Color
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The archive contains posts about using color to teach music.
Color in Teaching
How does color help to teach music? Many studies have shown using pigment is a good teaching tool. For instance, Berry found that tinted charts helped college students effectively learn the parts of the heart. Likewise, Chute stated that grade school students scored higher after viewing a color film versus a black-and-white film.
Many other sources found pigmented materials a helpful teaching aid:
- Gattegno (1963)
- Pollock (1965)
- Goldenberg (1970)
- Papy and Papy (1970)
- Green (1970)
- Bradford (1974)
- Burns (1975)
- Ewbank and Ginther (1975)
Likewise, a number of subjects in school use it, such as:
- Early readers, leveled readers, and some early chapter books
- Language arts, writing, phonics, and spelling books
- Math books
- Science books
- Geography books
- History books
- Music books
- And, of course, art books
Using pigmented materials, even without color coding, remains helpful for holding a student’s attention, because it makes learning fun and engaging.
However, the true power of color happens when using color coding, because it makes the relationships in the teaching materials clearer.
In music, Rogers stated that students preferred working with pigmented music notes over unpigmented notes. This is because the students found it simpler to read. “… 65% of all subjects favored the color coded notation as easier to play” (72).
This remained true for rhythmic notation as well. “…nearly 80% of the students preferred the experimental [pigmented] notation” (23).
The following posts talk about how to color code notes (for distance teaching), rhythms, and much, much more.
© 2021 Geoffrey Keith
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