Where does the note go on the piano?

There has been much discussion and research into how students learn to read music  I always want to follow that philosophy that leads children towards music literacy (isn't this why we chose Musikgarten?).  I have many packets of flash cards sitting on a dusty shelf in my basement and most look like what you see above.  They focus on one note and the teacher usually focusses on the letter name and finding it on the keyboard.  But research shows that this path is visually led, not aurally let.  We teach patterns aurally and introduce notes in patterns.


OK, enough, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty.  Here is what I have found.  My Post MG students are superb in reading patterns, but.... they have trouble finding where to start.  Often I experience students playing in the wrong register or they sit and wait hoping I will open my big mouth and tell them what the resting tone is and where it is.

So I decided to work on guideposts in my book 4 class and in my post MG group class (notice the cards I chose in the first picture. I call them guideposts and so do a lot of other teachers).  First I aurally play them and ask them to find the sound on their piano without looking at my piano.  We play this matching game for a while.  Then I lead them to discover the key signature of the cards (C major) and explain they are all the Cs found on the grand staff.  Then we play games finding these positions.  Pace likes to then have them play a warmup in these positions, or a scale, or a chord, or a chord progression.  These are fun expansions.

Then I bring out my own flashcards.

I created flashcards in C major of patterns that I prep aurally  and then I put them in every register. I made 8 different patterns, some familiar, some less familiar, all in C, within a five finger position and placed the same pattern in 5 different registers.  I will show them the difference, play them (see earlier game) and then I will have them compose a piece that they will play for us.

There are many ways to play this game.  The purpose is to understand that patterns look and sound different in different registers on the piano.

Oh, a great piece to move to would be Kabalevsky's piece, Funny Event from Op. 39.  It would also be fun to compose a piece just for the class...