Music Reading Lesson - Years 3 & 4

Teaching students to read staff notation can be a challenge, especially when dealing with so many different abilities across a school. This resource is designed to be added into your own unique teaching routine, with your own students. With worksheets, anchor charts, and supporting slides, these lessons can be slotted into any music unit you are teaching. Available as a combined purchase for Years 1 – 6, or a single purchase of a single age-group, you can find something to suit your music education needs.

This resource has been purposefully designed to be used flexibly. The purpose of the task is to expose young students to reading music for themselves, without making it overly complicated. This is the first in a series of worksheets that will be released on this website, leading to children being comfortable in creating and recording their own melodies on a grand staff.

The colour coding of the notes is purposefully random, due to the complication of and individual concept of ‘correct colours’ for notes. If you would prefer not to have colour coding, the sheets can of course be printed in black and white.

In the interest of saving the busy teacher time, the worksheets have been produced in different formats, to suit individual situations. They are differentiated to suit different ages also.

These formats are:
• Included learning intention and success criteria (using solfege)
• Included learning intention and success criteria (using alphabet names)
• Without learning intention and success criteria (using solfege)
• Without learning intention and success criteria (using alphabet names)

To make your lives even easier, two powerpoint slides for teacher modelling have been included, which also have notes to play embedded, if you do not have an instrument at your disposal. This is best used on an interactive whiteboard.

There is also an anchor chart sheet, which can be printed to cut out images and display to students, which can be used to support in whole class instruction.