Amber's SOHH chapter summaries 5-8

 Amber's Chapter Summaries 5-8
Chapter 5
When it comes to learning, there is no right or wrong approach; just different.
Key concept: you must, MUST know your student's learning style and match your efforts to that perspective if either of you want to get anywhere without incurring significant psychotherapy bills.
Connection: It is my responsibility to get understand what my students learning style is, or we're both going to be disappointed and frustrated, and ….sad.

Chapter 6
Everybody's brain works different. Perception of the student must be paid attention to. For some it helped to have the music staff turned on its side. For others, it was a matter of seeing the notes from a new perspective by being put in a position of teaching them. Still further, the act of juggling or throwing a ball back and forth with alternating hands seemed to stimulate a balance between the extremes of the perceptual spectrum and make it easier for students from both ends to make the connections they needed to perform better whether it be in sight reading or memorization.
Key concept: Where a student is coming from (their point of view) is just as important as where they are trying to get.
Connection: I had better pay attention to my student's learning style and how they see things to help them get where they need to go with their music, or anything else I am teaching.

 Chapter 7
How to help those struggling with sight reading. Methods include, helping students to see the shapes of intervals and short phrases on the musical staff, and even turning the staff to the side to make intervals more clear, especially to those playing the piano.
Key concept: Find ways of making patterns in music more clear.
Connection: This is very powerful for me as my first piano teacher taught me (at six years old) in a similar manner by interval and transposition before I ever learned letter names of notes. It was all about finding the patterns. She would write out a tune on staff lines for me in my own notebook in C major, then every week give me a new key to play/transpose it in every week following the pattern of whole and half steps and clustered chord patterns in the same fingerings. I knew what the intervals were way before I was ever in any choir and I LOVED going to piano lessons because it was a fun new game of lines and spaces every week.

Chapter 8
Sometimes when we need to have a breakthrough and start doing things differently, we need a whole new set of descriptors to help us conceptualize what we need to do, or even how to get there. For example, instead of the feeling of being just dead in a piece, a student was finally able to get the right feeling with the phrase dead still.
Key concept: Music is all about communication and evocation. One needs the right descriptor for his or herself in order to get to that place on a personal level before passing it on to an audience.
Connection: I need to be aware of how my student perceives the world and interprets it in order to  help him or her find the right descriptor he or she needs to fulfill the music for him/her self and others. (also I need to buy a thesaurus to keep on hand in my future studio)