff is laid out the way I see it in my music. That connection becomes very visual, something that is kind of esoteric and unclear becomes very visual instead.

Arianne: I have been searching for a product just like that for so long. I'm definitely going to order that product again, not sponsored at all. Just been looking for something like that. I would make my own version of that using my own magnetic whiteboard and literally thin black strips of electrical tape and then just magnets that I found at the office store, but I could never get my piano keyboards to print the exact size of whatever system I was using for the staff. So that's really nifty.

Jacqueline: Yeah, and if you buy in bulk you can get a discount from Music Escapades so that you can sell to your students.

Arianne: Awesome. Well, I'm glad I learned about that today. Thank you for sharing that hack.

Jacqueline: But other than note reading, there's a lot of other things on the staff, right? It can be overwhelming, depending on how gentle your method book is, or for those of you who may not use a method book, you might just drop your student into music on the staff right away. The prevailing pedagogy now is that you should have a lot of pre-staff reading before you get onto the staff. Would you agree with that, Arianne?

Arianne: Yeah, for most kids. I feel like they need that understanding, especially going back to the whole reading notes that get higher, going up and lower, going down on the page, just correlating that to left and right on the keyboard. I think it's important to introduce those things in a staggered manner, instead of using methods that just use black keys. We're teaching rhythm and how to read rhythm. We're teaching up and down, and then it does not correlate with left and right, you know, because that is intuitive. As you go further up on the piano, you're going to the right. So as the notes read that way, maybe they go up. We counteract that first, and then we go from just black key reading to pre-staff notation where the letter names are inside the note heads. We're now establishing the relationship with the white keys, and then some books take it a step further; they do the names of the white keys inside the note heads on the staff before gradually removing that element as well. But there are three elements of staff reading: the rhythm, the up and down, and then the white key names. When our students see a quarter note on the bottom line of the treble clef staff, we are expecting three things from them: that it is a quarter note, that it is an E, and that it is related in some way to the note that precedes it, and the note that comes after it, either higher, lower, or repeated note. For us, it's one concept. But we're teaching them to read the staff, and these disparate elements make up quite a monolith of concepts.

Arianne: That's a great point. For a tabula rasa student, you might want to break it down. The one missing link that I find in the Faber method would be including pieces that have letters inside the note heads while the students are learning from the staff. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right Faber books. I only use a few, but that would be my missing link that I would like to see because they do have letter names in note heads when we're not looking at the staff. But then suddenly, when we get to the staff reading, the note heads are not lettered, and I wish they were, because that would just reinforce things for a lot of students getting into staff reading.

Jacqueline: You know, there comes a point at every piano teacher's career when we say to ourselves, "I should make a method book just like I think it should go." And I've had that thought, I'm sure a lot of listeners have too. Why doesn't it just do this thing? But it isn't practical to design your own curriculum from scratch, especially as new teachers. You find a method book that fits your principles as closely as you can, and then you do out-of-book activities, such as the preparation stage learning that I was discussing, linking the notes to the staff before just turning that page and suddenly all of that stuff is there. In the Primer book, they have that page that has all a through G bottom space of the bass clef staff. I think that's the only time they do that in the Primer Book.

Arianne: Yeah, it's crucial to fill in these gaps here and there as needed because no book is going to cover everything that you want to impart on your students. You'll just have to do it in a preparation stage activity or something like that, especially if students are curious to learn more about a certain topic that wasn't really fleshed out in the book.

Jacqueline: Yeah, don't limit yourself to what's available in the published book. You certainly don't need to do every piece in the method book. Sometimes you might feel like you don't need to do something, you can skip some of them, and sometimes you might feel like there's something missing here. There's a missing link. There's too many concepts that our student is being asked to leap to at the same time. By filling in those missing links, you can make the transition from off-staff to on-staff as smooth as possible. You want to have as few hiccups as possible, and if you wait to introduce treble clef and bass clef, if you wait to introduce the lines and spaces until you're expecting them to remember all of that, it's going to probably have hiccups. Before I did the preparation stage learning, I would have students that would come back and there would be problems; it would take weeks to get adjusted to the staff.

Arianne: And if there is that sense of overwhelm in class, then the student will be more likely to go home and feel unmotivated to practice. If you introduce preparation stage learning activities that ease them into these concepts so that by the time the unit rolls around, they'll be familiar with them. Then they're actually more likely to visit the piano at home and practice and engage with the material in an environment when they don't necessarily have to. I mean, there's parent encouragement to practice while outside the lesson, but the lesson is where there's the highest expectation to perform as a student.

