access to music education for children with SN, esp, primary, esp. KS2

[lingle]

Gosh it's a lifetime since this thread........www.mumsnet.com/Talk/behaviour_development/600616-is-ds2-s-musicality-hindering-his-speech-development

Anyway, since I stopped being a regular on this board, I've applied part of my brain that used to focus on DS2's problems to music, specifically music learning and the barriers to it. One thing has led to another. I set up an "any child, any ability, any instrument or none" school orchestra and I've now been asked to join the staff and work at the school.

Old friends will not be surprised to learn that I have absolutely no expertise but a profound interest in the opportunities afforded to children with SN to access a meaningful music education at primary school. I plan to make a difference, even if that means one-to-one with just one child for several years.

Is anyone around to chat? to tell me about hopes, experiences, barriers, and what you feel it would take for your child to reach his or her musical potentail? Needless to say, I have a deep interest in children who communicate better musically than in other ways, but I'd be glad to hear from anyone.

wow, how marvellous! well done lingle!

from my POV, I'ld say some form of flexibility re:matching instrument to child, as I imagine finding an instrument that appeals to the child will be v important for motivation etc.

well done!

will watch with interest.

dd1 is musical (sang before she could speak, can alter pitch and rhythm of well known tunes 'just for fun' etc) and I have been searching for a long time to find a method of teaching her.

we did piano lessons for a while - it was ok, but not really right.

we are continuing to teach her ourselves (and school), but she is still at the single line melody stage, when I know she could do more.

DS has a good voice but hates group song practice - hates everyone else's bum notes (but not his own ) and doesn't get why you need to practice so much.
He has tried learning keyboard in a group lesson but the noise of everyone playing at different speeds and diff notes made it too difficult to concentrate so we stopped. We are hoping to find one to one lessons.

At school they had a big thing about African drumming - for him Drumming went right through him and left him a pained quivering ball in the corner.

This year they have some teaching on computers and using headphones. It has been fabulous for him. I don't quite know what it is called _ I can ask DS if you like. It is mixing music and things I think.

Thats great
I have meant to get DS playing the piano ever since he figured out tunes himself on the toy xylophone, but one of those things I haven't got round to.
Something I found out about is a system called figurenotes which is a colour coded way of reading music. I can't get the website to work but if you google 'figurenotes + Drake music' the UK place that is doing work on this will come up. They are planning to have materials to buy online from Sept so I have decided I will wait until then to get DS to play.
I can't see normal piano lessons working but he does ABA and this piano is a programme we could easily bring into ABA.
Drums and action songs are big hits with DS.
When he has to learn a new song at school we video it and put the video on his iPad so he can learn it and he loves watching them.
Low expectations is probably the biggest barrier.
For eg in school assembly DS just got to join in the group singing he wasn't chosen to play an instrument, join in a sketch and having major speech issues being a narrator was not an option. Yet when one of the boys who was to play the drum had a strop and refused DS seeing the spare drum and the other 2 boys on drums playing jumped up and started playing along. And he did it perfectly. His ABA 1:1 had been working with him on observing and copying other children for weeks so was so pleased he was copying the others she let him get on with it. The teacher did not notice even though he was a total star. Afterwards when his 1:1 told me what had happened i said that I thought it was odd he had been chosen to play the drums as I wouldn't have expected the teacher to have picked him. And thats when I thought, his teacher would never had chosen him, yet when given the chance and without any practice he did it perfectly.
Learning patterns is something most ASD children are good at. Everything in life is a pattern for DS. So he loves music for that reason its always a predictable pattern. Music is also something that gives him a huge amount of enjoyment and its the one big group social thing that he enjoys. He absolutely loves all the children singing and playing music together. Which for a boy with a tendency to isolate is great.

Think thats a brilliant idea Lingle. My 11yo ds doesnt communicate at all but does loves his music. He will bang drums all day long, ping a guitar play the electric piano (his way, lol). He has been attending hospital recently for various issues and they are trying to work out a way to communicate and due to his love of music they are now trying to get his school involved, in using this as a way of cummunication. Wish you were in my area :)

"Learning patterns is something most ASD children are good at"

thanks Agnes, that summarises my last four years' thinking in ten words.

Light Passenger,

yes, flexibility. And not just the instrument, that is just the start. The pedagogical methods. Just as with our language development discussions, you have to spot all the hidden politics and the power stuggles and the funding issues (which are never described as such) and find the music underneath.

To give you an idea of current thinking, there is a great book called "How Popular Musicians Learn" by Lucy Green. It's an empirical enquiry into... well into how popular musicians learn.

They learn by:
(i) listening to recordings of their favourite music over and over again and attempting to imitate it, usually on a keyboard or guitar, and frequently working in total isolation
(ii) learning in a haphazard way, sometimes practising obsessively, sometimes dropping practice altogether for months
(iii) learning exclusively from music they like, not from what someone else has chosen.
(iv) learning from peers rather than formal lessons.

isn't that interesting? hardly any of them do their true learning from formal traditional lessons, even those who have electric guitar lessons and take "Rockschool" exams. Most bands tend to have one formally trained member who fills in the other members' knowledge gaps.

So the field is wide open at the moment

Silverfrog, yes, I was always so interested in her music.

Is it possible to identify what more she could do?

Alison

today the reception class came in to watch our orchestra. Another volunteer said to me afterwards, "what a pity some of them were rude enough to cover their ears".

There is no awareness of sensory issues, it seems.

My DS2 (year 1) will now watch the orchestra fairly close up, but he prefers to be on the other side of a glass door, and he will need earplugs when he is old enough to join.

ooh how interesting Shazian, let's hope someone on your professionals' team can spot some potential patterns/ways in. Do you fancy posting a video?

zzzzzzz,

snap, both mine were like that - both of them lost some of the extreme music skills as their other communication developed.

Eventually the musical pattern-recognition had to give way somewhat to recognising language. With DS2 I had to ban all music and poetry - including all rhyming books - from the house for several months, and I'm sure that helped.

now the music is DS2's brain's servant, not its master.

"The Music Instinct" by Philip Ball is great. Ball is a scientist and it is a survey of what evidence there is - and isn't - about what music and your brain do together.

Farewell Mozart effect and minor-keys-must-be-sad. No evidence!

But there is evidence that we all recognise a tonic (home note) and want and need melodies to find their way to it.

Moondog would love it.