Building Better Sight Readers

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Building Better Sight Readers

• Teaching Yourself Out of a Job
• Dr. D. Brett Nolker, University of North Carolina
  at Greensboro
• Dr. Robert L. Sinclair, VanderCook College of
  Music

MRi_at_UNCG
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All Reading is not the Same Group Skills ?
Individual Skills

• Skills choices are determined by context

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Key skills by context

• GROUP
• Reading Readiness
• Listening models
• Matching (Same/different)
• Social Context
• Pecking order
• When not to sing

• INDIVIDUAL
• Confidence
• How to begin
• Dont stop
• Error detection
• Real reading skills

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Teaching to the Individual
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The Goal Real Reading

• Expectation--Developed through listening
• Pattern Identification--Pitch and Rhythm
• Phonics--Sounding out unfamiliar passages
• Fluency--Has musical meaning
• Error Detection
• Personally correct
• Sound matching notation

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Expectation

• Tools for Appropriate Guesses
• Style or genre
• Notational Cues
• Key, mode, etc.
• Analytical (comparative) listening

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Pattern Identification

• Vocabulary Words (sightwords)
• Pitch
• Rhythm

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Phonics

• Sounding Out New Words
• Sight-words versus Phonics tools

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Error Detection

• Personally correct?
• Matching?
• Sound-matches-notation?

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The Watchwords
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Clarity

• Clear Intent
• Clear Process
• Clear expectations
• Clear Outcome

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Fidelity

• All aspects are true to intended outcome
• True (authentic) materials
• Authentic procedure
• Assessment true to practice and outcome
• Rhetoric true to Intent

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Consistency

• Time
• Massed versus distributed practice
• Musical Choices--(fits expectation)
• Attitude and modeling
• (not of secondary importance)

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• CLARITY
• FIDELITY
• CONSISTENCY
• GOALS, MATERIALS, AND RHETORIC

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Building Literacy Teach with the end in sight.

• Build the skills that make good musicians.
• Posture and Vocal Production
• Posture takes reminders rather than reprimands.
• Begin with a musical singing breath.
• Rhythmic
• The when is often more important than the
  how.
• Characteristic of sound to be produced
• Produce a healthy singing tone.
• Energized with air (hissing)
• Tall Vowel Shapes--recognizing word sounds vs.
  words
• Pure Vowels--speaking vowels vs. singing vowels
• Consistent Tone Across the Vocal Range
• Consistent Tone Among the Vowel Shapes

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Building Literacy Teach with the end in sight

• Build the skills that make good musicians.
• Posture and Vocal Production
• Reading and Literacy Skills
• Writing, Reading, and Performing Rhythm
• Writing, Reading, and Performing Rhythm Pitch
• Vocalizing or Warming up with Literacy in Mind

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Building Literacy Teach with the end in sight.

• Build the skills that make good musicians.
• Posture and Vocal Production
• Reading and Literacy Skills
• Error Detection Skills
• Errors in Technique or Production
• Breathing
• Vowel Formation and Shape
• Errors in Rhythm
• Approximate or Exact
• Errors in Pitch
• Approximate or Exact
• Ensemble Issues

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Building Literacy Teach with the end in sight.

• Build the skills that make good musicians.
• Posture and Vocal Production
• Reading and Literacy Skills
• Error Detection Skills
• Critical and Creative Thinking Skills
• Recognizing Sections
• Discussing Function
• Exploring Balance and Blend

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Audiation and Literacy

• What is audiation?
• Deeper than inner hearing
• Involves experiencing rhythm or pitch mentally
  and internally
• Sound Carriers (Johnson and Klonoski) and the
  Choral Context

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Audiation and Literacy

• What is audiation?
• How can we use it to enhance literacy?
• Sign vocal exercises to your choir then sing.
• Use a sing/dont sing approach to build ears.
• Audiate sections of rehearsal pieces while
  playing the chord progression.
• STOP playing all of their parts.
• STOP always giving them starting pitches.
• Play chord progression and context rather than
  content.
• Expect them to remember tonal contexts.

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Rehearsing for literacy

• Rather Than
• Fixing a problem by hammering notes at them,
• Playing the part or parts,
• Telling them what to fix and how to fix it,
• Drilling a section on text,

• Try
• Singing problem areas on syllables. The tool you
  have been teaching.
• Playing chord structures so they can hear
  harmonic context rather than pitch content.
• Asking them what is wrong.
• Count Sing or Sing syllables to learn.

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Assessment

• Guides and informs goals and Outcomes
• Authentic context
• Within-Group versus Individual in isolation
• Self-assessed versus teacher assessed
• Formative Summative

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New Technology

• Digital Recorders
• Web-based / email communication
• Reading / musicianship software
• Karaoke for better singing

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For Further Information Please contact

• Dr. Robert L. Sinclair
• VanderCook College of Music
• rsinclair_at_vandercook.edu
• 312/225-6288, ext.224
• Dr. D. Brett Nolker
• School of Music,
• The University of North Carolina
• at Greensboro
• dbnolker_at_uncg.edu
• 336/334-3642

This presentation is available for
download http//www.vandercook.edu/free