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Dyslexia friendly music teaching

  1. Be imaginative and patient. One size doesn’t fit all: everyone is different. How do you / does your student learn best?
  2. The student should choose what works including reminders (such as tracking from one end of the stave to the next). Don’t impose ideas
  3. Use colour (of the student’s choice) for highlighting etc
  4. All activities should be very structured: chunk information; build it up
  5. Use multi-sensory approaches: hear; see; feel; read; write; hands on…
  6. Consider whether visual difficulties (visual stress) could be a problem; try copying on to tinted paper (of the student’s choice)
  7. Use over-learning/revision/embedding: recap – repeat – give overviews and summaries – this helps with short-term memory difficulties
  8. Try approaches from Kodály, Dalcroze, Suzuki, but they aren’t always successful with dyslexic/dyspraxic students, so just given them a go!
  9. Remember: dyslexic people can take 10 times as long to complete an activity = extra tiredness and perhaps stress & poor self-esteem
  10. Help with organisation (in imaginative ways): use mobile phones; post-its; labels; colour-coding; texts… Use written reminders (using large, sans-serif font, if possible, not handwritten).

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