How to teach kids to read music effectively

The kids were jumping up with excitement; there were only 10 seconds left on the clock. Both brother and sister were now yelling out the answers, hoping to beat their sibling rivalry! You might be thinking we were playing something like charades or a fun board game, but we weren’t—we were drilling flashcards for notes in the treble and bass clefs. Pretty simple stuff… I’d hold up a card, and they would guess the answer. As we made this game part of our weekly lesson schedule, I noticed my students’ musical reading comprehension was getting better and better.

Why was this simple activity so much fun for these students? And how did I, as the teacher, “trick” my students into reading a bunch of notes? Simple—we turned the note-reading exercise into a game. It’s the secret sauce to getting kids interested in pretty much any subject. Kids want to have fun, they want to enjoy the learning process, and they need creativity and space to absorb the information. More and more research is showing that kids learn best through play.

So without further ado, Here is a list of my favorite flash card games that I use with my students.

Game 1
Set a timer and quiz your student as you go through the stack of flash cards. This can be done individually or with a group of students, as they work together to figure out the notes. Keep track of the student score using the Music Memory Score Card (download for free below). This helps students stay motivated to see if they can break their record from the previous week.

Game 2
Set a countdown timer to challenge the students to complete the set of flash cards in a given amount of time. They can’t move on to the next flash card until they give the correct answer. Keep track of the student score using the Music Memory Score Card. Along with writing their name in the Player column, record how many cards they were able to complete. Also record your pre-determined time for the countdown.

Game 3
Group the students into pairs and have them quiz each other with the flash cards. For private piano lessons, quiz the student and then have the student quiz you, the teacher (kids love this :). Keep track of your scores using the Music Memory Score Card.

Download music memory score card and game instructions:

These simple games have helped my students become motivated to memorize the line and space notes on the grand staff. As a teacher, I realize more and more that in order to motivate kids to want to learn the language of music, I need to understand what motivates them. I meet them where they are when approaching how I teach each lesson, and from there, I watch them blossom.

So next, let’s talk about the flashcards I use. I’m a fan of music mnemonics, but not just any mnemonics—these are the ones that actually work (stick with me, all of you who preach landmark notes). In the book Vocabulary Cartoons from New Monic Books Inc., the introduction states, “A mnemonic is a device that helps you remember something by associating what you are trying to remember with something you already know. Memory experts agree that mnemonics are the surest, fastest, and easiest way to remember names, places, events, words, and anything else you want to remember.” Remember when you were a kid and how mnemonics helped you learn different subjects in school? Who could forget the phrase, “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two”? That’s the beauty of a good mnemonic—if it works, it works. The problem with traditional music mnemonics is that we can’t keep track of which one to use for which clef or set of notes. That’s why I created this…

Notes on the Grand Staff Memory Phrases: First, let’s look at all the mnemonics, or memory phrases as I like to call them, from top to bottom. Above, we have the treble clef and bass clef in two different colors. The treble clef is blue, the color of the sky, to represent the high notes. The bass clef is green, the color of grass, to represent the low notes. The memory phrases for the treble clef are things you’d find up high in the sky, representing high notes: the sun with a face and the bird. The sun spells “FACE” on “the space” (representing space notes), and the bird that flies and lands on “the lines” (representing line notes). The bass clef phrases are things you’d find low on the ground, representing the low notes: the cow and the bug. The cow needs lots of “space” because of all the grass it ate, representing the space notes. And the green bug digging for a “line” of ants represents the line notes. These music mnemonics are not random; they are easy to remember and serve their purpose in helping students determine which phrase to use for a particular clef and set of notes. Every time students practice, they can rely on this teaching tool—taking in the pictures, the colors, and the funny phrases they naturally connect to, which then links them to the language of music.

As the picture above shows, we climb up each line, saying the phrase out loud, until we reach our note destination. If it’s a space note we need to figure out, we climb up the spaces, saying the appropriate phrase, until we reach the note.

Students won’t always need the pictures, colors, or even the phrases. These are memory aids to support them as they learn the complex language of music. These tools help build their confidence, showing them that they can truly learn the language of music and enjoy its benefits for the rest of their lives. You can find the Music Memory Flash Cards on Etsy or TPT.