Does Stave House support children with SEN? 

 

This is a question we are often asked by schools and parents.  This letter, received by a mother about her child’s progress with the programme, seemed the best way to answer it…

 

‘I’d like to express my appreciation for the difference Stave House’s multi-sensory and creative approach has made in Jack’s (aged 12) enjoyment of making music. Using the Stave House magnetic board, cartoon characters, and original songs has given Jack a unique way to relate to music that works with his creative brain.

He went from not being able to read music in November 2021 to sight reading music with his guitar in March 2022!

Jack was exposed to music early on through toddler music classes, “performing arts” preschool, and traditional beginner piano lessons. He has always gone about his day humming and singing simple, original compositions.  However, this enjoyment of music stalled during his first year of piano lessons at age 7. We did not realize Jack was dyslexic at the time, and we have recently learned that Jack also has Irlen Syndrome which makes perceiving text and musical notes on white backgrounds extremely difficult. For Jack, the lines of the staff (stave) distort and bend around the notes in such a way that Jack could previously not tell on which line a note was written or even what the notes meant.

Jack was originally taught piano with a popular traditional approach in the U.S. which uses beginner piano books and mnemonics to memorize the notes. Jack’s piano teacher would stop him every time he made a mistake. He became extremely anxious during lessons and the required performance and judging sessions.

We took a break from music after this negative experience, but Jack continued to make his own vocal music all day long. He seemed to remember songs after one listen and was able to remember school subjects better if they were set to music. However, we kept him out of music classes at school, knowing he would have a difficult time reading the music.

After a two-year hiatus from music lessons, Jack started to learn the acoustic guitar chords using music for popular songs that noted the chords for him above the measures. He learned most of the chords in a year and a half without an understanding

 of why he was using which chord. Learning individual notes on the guitar was the next step, but we knew we needed an alternative to the traditional teaching approach of reading music before he could proceed.

We found the Stave House online course through other parents of Bullet Map Academy, an international, online mind-mapping school geared toward supporting dyslexic students. We knew Jack responded well to a multi-sensory reading approach, so we decided to give Stave House a try. Using the Stave House magnetic characters and catchy songs to discover where the notes “live” on the various clefs made complete sense to Jack.  For instance, “Sea Searcher” (middle C) and his friends can travel as the same notes to different places on treble clef, to bass clef, to alto clef.

Your support has been invaluable  in helping Jack and myself truly understand music with a fun, approachable method. I never realized how much I didn’t know. Jack is excited be learning the “secret code” of written music and is enjoying making music again.’