sight reading

[mark the brave]

I'm a relatively inexperienced teacher, and I recently entered 3 of my pupils for the grade 2 ABRSM exam.  By far the worst section for all three of them is sight reading.  I expect it's because I 'spoon-feed' too many pieces to them, rarely assigning one for them to learn independently.  I do this, however, because I know from experience that trying to learn a piece from stratch can be very discouraging, especially if you're only 8 or so years old.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  How can you effectively teach sightreading throughout the year without it becoming mundane, or taking too much of the lesson time?  Anyone know any wonderful books or resources or anything that covers this?

Thankyou - and love the forum btw,

mark

[florentin]

if you do a search on the subject, you will find many posts on it.

good luck to you.

[G.W.K]

I know you will find this useless: 

But whilst having a music lesson yesterday, my instructor showed me this wonderful program on the computer (I forgot the name however) that had all types of music from beginners to professionals. It taught you how to play faster and taught you to sight-read.

It can be used for all sorts of instruments and it costs £25 per year, if your interested I'll try and find the name of the program...

Sorry this is pretty useless :-D

G.W.K

[luv2teach]

i make up games.  for example, i put "secret" little pieces in different envelopes and color code them.  gold is the hardest, silver is medium, bronze is easiest and i ask them to take them home and decide which ones they want to play for me next lesson.  makes it more fun than doing sight reading exercises from a book.