Effective Teaching Strategies for Music Students with Dyslexia

Over the course of my teaching career, I have often encountered students who have been playing music for a few years but continue to struggle to read musical notation, specifically rhythms and notes on the staff. These obstacles have been accompanied by problems tapping rhythms at steady tempos, shortcomings to correctly executing consecutive finger dexterities, and disorientation between the clefs on the staff. These persistent obstacles in the students’ musical development led me to wonder if they had anything to do with the learning disability, dyslexia.

Through conversations among my peers, I quickly realized that the majority of us educators had no experience on how to cater specific learning needs to students who have a learning disability such as dyslexia.

What is Dyslexia and How Does it Affect the Music Student?

According to The Colorado Department of Education, “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.” While dyslexia is a reading, writing, and spelling disorder, it can also involve inaccurate visual and auditory perceptions, which can cause difficulties throughout many areas of learning.

A considerable amount of research has confirmed that music learning and language-related skills are precisely related as they use the same area of the brain to decode symbols. Music is a type of language that requires the use of working memory to recall notes, associating the place of notes on the staff, and connecting the notes on the staff to the piano to contextualize their meaning.

For the music student, dyslexia can be clearly identified through several factors exemplified through learning. A few examples include, but are not limited to, continual inaccurate pitch identification, impaired perception when reading rhythms, and confusion when reading between staves concurrently on the staff. This results in students struggling to remember staff notation, particularly, where certain notes belong on the lines of spaces. The outcome is often called “third transposition” which is a common obstacle, where the student reads notes a line or space too high or too low. A common example of this is students reading “G” if “B” is in fact notated.

Another factor to consider is that reading regular text proceeds horizontally, while music reading advances both horizontally and vertically. This particular component might become an additional challenge for a dyslexic student.

How Music Helps Dyslexic Students

Dyslexic students are not active users of the left brain area, which is responsible for speech, comprehension, and writing. Music requires both hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere analyzes music and executes fine motor skills, while the right hemisphere exercises the creative portion that processes tones, sounds, and melodies. As a result, considerable research has supported that music learning improves reading skills and speech perception as it exercises both hemispheres of the brain during study.

Effective Teaching Strategies

When it comes to learning music, there are many successful adaptations I have researched and applied to my teaching process that have facilitated and reinforced an effective learning environment for students with dyslexia.

1. Bright colors have been known to stimulate more neurological activity compared to neutral colored stimuli. Colors are correlated to both increased attention and stimulation in different areas of the brain. As a result, teaching materials that introduce new concepts and skills using color-coding is very effective. For example, practicing notation writing on a colored staff and assigning each note a color has been a very functional adaptation used throughout my teaching. My inspiration behind this idea came from “The Coloured Staff” by Margaret Hubicki. On the colored staff, A is pink, B is dark blue, C is red, D is orange, E is yellow, F is green, and G is light blue. If we begin to learn a piece and the student is constantly confusing “C” and “E,” we might go ahead and lightly shade the notes missed using the colors that match our colored staff so the student knows where they go and that they are different.
2. For young piano students, color-coded staves have been very successful to help differentiate between the hands. An example of this would be to color code the treble clef with the color red, and the bass clef with blue. Students often love receiving a red sticker on their right hand and a blue sticker on their left hand so they know what hand plays when the colored section comes up in the music.
3. Color can also be used to keep track of patterns or repetitions in pieces so the student knows they don’t have to work twice to decode symbols in the duplicated section. Furthermore, printing music onto colored paper is also effective in keeping more focus when beginning to learn a piece. Method books that also include drawings and photos relevant to musical ideas or pieces can also help the students associate imagery with the notes they are playing.
4. Research suggests that student comprehension of notation symbols becomes easier for a dyslexic student once they are familiar with the associated sounds. For that reason, integrating methodologies that prioritize rote learning over notation reading allow students to better relate the aural aspect to the visual when reading notation symbols. Additionally, recording the pieces students are working on allows them to correlate it to what is on the score. This is also especially helpful in assisting students to compare their notes and rhythms to the recording when they are practicing independently. Also, having the student listen to a recording of the music and trace the phrasings with their hands can assist in articulating what is happening in the music before attempting to play the phrase.
5. Correlating the use of physical motion with musical ideas has also been a successful adaptation throughout lessons. When introducing the staff, creating or purchasing a staff floor mat has been especially useful to incorporate the entire body while having the students walk on different lines and spaces to identify notes. By doing this, large muscles create visual stimuli, making students aware of spatial and directional relationships within the music. Overall, this exercise introduces the staff as a manageable and achievable concept.

Let’s Talk About It

What would be an effective way to bring up that a child might have dyslexia if the parent has not formally communicated that their child has it? Oftentimes this requires delicate and efficient communication on the teacher's behalf in order to not step on any toes.

An effective way to go about it could be, “I have noticed that Amy has had some trouble memorizing the notes on the staff and understanding rhythms. We have tried a few different methods, but they don’t seem to stick. Might there be any information I could know about Amy’s learning style in order to better assist her during the learning process in our lessons?”

By phrasing it in this manner, the teacher invites any information about the specific learning style of the student. In addition, I always follow up with some of the teaching adaptations that can be used at home during practice sessions which are generally really beneficial even if the student has not been officially diagnosed.

Final Thoughts

All things considered, there are many teaching adaptations that can be implemented into a music lesson for a dyslexic student in order to make the learning process efficient and positive.

Teaching in general has its own challenges and teaching a music student with dyslexia poses other obstacles, but helping students achieve their dreams and aspirations regardless of how they personally learn makes it worth every bit of energy devoted to teaching them. With this, we as

educators play an important role in shaping not only a student’s musical journey but influencing their day-to-day lives for the better.

References

Colorado Department of Education Dyslexia Handbook (Feb. 2020). Colorado Department of Education Dyslexia Handbook. (2020, February 25). https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/codyslexiahandbook

Fernandez, A. (1989). Teaching the Learning-disabled child: A multisensory approach to piano lessons. American Music Teachers, 38 (4). 20-23.

Flach, N., Timmermans, A., Korpershoek, H. (2014). Effects of the design of written music on the readability for children with dyslexia. International Journal of Music Education, 34 (2). https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/0255761414546245

Forgeard, M., Schlaug, G., Norton A., Rosam, C., Iyengar, U., Winner, E. (2008). The Relation Between Music and Phonological Processing in Normal-Reading Children and Children with Dyslexia. Music Perception, 25 (4), 383-390. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2008.25.4.383

Hébert, S., & Cuddy, L. L. (2006). Music-reading deficiencies and the brain. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2 (2-3), 199–206.

Kuo, Y., & Chuang, M. (2013). A proposal of a color music notation system on a single melody for music beginners. International Journal of Music Education, 31 , 394 - 412.

Macmillan, J. (2005). Music and dyslexia–and how Suzuki helps. European Suzuki Association Web-Journal .

Overy, K., Nicolson, R. I., Fawcett, A. J., & Clarke, E. F. (2003). Dyslexia and music: measuring musical timing skills. Dyslexia (Chichester, England), 9(1), 18–36.

Stojanovic-Kiriluk, R. (2022, October/November). From My Piano Bench: Students with Dyslexia. American Music Teacher (AMT), (72) (2), 31-34.

Vance, K. O. (2004). Adapting music instruction for students with dyslexia. Music educators.