Hi, Theresa, and welcome.

 

One word for you:  Kodaly!  And his materials.  After all, 6th graders in Hungary read music better than college sophomores in the U.S.!!!!

 

John

 

For over 20 years I used solfege- movable Do with La based minor along with the David Bauguess Jensen sight singing book and also incorporated the Kodaly hand signs. I taught high school, used it for 5 - 10 minutes daily and had some of the best sight singers around. Many testimonials of former students who went on to major in music education or performance and were one of the few in their choirs who could sight sing well.

Jan

Take a look at Master Works press's material. They have basics, such as Melodia, a staple for some of us, to rounds and canons, to Bach Chorales organized from simplest to most difficult. All materials are also offered as reproducible OR bound, non-reproducible hard copy. The website is www.masterworkspress.com/.

 

Craig

Hi Theresa,

 

I teach literacy to high school students (9-12)...as well as adults all the way into their 80's!

 

For rhythm I use TAKADIMI syllables (www.takadimi.net).  I switched two years ago and really like it.  I think it's an improvement over both the Kodaly rhythm syllables (which I used prior to switching) and Gordon syllables (although in my ways it's similar to the Gordon rhythm syllables).  It can easily be learned by everyone from young children to adults.

 

For tonal syllables, I use moveable-DO solfege with LA based minor.  I eventually teach DO based minor as well just so kids will have experience with it. 
 

The basis of my teaching is what I learned from Dr. Carol Krueger.  Her method is based largely on the work of Kodaly and Gordon.  I use Dr. Krueger's book "Progressive Sight Singing" published by Oxford University Press.  It has TONS of exercises and is VERY progressive in regard to introduction of new skills.  There are a lot of free resources on the companion site for her book:

www.oup.com/us/krueger

 

I have also created a number of flashcards and other resources that you can download from my website for free:

http://michaeldriscollconductor.com/music-literacy-resources/

 

Mike Driscoll

Brookline High School

Brookline, MA

1)  I have taught solfege- movable Do with La based minor- for 10 years and find that my middle school students a) adapt to it easily and b) read music pretty well by 9th grade (we are a 7-9 building.)  We spend about 10 minutes each rehearsal singing various solfege patterns and sightreading from exercise sheets.  These 10 minutes pay back HUGELY when the singers show they can read music on their own as we learn our octavos. 

2)  What works well?  The students develop strong pitch relationships between the notes of the scale.  Over time I have found less need to teach intervals because solfege builds in the tonal relationship (ie: instead of spending time teaching that a perfect 5th sounds like "Twinkle Twinkle", I say that it is Do-So or Re-La, etc.)  Because we use it regularly and consistently, students can apply it to our octavos (in 7th grade they need a lot of guidance. . .by 9th grade it is fairly easy.)  Having a solid working relationship with solfege has been time very well spent.

3)  We use materials from Masterworks Press (www.masterworkspress.com) and recommended them highly.  Because I teach 7-9, the series "Let's Get Started" (2-part) and "Steps to Harmony" (3-part) have been the most useful.  MP also offers a variety of SATB materials that are equally useful and appealing.  MP items are very economical and come with a license to reproduce --so you can choose which pages and what order to present the information to your choir.  We also use their "Music Theory for Choirs" level 1 and find that it presents theory in a useful way for our young singers.  Definitely check them out.

 

Good luck!

 

Kelly Truax

7-9 Vocal Music

Prairie Point MS

Cedar Rapids, IA

1.  moveable do, la based minor

2.  sequential presentation/learning (very spare melodies and rhythms to full diatonic melodies and complex rhythms)

3.  Denise Bacon's;  185 Unison Pentatonic Exercises, 50 Two-Part Exercises; 46 Two Part Songs.  John Feierabend's The Book of Tunes for Beginning Sight Reading.   Kodaly's: 333 Elementary Exercises, 77 Two Part Exercises.  Philip Tacka and Michael Houlahan's Sound Thinking Vols. I and II.

