I was working with a student yesterday that took a break over the summer. We were reviewing solfege hand signs and eventually moved on to some simple sight reading exercises. It was just a short line of abbreviations, such as [d m m s m d r d]. My student was having difficulty with losing visual place in the exercise and pitch memory/pitch relationships (i.e. do to mi was consistently being sung as do-so, and so forth). Despite my patience, the student was acutely aware of his error, and it was obvious that he was frustrated in his inability to produce the correct interval. After several repeated attempts without any success, I had an idea. On the side of the page there was a box that displayed the solfege scale vertically:
do'
ti
la
so
fa
mi
re
do
I suggested that he try pointing to the syllable as it was being sung. As if by magic, he was able to sing the entire syllable line accurately. We were both pleasantly surprised! He then proceeded to finish the page with only minor difficulties (no pun intended). Something about the visual/tactile act of seeing the "distance" between the pitches and physically referring to them cleared up any uncertainly of interval reading.
I am sure this could be viewed as a learning "crutch," but I made me ponder on learning styles and how music instruction ideally should have some variation according to the learning style of the student--even if it takes printing a scale chart and having the student point to the exercise they are singing.
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