Preparatory A (from 2+). Lesson 46

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Today in our Pedagogy Class we will talk about verbal ways for developing child's music attention.

Attention and Development of Ability to See Musical Notation

Just like visual perception of images develops in newborns, so does their attention, directed towards visual perception of music notation.

Note Alphabet, the Alphabet Song, and working with note sequences direct attention towards memorization of note sequences.  Knowing these sequences helps visual perception find the note in the system.

The ability to focus on a music note, isolate it from among the musical text, shift the visual focus from the note to the key, control the strength of the impact force – all these and other physical problems should be considered when working with beginners.

Only gradual development and improvement of these skills help them switch to autopilot mode. This saves child’s attention energy and enables him to independently solve super-structural problems.

As we already experienced before, in the Soft Mozart program, the physical parameters of attention development are measured with numbers. The figure on the left helps understand the number of mistakes. The figure on the right shows the time delay in relation to real time (presentations 1 to 5). As a rule, delay is caused by namely switching attention to solving physical problems.

Decrease in the amount of mistakes as well as lower time delay on the timer helps both the student and the teacher decide whether the student is ready to move on to more complext tasks and what the maximum optimal increase in the work load is.

Focus. In order to teach the beginner to focus on music notation, we work with cards where he can learn to find them with the help of images, voice, and sound.

Concentration.  For the purpose of visual perception development, the Gentle Piano Module contains a focus line where a student can concentrate on a music symbol, study its distinct characteristics (color, position on lines or spaces), and remember it in more detail.

Focus Redirection. Identical key coding helps students learn visual focus from the music notation space to that of the keyboard.

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