Study with the Kodaly Program at Holy Names University!

Jennifer

 

1.

Movable do with Do-minor.

 

2.

I found that students learn well if the solfege and other musicianship staff were incorporated in the normal warm-up process.

Movable Do (but being flexible between fixed Do with chromatic syllable), with Do-minor works best to acquire the sense of tonal construction (ti-do relationship and scale construction), and works well for both students, with and without perfect pitch.

 

3.

Kentaro Sato's free musicianship materials

http://www.wisemanproject.com/education-e-musicianship.html

Bill Douglas Rock Etude

I use #2 which goes something like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pooHkI9Rvas

This is very difficult (looks difficult too) at first, but every students will be able to this by the end of the year.

Actual sight-singing practice can be done using actual music we are working on...

I teach an after school boychoir program that has one choral rehearsal a week plus a shorter musicianship class that meets on a different day.

1. Movable do/la-based minor

2. Small group instruction (no more than five students)

3. A Young Singer's Journey (Hinshaw) - a combination of theory, sight-singing, and ear-training in a workbook w/CD and a small sight-reading booklet.

 

I also highly recommend:

Five Wheels to Successful Sight-Singing by John Bertalot - entertaining and informative

I have just started using solfege with my students, this is my third year of teaching grades 8-12. They are learning SO fast, I wish I had started it earlier. I am using moveable Do, and I'm only in major scales at the moment. I have been using exercises with hand signs, and then writing on the board, and I have been using Essential Sightsinging by Emily Crocker and John Leavitt, as well as The Choral Approach to Sight Singing by Emily Crocker and Joyce Eilers. Both have good exercises in them, and the kids can point to their notes while they are singing. 

 

I have a question for others, about teaching the minor keys, I am inclined to use La based minor because so many of my students cross over to band, and of course they learn relative minors in band so I am thinking it will make more sense to them if I also teach minors that way. Any comments regarding minors?

 

Thanks for this discussion

Theresa,

 

I concur with Michael.

 

1. I use moveable Do, with La based minor, I also teach a Do based minor after they have really learned La based minor.

2. I also use the takadimi method (www.takadimi.net). I think that it is the best system that is there. 

3. I have used the Alfred "Sing at First Sight" levels 1 and 2, but this year have switched over to the Krueger text.  It has so many of its own suppliments, that you don't really need any additional resources...

 

Not sure where "home" is for you, but Carol will be offering a workshop this summer in northern Virginia in June using her textbook. 

 

Hope this helps!

 

Kyle

I teach high school at a private prep-school. My feeder choirs do not use a consistent system (or any system, in some cases), so I do not consistently inherit students with a set of prior reading strategies. When you are compiling your data, you may want to go back and ask for this information from those who didn't provide it. Grade level and first exposure make a huge difference in this area for materials and methods selection.

 

I use Moveable do, la-based minor to start, and this is always "home" for my choirs. As students progress, and the literature warrants it, I will shift systems to fit the situation. So, by my advanced ensemble, students can use both do and la based minor, and fixed do. I think if you are careful in how you approach it and take appropriate time setting things up, the shifting of systems is not nearly as confusing as some texts would suggest. If a student understands the relationships and knows where do is, they can switch between systems quite easily, and also helps reinforce the concept that there are multiple ways to solve the same problem (and sometimes, one system is better than the other in finding the solution).

 

I also incorporate Curwen hand signs extensively, particulary in beginning stages.

 

While I have been trained in Takadimi, I am not all that enthused by it personally. It is a strong system, but it does require a strong buy in, and there are pockets of the country that use it well, and well from an early age. Usually it is a total commitment by not just a teacher, but an entire music program (much like Gordon) to make it work. Takadimi is highly reliant on self conducting, which is not a bad thing, but if you want students to know exactly where they are in the measure, and not just the groupings, it can get pretty hairy sometimes in a general population. (Again, if the students start earlier than high school in takadimi, the success level goes up considerably). If you don't know the system, I would encourage you to explore it, because whether you accept it or go down another path, it asks the teacher to really think about what is essential to rhythmic accounting, which no system really can do with exact precision (Takadimi, though, to my mind, is the most precise one out there). Look at the materials suggested in other responses.