Jacqueline: That's hitting the nail on the head about how unmotivating it is to practice something that you are just clueless about because what is the point for them to practice something that they don't understand? If they have no idea whether it's going to be right or not, how is that a productive use of their practice time? I aim for my students to never go home with something that they don't understand. I feel like that's a good goal for every teacher to strive for, that no one should walk out of your studio door, or if you're a traveling teacher, you shouldn't walk out of someone else's door when they don't know fully what it is that they're supposed to practice. So if it's a syncopated rhythm, they need to have performed that rhythm and demonstrated competence with that. If it's staff reading, they need to have demonstrated competence with that. The only thing I might disagree with that about is polyrhythms; you just kind of have to bang your head against the wall a little while, until suddenly it clicks.

Arianne: And we've all had students that come in and it's evident that they did practice, and they just happened to practice the entire piece, maybe with something going on, maybe like in a different part of the piano. What could be more discouraging than that? You thought you did everything you were supposed to as a student, you came to class, and supposedly you were prepared, so it is really important to set up a student for success before they go home for their practice session. This could be an entire podcast topic in itself, like, how do you set up the student for a successful practice session at their home away from the lesson.

Jacqueline: Absolutely.

Arianne: Anyway.

Jacqueline: Sure, we'll get around to that at some point—practicing good practice habits.

Arianne: That could be a new topic.

Jacqueline: It is so frustrating for us as teachers when they come back, and the entire piece is just wrong. It's easy for us to express our frustration at them. Why didn't you just do it the way that I told you? Of course, telling is not teaching, but it's never their fault if they come back and the entire thing is wrong but confidently wrong. If they rock up to the piano and they whip out their book with a smile on their face and play their entire piece wrong, well, that's your fault, not their fault.

Arianne: Totally agreed.

Jacqueline: You have no right to get frustrated. I mean, you shouldn't get frustrated at your students in the first place, but absolutely in that situation. That one is just squarely on your shoulders.

Arianne: And what do you do when something like that happens? I usually try to do a compliment sandwich.

Jacqueline: I do too. I really like this, this was awesome, but here's what needs improvement, and then end with another compliment. The more specific the compliment can be the better, because then it's not just, "Oh, you're saying good for whatever reason."

Arianne: Yeah, it should be specific, so that they know which behavior, practice habit, etc., is meant to be reinforced.

Jacqueline: Absolutely. I mean, just think about when someone gives you a compliment on your appearance, which makes you feel better? "I really like your makeup today," or "You look nice," right? Something specific like "That top looks great on you" is always going to feel better than just "Wow, you look nice." So even when something is really bad, you need to find a way to make something good out of it, like "that was a really beautiful legato, well done, unfortunately, you were supposed to play it with a different articulation." So, you're always trying to find a way to make something good out of that, even when it feels like there's nothing, but that could be another subject in and of itself—providing feedback, criticism, encouragement, what we call 'teacher talk' at university.

Arianne: Interesting. I'd be interested to learn more about a lecture like that.

Jacqueline: But where were we? The staff, right? If you aim to have them never leave your studio without feeling confident that they know what they need to practice, then the staff is a huge stumbling block. Thinking about another concept that is such a huge stumbling block, eighth notes. They used to be such a nightmare, getting them onto eighth notes and suddenly saying "and's" and all of this new stuff. But I think that staff reading is just this massive thing. So you need to find a way to break it down into bite-sized chunks, like the staff lines and spaces, the clefs, and of course, the up and down.

Arianne: Yeah, and I think supplemental workbooks again, this is where they come into play. You can use your supplemental workbook to introduce a preparation stage concept, and that goes for new notes on the staff, you know, because at least in the primer level Piano Adventures books, staff reading starts out with just middle C, then it introduces treble clef G, then it goes to bass clef F. These are the guide notes, and so that's kind of manageable. But before you introduce other notes like D, E, and F, that's when I like to lean on my workbooks. I really like John Thompson's Note Speller Book A for any students who are just learning the notes of the Grand Staff. It isolates the concept, and you can choose what to assign so that they're doing whatever preparation stage activities are needed before it gets to their lesson book workbook, repertoire, whatever.

