janaki

Hi Jane,

I hav few students with same problems in my class. The things I am doing to help them ( seems to be working so far) are...

1. Listen to the clock's ticking sound when you are in the bed and relaxing. Say the ticking sound loudly. You can ask her to add a simple move like, tapping on the bed, contracting the stomach or anything that works in a lying position to the ticking. Working in their privacy and in a relaxed situtation helps them to understand the problem. Many of these students don't even know what the problem is. Not knowing the problems doesn't help to solve it. This excercise helps them to understand the problem.

2. Metronome is a great tool to train also. You can vary they tempo of the beat. Start with counting loudly and tapping the feet and add other moves later on.

3. Introduce a slow piece of music firstly with rhythm only (slow baladi, saidi or maksoum work good) and ask her to clap on the dums and then teks and dums and teks. Later you play simple rhythms like above with one intruments with a melody. Later you can introduce more textures in the meoldy. After clapping, introduce stepping and other moves. This slow and progessvie introduction is really heling my students.

4. Play a piece of slow music with an even beat and make her count the beat loud and clap few times. When she is into it, take off the volume and let her keep clapping. Tburn the volume up after a while. She will then understand what is going on if she is off beat.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Janaki