Qualities of a 'good' Sight Reader

We have all had students who are very good Readers, and a huge percentage of students just cannot read, even if they are playing Advanced Levels of Music.

So here I have enlisted a few Skills, Habits and Qualities that the 'Good' Readers have

1 - Can Visualize the Keyboard without physically looking at it while Playing

2 - Can Visualize their Hands without looking at them while playing

3 - Have a great Sense of Key Topography for Different Keys and Tonalities

4 - Have a High Spatial Recognition ability

5 - Have played a considerable amount of Music of different Keys, Meters, Tonalities, Meters, Styles, etc

6 - Have a general curiosity in figuring out new Written Material

7 - Are able to group Rhythm Patterns from the score quickly

8 - Are able to group and think of Phrases even if Phrase Lines are not explicitly drawn

9 - Have a good short-term and long-term memory

10 - Have a good Technique that allows them to visualize, feel and execute Intervals, chords, inversions, Scale Passages, etc without looking at Keys

11 - Have a sense of Cadences and Chord Progressions, and are able to anticipate changes in the Music

12 - Have a very stable sense of Pulse and can stay connected to it

13 - Have Trained their Eyes to Move ahead on the Written Score with the Pulse

14 - Have trained their Eyes to be able to Read Vertically

15 - Can anticipate Questions, Answers, Development of Phrases

16 - Have a good sense of Phrasing and Phrase Lengths

17 - Know what the Signs and Symbols on the Score mean

18 - Has a good ability to inference a written Sign/Symbol and mentally hear it while being able to physically play it

19 - Is comfortable with Multi-tasking

20 - Has a Logical approach to life

21 - Are able to Read Intervalically and not Note by Note

22 - Have a good Hand-Arm-Finger Choreography

23 - Have a good Coordination between Hands

I am sure there are other skills that I haven't written about that you chime in with.

But I want to draw your attention to the fact that most of the 23 points I've above are not related to Theoretical Knowledge per say.

So maybe it is a good idea to focus on those others aspects of Piano Playing, and when they have had abundance of those other experiences, have them make those connections in the Written Score