Landmark Note Naming Practice with Landmark Xs and Os Game

This is a landmark note twist on a classic game. Turn your students into landmark note superstars with X’s and O’s.

The landmark note identification method is recognised by most these days as the most efficient. When you have a few notes that you can recall immediately, you can just count up or down to figure out any note on the staff.

For this method to work these notes need to be close friends to our piano students. They should be able to recognise them upside down, downside up, backwards and forward. 😉

To achieve this kind of close relationship with these notes I use games, activities and manipulatives alongside reading work. The more varied ways we learn about something, the more durable and long-term that knowledge will be.

My students review these landmark notes in several ways such as…

• Completing work pages in their Thinking Theory and Thinking Theory Plus workbooks
• Circling the landmark notes in their repertoire
• Using the floor staff to play games and find the landmark notes
• Playing games like this one in individual and group lessons

If like me you’re always on the hunt for more ways to review landmark note names – you should definitely check out this fun game.

I love how simple and quick it is to set up and play. It’s one of my go-to games for beginning piano students.

Gameplay is Simple:

• This is a two-player game.
• Choose 1 card to play with and place it between the two players.
• The players take turns to draw a card and place a token on the correct note (only 1 at a time, even if there are two possible notes).
• The first to get 3 in a row is the winner.

(Click on the image to download the pdf.)

Included in the Landmark X’s and O’s pdf is the cover sheet, 6 different game cards, and 48 note name cards to draw from.

Are you looking for another way to review these notes?

The Thinking Theory books review the landmark note names periodically throughout. There are naming pages, drawing pages and pages where students match the notes to the keyboard.

Students really get a full and broad view of what the note signifies through these workbooks.