Student having trouble recognizing the direction the notes go.

[piano6462]

I have encountered something I've never seen before. My 7 year old student who has only been taking for about 3 months is having difficulty recognizing the direction of one note to the next. From middle C to E, she doesn't seem to be able to make the connection that it is 'up.' And since 'up' on the music means 'right' on the piano, we are having some trouble here. I tried writing in a few arrows, but I don't want that become a habit and it really didn't seem to help. Is this an eyesight issue or something else? I waited about a month before telling her parents, since I don't believe this means something terrible is going on, but this is strange. I've never had a student with this problem. Any suggestions would be great.

[pianowolfi]

This is something very common. Many people also have a problem with right and left, even adults sometimes. The only thing that helps is to practice sight reading regularly at every practice session.
To make students actually do that outside of the lesson is an issue in itself though. With most of my students it works unfortunately only if the parents are after them and make them practice sight reading.
Kids like playing but they don't like deciphering notes and they often don't see the sense of it yet.

[keypeg]

Does it have to be direction?  Can it not be sound?  E sounds higher than C, so if we get a lower sound then it must be the wrong direction.

[nanabush]

Some kids have trouble with that too

One of my students literally has perfect pitch (names any note he hears without seeing it), but often mixes up if I play a C and an E, which of the two are higher!!  We do 'high low' exercises, and he gets about half of them right, but no issues saying what the note names are.  I find that the strangest thing! 

[Bob]

Could be a developmental thing too.  Their brains are still growing, although adult size I think at age seven.  In size, not in function.

Maybe some material learned by rote on the keyboard and then seen in notation?

Ditto on the "it's common" idea.  I know there is a lot more written about it, like the idea of turning the staff on its side.

[thalberg]

Problems with up and down are very, very common.  

The problem almost always comes from the child not understanding which direction he is reading across the page.  I drag my pencil eraser lightly across the page and say, "which way are we going -- this way across the page (dragging left to right), or this way (right to left)?"  Children often get it wrong.  I show them we always go left to right, like when reading.

Then I say, moving my pencil left to right, "If I were riding my bike this way, would I be going up the hill or down the hill?" As I do this, I trace across the notes going up or down.

This solves the problem for that day.  But then the next week they forget again.  After several weeks they get it.  

[piano6462]

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm brand new to this forum and you've all been very helpful.

I didn't realize this was such a common thing. In 8 years this is the first time I've seen this be an issue for this long. I should have clarified that with past students, it may have been an issue for a week, but a couple explanations and some tracing with the pencil and we were good to go. This is the first time I've had to really work on this with a student for a longer period of time.
I think the best option is to just keep working on it with her and maybe try some new exercises. It's always fun to find a new way to teach a child since they all have their own way of learning.
Thanks!

[mcdiddy1]

When you have students at such a young age, you have to increase their readiness to do a skill you want to learn. Before approaching something as complex as notation, you could use things she already knows about to apply to piano.

For example you can start by  have a conversation like...

Aurally --What sounds do birds make?  high or low. (Starting aurally with everything you teach her make sure she can hear the difference between the sounds first through a variety of games.)

 Same or different --For Example lets play the high/ low game...I want you to play three high notes and three low notes.

(Teach hand signals with a closed fist to represent the positioning of the note. Make it a game and try to trick her. She will unknowing be assessed by you for her ability to hear high or low sounds, leaps, skips)

 Humming the notes. Then say label and say these notes are getting higher/ lower/ same (She experinces the difference between low and high and the same aurally)

When she learned them, label the experiences she had with  flash cards with note heads no lines or spaces. She can do this with her eyes closed or open. When their open let her see which way you are going. Then test her to see if she can tell the difference between notes that go down, stay the same, or go up.

Then she can start looking at notation and learning note names.

The problem with starting with notation is first of all most students are learning to reading and frankly do not have the experience for it to make sense .
Second if you think about it, how does right mean up anyways? Right means going right and up means up. Even when some kids say the right answer, sometimes its luck but most of the time they are able to figure out out concrete operations and able to get better spatial understanding.

If you want to them to remember what they learned which should be the first day they started you can always start with any game but you have to review if you want them to remember it and not hope it will be retained because chances are it will not be.
Teach them to use their ears critically and have them expereince it before they are assessed on it, and are ready for the next step and you can stop this problem in the bud.