Jacqueline: I think note spellers can be really useful, as can composition. Once you introduce the guide notes—middle C, treble G, and bass F—assigning a composition where the student needs to use all three of these forces them to consider where to put it on the staff. Going back to using the bass clef, the big dots flanking F above and below show where F is in the bass clef. The treble clef curls around the second line of the staff, indicating where G is. Assigning a composition where they need to use all three guide notes and literally draw the extra ledger line for middle C reinforces that skill before moving on to like, filling in D, E, and F in the treble clef, filling in G, A, B in the left hand in the bass clef. Ensuring they really remember middle C, bass F, and treble G and creating, as we've talked about, is the highest form of mastery with a concept. If you can write it down and then play it, it shows you knew what you were doing, and you're able to read what you were doing, and you had intention with what you were doing.

Arianne: Yeah, there are similar exercises by the time you get about halfway through the theory book in the primer level Faber set. You're able to fill out a mad libs style story about flapjacks and robots that include the three guide notes, which is nice because it's a different stage of the learning process for guide notes. Then later, you get to compose your own stuff, so you can ascend the rungs one at a time at your students' pace, and eventually that culminates in composition where the playing of specific notes fits into that, you know, in repertoire. I don't really know what should come first—comprehending notes, filling in the blanks, labeling them with the correct letter, playing the notes in repertoire, or composing the notes in your own piece.

Jacqueline: Experiencing it on staff, I think, is important to have first. Otherwise, you risk not having the context, that crucial context of knowing this is a C, but there are several Cs on the piano. Knowing which C it is—why is it this one? You might risk that. Experiencing it before being tested is important, and I feel like writing it down is a form of testing because you're being asked to fill in the blank. These questions are all different stages of learning. What note is that? Can you point to Middle C? Can you draw me Middle C on the staff? Naming the note, playing the note, drawing the notes, identifying from a group of notes which one is C. Those are all different stages of learning. It's very easy for us to group them all together. Well, yeah, you play it. You can read it. You can write it. You can do all of those things, but they all represent different stages of mastery with the concept, and culminating with writing it down on your own and composition, or theory the note speller books. If you are a fan of the guide note approach, Faber has "I Can Read Music" books that use the guide note approach instead of the mnemonic approach.

Arianne: I actually use that for my violin students. "I Can Read Music" books are pretty awesome for good preparation stage learning.

Jacqueline: I used to lean heavily on flashcards and note spellers. I have so many flashcards, and I honestly only use them with one of my autistic students who I struggle to work on processes with because he is not able to share his thoughts with me. All I know is the outcome from his fingers or mouth. Flashcards have been useful for him because walking him through the process of guide note to step up, step down, skip up, skip down was never possible. Even if you have your preferred approach, it's never a one-size-fits-all solution. You'll have situations where one student needs something different than your usual approach, but you probably will come up with an approach that is a unique blend of a lot of different things that works with most of your students.

Arianne: And quickly going back to the idea about quizzing or testing a student on a concept that they haven't totally digested yet, I think that could be really discouraging for a student. It's definitely a teaching faux pas that I've seen myself guilty of in my earlier days of teaching, and a lot of other teachers who are just starting out make the mistake of quizzing about a new concept way too soon. Then the student gets discouraged, frustrated, and they don't understand why they still don't know the answer to something, even though they're generally a good student in every other subject. Public school teachers, just teachers in general, know that first, you have to go through all these activities before the culminating quiz or test. So just something to be aware of.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it's in a public school teacher's best interests not to quiz a student before they are confident that the student can demonstrate competency because teachers in a lot of places have incentives based on grades, pass-fail rates. They get reviewed based on how well their classes are doing, so it's not in their best interests to have them take a quiz, a written exam, homework, or something that's graded until they demonstrate competency with it. I used to quiz like 30 seconds after I'd introduced a concept.

Arianne: Yeah, and that kind of goes into what is the definition of quizzing? Is it a formal activity, or I define quizzing more loosely as just the act of asking a student questions.

Jacqueline: Yeah, flashcards are quizzing.

Arianne: Exactly. You can use flashcard activities that aid in the teaching process that are not just showing the student a flashcard and asking, "What is the answer?" You can also say, "I have 30 flashcards here. Can you put them all in order on the ground? Let’s go to the carpet, sit there, and arrange all these notes in order so that we can train your eye to tell the difference between the lines and spaces." That's an example of a flashcard activity that is less about quizzing and more about engaging in an activity.

