a teacher's story...

When I first began teaching I was determined to make sure my students had the opportunities to become excellent sightreaders. We spent a great amount of class time learning the techniques and practicing examples. All the while trying to convince the students that this was a worthwhile cause and that they could be successful. For our efforts, we would receive the highest ratings at festivals/contests in sight-reading.

But there was a problem. When I listened to my students sightsing by themselves, they were unable to perform melodies that they could have easily read within the group setting. Therefore, the concepts that I thought they understood, were not really being absorbed.

The problem was two-fold. First, the amount of class time used for sightsinging, with success only for the group and not the individual singers was becoming too inefficient. Second, I needed to find a way for each individual student to improve their ability. I knew there had to be a better and more efficient method for teaching sightsinging.

One day, when visiting my colleague in the band room, I noticed him checking the instrument lockers to see which students had taken their instruments home to practice. That's when I realized what was missing.

Every other subject area (including Band) in the school expected and monitored individual achievement where as I focused on and monitored group achievement. Those teachers were able to assign homework to ensure that each individual was able to learn, reinforce and apply those concepts taught in class.

I wanted to incorporate that aspect in my classroom, but in order to expect my students to do any type of preparation or practice at home they would require some sort of pitch reference.

For the training of sightsinging skills in the classroom, at some point (hopefully sooner than later) the class would sing the example correctly. This is the point when the students would receive the proper association between the notation on the page and the correct aural perception. I needed something that provided them a pitch reference - some way for the students to hear the example correctly in order for them to work on their own and to reinforce, practice and supplement the concepts taught in class. Creating something that would accomplish these tasks also had to be efficient and available to all of my students.

What was created was the worlds first Web-Based Interactive Sightsinging Program. When implementing this tool, what I noticed was dramatic. With even slightest improvements by the individual students, the net effect of the improvement within the group was exponential.

With only about ten minutes of practice three times per week, not only did my students individually sightsing well, but the group as a whole was able to sightread at a much higher level than even before, and their output as a group improved much faster than when I had only been working with the group as a whole. previously. I realized that there was nothing magical about the process. What was unique was that choral music teachers were now able to offer and expect their students to spend time outside of the classroom to reinforce the concepts of what they did inside the classroom - education, the way it was intended to function.