 

I use a more traditional counting system (in 4/4, 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+, 6/8 1+a 2+a, etc.) and ask students to always count at least the first subdivision of what the rhythm requires. So, the underlying meter remains in "motor," and they clap the surface rhythm. I find that then students transition quite quickly to count singing. It also forces students to fill space on sustained notes in ways that simply counting the event (and not everything leading to and away) doesn't.

 

Mike

I know that the Kodaly system works--hand signals and solfege method.

I used it grade 1-6 for several years, and it was amazing how the kids

could sightread my hand signals on a new song, after I gave them  only the

starting pitch.    The rhythm syllables are very helpful too, also in teaching

piano.    Learn how to recognize Tahs, etc, and the counting can come

later.   I took a college course in teaching Kodaly method, but I don't know

any textbook to recommend.

Ruth Jones, Lancaster, CA

1.  Movable Do, La-based minor, Kodaly rhythm syllables.

 

2.  Students are allowed to write in syllables as they need.  This system provides for learning on multiple levels.  While some students are not exactly "reading" they are nonetheless building a vocabulary of tonal patterns.  Others are simply learning to find and recognize "do".

 

3.  No special materials, just the repertoire.  This works especially well in learning pieces with tight harmonies, crossed voicing, etc.

Theresa,

 

I'm a recent graduate and began teaching only last october. I came in with no plans, but chose to model all my classes after methods developed by John Feierarbend.

 

1) movable do, la-based minor

2) I've only worked with it for this spring semester, but across the board (6 - 8 both auditioned and beginning vocal students) I have seen great results. The reason Feierarbend's method works well is that it operates with the idea that syllables (both melodic and rhythmic - whatever they are) give "conversational" ability to individual singers. Music is a language and just like learning enligsh (or any language) you can't start with the theory and the written stuff. If you didn't know what all of these letters sounded like, you wouldn't be able to read the words I'm writing. If you didn't then learn grammar, syntax, and other rules, you wouldn't understand the sentences I'm writing.

3) GIA Publications has all of Feierarbend's stuff, but until I can get it, I've just taken his system (very understandable) and started implimenting it. The first steps are all by rote, then decoding and creating, then and only when they can "speak the musical language" do you show them what it looks like. The ear learns first, the eye learns second.

 

Anytime it becomes "tedious work" it's not being taught the way kids (especially middle schoolers) can learn it. "The skillful teacher enables learning to be a process of simingly effortless assimilation." - John Feierarbend, but (to quote Reading Rainbow) don't take my word for it, look him and his research up.

 

:)

Jeff

Like most others, I teach moveable Do solfege with La-based minor. I don't use a particular sight-singing method, but create my own exercises as I need them. I haven't figured out the best way to teach diatonic leaps. I teach at a small school where I have the entire vocal music program from grades 5-12. There is a large variety in students' music learning backgrounds when they come to our school, but they pick up on solfege scales quickly with both hand signs and "scalesthenics", which is a whole-body approach to hand signs.

 

If I may take the discussion a slightly different direction, I'm wondering how others incorporate sight-singing exercises into classes that include students in grades 9-12: some students are in the first year of choir, others are in the fourth. I have the same issue with choirs of 7th and 8th grade students mixed together. I think there are some skills that can be alternated between years without needing to be sequenced, but reading pitches doesn't work that way. Any suggestions?

 

Michael Bloem

Can we hear from someone who uses numbers?  How about someone who uses fixed do?

 

Thanks.
 

Hi Theresa,

 

I assume you have looked at Steve Demorest's outstanding book which presents all the various approaches to sight-singing in the choral rehearsal, including research on effectiveness.   

