Dyslexia friendly music teaching

- Be imaginative and patient. One size doesn’t fit all: everyone is different. How do you / does your student learn best?
- The student should choose what works including reminders (such as tracking from one end of the stave to the next). Don’t impose ideas
- Use colour (of the student’s choice) for highlighting etc
- All activities should be very structured: chunk information; build it up
- Use multi-sensory approaches: hear; see; feel; read; write; hands on…
- Consider whether visual difficulties (visual stress) could be a problem; try copying on to tinted paper (of the student’s choice)
- Use over-learning/revision/embedding: recap – repeat – give overviews and summaries – this helps with short-term memory difficulties
- Try approaches from Kodály, Dalcroze, Suzuki, but they aren’t always successful with dyslexic/dyspraxic students, so just given them a go!
- Remember: dyslexic people can take 10 times as long to complete an activity = extra tiredness and perhaps stress & poor self-esteem
- 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).
Queries? Contact [email protected]
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