Jacqueline: I have these little wooden tiles that are the width of a white key. I have one set that has letter names on them, and another that has staff notation on them. They are from Music Escapades and are the perfect size to place on the staff. When a student learns the white keys, we place every single white key on there, all of the white keys, and the same thing can work for the staff. You give them the tile that has Middle C on it, and you ask them to place it in the correct place on the piano. It's again making the connection between staff and piano. This episode has been so useful for me to remind myself of these methods that work so well. I have them in my studio, but sometimes I just don't pull them out when I'm working with a student. Responding to your point about quizzing, games can be a form of quizzing that are in a relaxed setting, but you should never ask your student a question unless you're reasonably confident that they have the right answer.

Arianne: Hey, I mean, I'm not the police here, so go for it.

Jacqueline: I think it's fair to say that you should try to find alternative forms of assessing students' knowledge without asking them a question that you then reply to with, "Oh, that's not it, you got it wrong," or "that's not quite right," even if you're being more gentle about it, it still feels bad. You shouldn't ask your student to point out which one's Middle C unless you're reasonably sure that they know that because the experience of getting a question wrong can be intensely stressful for some students.

Arianne: Yeah, and so the nature of questions can be really useful in these stages of learning. If you're going to ask questions as a teacher, aim for them to be more rhetorical, as part of a lesson like, "How do we figure this out? Oh, I'll show you." It's a kind of question that you just ask yourself as a teacher, and you say it out loud so they know what question to be listening for the answer to.

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think we're veering into teacher talk territory. But you should never ask an open-ended question that needs a certain answer for you to proceed, like, "What is the most important part of this piece?" if you have one answer in mind. Then they say, "I think the dynamics are the most important," and you say, "Wrong, that's clearly not the most important thing because I had a different answer in mind, and my lesson can't proceed until you give me the right response."

Arianne: Literal university professors do that, and it's like, how did you go through your entire career? You should know that's one of the biggest no-nos in teaching—asking an open-ended question that only calls for one specific answer. All the poor college students in my class are trying their hardest to answer the question, and all of them are wrong. Big pet peeve of mine.

Jacqueline: Oh, yeah, it's basically like you're just trying things out to get the right response from your teacher at that point because the student will consider and say, "I think this is really important," and then you say, "No, that's not really the right answer. Maybe not the most important thing. Would you like to try again?" And now they're not using their own knowledge to evaluate what they think is the most important. Now, they're trying to guess what their teacher thinks is the most important thing.

Arianne: Right, and it can be subjective, you know. Not every expert even agrees with every other expert. So it's important to take the reality of our field into consideration. This is music, not necessarily physics or mathematics, where there's just one correct answer to some question based on a theory. Our questions are a bit more subjective in nature.

Jacqueline: If you need certain types of answers, you can start by eliminating wrong answers. For example, asking, "What is the name of that note? We know it's not Base F, right?" Or you can engage in alternative activities like asking them to grab a pencil and highlight or trace the second line of the treble clef staff, then discuss how important that note on that line is, rather than just asking "What note is that?"

Arianne: Exactly.

Jacqueline: But evaluating knowledge should be done in the most casual way possible. It's very difficult to know if the student understands something unless you just ask them directly, but that will have to wait for another episode, as we've been off-topic here for long enough.

Arianne: From...

Jacqueline: But seriously, I'm very interested in doing a teacher talk episode.

Arianne: Oh yeah, that would be great, especially as someone who was a pretty awkward conversationalist and still arguably am, but especially when I didn't know how to act right because I was in my early twenties and just a mess in general.

Arianne: Yeah, I didn't know how to talk to students. A teacher talk podcast episode could be very helpful because we could talk about things we've picked up and learned along the way. Going back to staff reading, though, what would you say is your least favorite part about the process of teaching staff reading, and what is your favorite?

Jacqueline: My favorite part, actually, is staff reading because once I learned about preparation stage learning in one of the very first classes of the pedagogy program, it clicked in my head. Before, I felt like I failed to teach these concepts correctly over and over again. My favorite part now is how fluid and seamless I've managed to make the transition for some students from off-staff to on-staff. It seems like a natural continuation of what we've already been doing, instead of turning this page and suddenly everything is different.

Arianne: Wow! That's awesome.

Jacqueline: What about you? What is your favorite part of teaching staff reading?

