Teaching children with ADHD

Friday, October 24, 2008

A colleague made a comment to me recently that has caused me to give a great deal of thought to the problems of teaching children with poor concentration. The comment was "do you feel you have to constantly bully children who have ADHA?". My reaction was to identify with her feelings of frustration as a teacher. However, I also felt quite alarmed at the thought that any students of mine may feel bullied. Having given this a great deal of thought I have become more aware that there are children who need much more focussed attention from me throughout the lesson. They need constant feedback and encouragement. These children also tend to be less likely to have the tools to work out problems for themselves when they get home. This puts pressure on me to provide as much help and instruction as possible. The general result of this is that I feel as if I am talking non-stop during the half hour lesson. This scenario presents me with the dilemma "does this child feel bullied"? It can be very difficult to achieve a balance between maintaining a friendly relaxed relationship and striving for each child to achieve their potential. I would love to hear from any children, parents or teachers who have anything to say about this problem.

posted by Sharon @ 9:09 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Alternative Scale Fingering

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Christine sent me details of an alternative scale fingering some time ago. I have now used this very successfully with a grade 2 student who was experiencing enormous problems playing scales hands together. I have also used it with a 15 year old who is dyslexic. She has enormous problems learning pieces from music but plays with great ease from memory and by ear. This fingering has helped her to break down the mental barriers that had built up over many years of lessons with several different piano teachers. The major breakthrough occurs when you point out that the thumbs always play together. In addition the 4 and 3 pattern is exactly the same for both hands (you will need to play the scales to understand what I mean by this).
I believe that 'standard' fingering is a valuable discipline for young students. However this alternative is of enormous value to children who struggle with left/right differentiation. It is perfectly acceptable to play scales in exams with an alternative fingering. The key issue here is that the chosen fingering should be consistent throughout.

I would be very interested to hear of any other alternatives which may help with scales or any other aspect of playing.


Scale fingering

A few years ago I adopted a new system of scale fingering.
I did this after watching many of my students struggle for an inordinately long time to get their fingering correct when trying to play scales hands together with the traditional fingering:

RH 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1
LH 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1

In fact, my students who are now at the higher grades, who learnt this traditional fingering, often still don’t get it right!

This is the fingering which I now teach for all major and minor scales which begin on a white key (except F):

RH 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1
LH 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1

At first it may seem a little odd to start a rising scale with thumb in the LH. But the reason that this fingering works well is because the thumbs come together all the way. Students who have learnt this fingering with me from the beginning have had absolutely no trouble playing scales hands together, it just seems to happen naturally and they rarely make mistakes.

Another advantage of this fingering is that no-one has to be reminded to start B major and B minor with the 4th finger in the LH. The fingering on B is the same as all the others.

For F major and minor, I teach this fingering:

RH 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1
LH 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1

This matches the traditional fingering for F, apart from starting with thumb in the LH. This difference from the other white key scales does not seem to cause any difficulties.

So my scheme has only one exception (F) whereas the traditional scheme has two (B and F).

I did think at first that contrary motion scales starting on white keys might cause a problem, but this has not been the case. For contrary motion, I just tell my students to let the LH copy the RH, so both hands do 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 etc. as with the traditional method.

Christine

posted by Sharon @ 7:28 AM 2 Comments Links to this post

How old were you when you started to teach?

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Dear Sharon,

I have a simple question about your teaching career. Could you please tell me how old were you when you started teaching, what qualification you had and what was your first experience with teaching young children. (It seems difficult to believe that you are 49 years old now and you have more than 35 year of experience as pointed out in your reviews section. It turns out you were just 14 when you started teaching?)

Best wishes
Anna

Dear Anna, Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me. The answer to your question is 'yes', I did start teaching when I was 14. My very first student was the daughter of one of my school teachers. Of course, I had no teaching qualifications at that time but I always found teaching very natural, enjoyable and easy. I lived in a village where word-of-mouth travels fast and so very soon I was turning away students. From that day I have never had a break in my teaching. Even when I had my children I stopped teaching for just 3 weeks. I hope this answers your question satisfactorily.

Regards
Sharon Goodey.

posted by Sharon @ 9:37 AM 2 Comments Links to this post