How Tomio Sakurai Instructed Music Reading for Lower Graders in Egota Elementary School

Abstract

  The study aims to clarify a fact of Tomio Sakurai's instruction of reading music for lower grades in Egota elementary school.

  He recognized the necessity and importance of the instruction of reading music in lower grades. And therefore he devised various original teaching materials and used it for his class. He made much of teaching musical a scale in his instruction of reading music for lower graders. He devised the following teaching materials in sequence for lower graders to understand a musical scale : “Iroonpu (color notes), Irokotoba (color words)”, in which he connected each syllable of a scale to the color names, “Chawannoonngaku (the music of bowls)”, performing a scale using bowls, “Ehu (picture notes)”, and so on.

  He was not a music specialist, but a classroom teacher. This led him to produce his original teaching devices. He made much of “life”, “play”, “interest” of the child. He tried to connect children's life with learning of music reading. He let his pupils memorize syllable names of a scale, and understand the pitch difference between each note through a sense, however this was limited.