Arianne: My favorite part is all the lightbulb moments because it's relatively difficult to start teaching staff reading and staff notation. But it makes all the clicks all the more rewarding to me and the student when things do fall into place, and they start to understand the relationships to the keyboard staff and use the lines and spaces. I really like my John Thompson workbooks. I remember dreading it because it felt like math homework. But as a teacher, I notice a lot of my students are excited to present me with their note speller homework each week, which is a point of pride for them.

Jacqueline: I like that. Light bulb moments can be so rewarding for both teacher and student, and they are such a memorable experience. When a student just gets it and everything slots into place, it feels good for the student. We want our students to feel good about learning, to feel capable and competent. Creating situations where they can have those moments of elation because they've led themselves to a conclusion is great, and they feel proud when they get things right or when all these different things suddenly fit together.

Arianne: Yeah. Did I mention what my least favorite part was?

Jacqueline: I don't think so. What's your least favorite?

Arianne: My least favorite part about staff reading is the amount of times I have to reinforce concepts in the lessons or clear out the cobwebs from week to week. If the student is feeling discouraged, now they've reached that point where they really have to start learning how to read notes on the staff instead of just winging it or using their memorization. Just having to say things over and over to a certain student or question my teaching method because it's a hard concept for my student to grasp, that's probably the part that I'm still working on. I'm not the perfect teacher, I'm still learning every day how to communicate certain concepts more effectively and learn new teaching hacks. Staff notation and reading is definitely an area where I haven't totally gotten it down yet, and I'll let you know when I feel like I have a foolproof system. But everyone in my studio is so different regarding how they get their light bulb moments that I just have to feel around in the dark until I find what works for that particular student in that moment with staff reading.

Jacqueline: Gotcha. So when you have to reinforce something for the umpteenth time, that is your least favorite. I think my least favorite part about staff reading is transfer students. I have it fine-tuned for students who are new to music, and it feels so natural for the majority of my students. Then you get a student who has bits and pieces of a completely different method that clearly did not work 100%, otherwise I wouldn't need to do remedial work with them. The remedial nature of working with transfer students that don't have it 100% when they come in because they have baggage from the previous method is my least favorite part. Maybe their method didn't get to be seen all the way through to completion, and for whatever reason, the student is halfway in the door with it, and that's very difficult to handle.

Arianne: Oh yeah, people transfer for so many reasons. Sometimes it's unexpected, and if the whole teaching process that the teacher planned to complete wasn't completed, it can throw things off. And if it contends with yours, or is different from the way you usually go about teaching, then the student is in a position where they're like, "Oh, what the heck, now I have to rework everything mentally." But the light bulb moments for transfer students make it worth it for me, especially when they're at the late elementary and intermediate level, still working out things about the staff. It's a challenge, and it's the best when they finally get it.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it takes a lot of energy to overcome those hardships with transfer students. If you are feeling overworked, or if it's been too long since you've had time off, those moments can be crushing when it seems like you're not getting anywhere. Those moments require you to innovate and do something outside of your method, because your method works from the get-go for students who know nothing. It requires us to think much more outside the box, away from our tried and true methods, and it can be overwhelming.

Arianne: My big takeaway is I'm going to have to visit this Music Escapades website because it sounds like whoever engineered and designed these teaching tools went through a lot of the same trials and tribulations that we're speaking about and innovated their way to a solution that's palpable, which is how a lot of people learn—hands-on.

Jacqueline: My big takeaway is that it doesn't need to be all or nothing. It doesn't need to be guide notes or the highway. Perhaps I am a little too judgmental about mnemonics. Perhaps I am a little too judgmental. We'll see. But I think being okay with trying to mix separate approaches to something is an important skill and an important thing to be comfortable with doing because one size does not fit all, and a hybrid of lots of different things might be what's best for your students. So, not being afraid to try out things that traumatized me as a child, like nightmares about all cows eating grass.

Arianne: I would be so interested to hear from our audience and even just from friends, colleagues, people we've met in university, what is your take on the mnemonic debate? Do you love it, hate it, are you indifferent, or something in between? What do you do when it's time to really teach the nitty-gritty of staff reading to your students?

Jacqueline: If you are interested in sharing your voice, there will be an episode posted to the Defined Music Teacher Facebook page where you can comment if you are interested in sharing your approach to teaching staff reading. But that is it for us for now, thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.

Arianne: Bye.