Strong Advice for music teachers of all grades:

I would HIGHLY recommend teaching your students to read music. In my school’s music program this semester, there was a vocal student in Music Theory I who, as well as learning basic theory, had to learn how to read music. This was highly disappointing that a music teacher did not take the time to teach his or her students to read music.
Also, please teach the students that a quarter note is not always the beat. Students tend to have this mindset that a quarter note is always constant. For example, if a student sees a rhythm with quarter notes as the beat, they usually can sight-read it without much difficulty. If the student sees the same rhythm with the 8th note as the beat, the student will usually either take the passage twice as fast or will tap their foot to what they believe the quarter note to be. Either way, the student usually has a very difficult time with the latter scenario.
There are many methods out there for teaching music reading and rhythm, each with their pros and cons, but please: teach them to you students.