  

I did use Kodaly but found it did not work as well as Scalesthenics, by M.J. Milford. Scalesthenics is based on numbers and makes much more sense to me and to my students. Kodaly is good for intervalic reading and makes sense sequencially, but teaching another "language" is not want I intend to do. I combined music theory (scale degrees) with the notes and get fabulous results. For more information go to www.easysightsinging.com. All of the materials can be downloaded free...you have nothing to lose. Debra Nethercott

I could read the duration of notes in high school, rhythmically, but I didn't start singing again until 15 years later (5 years ago) and couldn't read pitch at all. I taught myself to sight read a few years ago, using numbers 1 through 7, with + and - signs for half steps.  So I memorized intervals, but also learned to pluck any of the numbered tones "out of the air" just by hearing what they sound like--familiarity. From not being able to read at all, after a few years I can now read any hymn and any other fairly simple melody perfectly the first time. For pieces that are very chromatic or complex, I tag some of the notes with numbers in pencil. This helps me understand the piece holistically, and perceive relationships between large portions of it. Seeing larger patterns has allowed me to understand the piece on a number of levels and learn it very quickly, both of which are important goals for performance. I've started to recall a lot of general patterns and "number sequences" which continues to accelerate my learning of new pieces. This also means that when a director transposes a key between rehearsals, I have no need or interest in getting the newer copy. With key changes, I write the number with regards to its position in both the old and new key, so I can pivot easily in terms of the way I'm thinking, and what key I hear in my head. Sometimes I notice that a series of numbers with accidentals is the same set of intervals as another, simpler series of numbers, so I'll rewrite a section using that set of numbers.  I suspect that some of the more tried-and-true systems mentioned in this thread are analogous to and therefore have some common advantages with what I do.

 

So, for those who use numbers, can you suggest further resources for me to study?

 

I feel like I have gone from "0 to 60" over a couple of years in terms of sight-reading. But I want to be able to pick up the most complex piece and sight-read it right away, so I can memorize it and then start to focus on the other aspects of performance.

Thanks in advance.

In my district, we are Kodaly-based. We use movable do with La based minor.  I don't really find anything negative about this system-- the kids seem to do well with it.

 

We use Patterns of sound method books in our choirs, but  lots of American folk songs/world folk songs with our general music students. I also extract lots of passages from the music my students are learning to show them the practical application of what they are doing.

Hi Theresa!

 

You've received great responses.  I concur with the Kodaly moveable DO and LA-based minor.  I have presented a workshop in several states on An Accountable Assessment of a Secondary Choral Program: A Grading System That Works!  I have it on powerpoint.  This is something I developed through years of public school teaching in middle school and high school.  I used it in the choral methods classes I taught for 18 years.  I am once again teaching middle and high school students and it still works today.  If you interested in receiving a copy let me know.  Good luck in all of your future endeavors!

 

Dr. Linda Jones

Theresa, I forgot to give you my email address: lbjonesmus(a)sbcglobal.net

 

Linda Jones

Movable Do, La Minor -- Takadimi

 

I didn't read all the replies, but if no one has mentioned it -- SOUND CONNECTIONS is an entire sequential curriculum for sight-singing based on current learning and brain research (which is EXPLAINED in the text). It is self-published by Dr. Don Ester of Ball State University. If you're looking for effective pedagogy for sight-singing based on how kids actually learn -- ie SOUND before SIGHT, as several people have mentioned -- it's probably exactly what you're looking for. It's a clearly laid out, easy system to use, and when you buy the book you are authorized to make copies and transparencies of all of the exercises in it. 

 

I don't teach yet - I graduate in December -- but I have seen this sytem do amazing things in schools around the area. When used consistently.... middle school and high school age students read more difficult rhythms (in simple AND compound meters, by the way) than most of my college colleagues can (seriously, a high school choir out-sight read us today). As previous people pointed out, takadimi is also age appropriate for small children through adults. 

 

Happy sight reading :)