Researchers and psychologists have undertaken preliminary studies tracking the eye movements of expert pianists or musicians with at least 10 years of training (i.e., Ahken et al., 2012; Hadley et al., 2018; Huovinen et al., 2021) to understand more about the top-down cognitive processes involved with eye fixations, pattern recognition, and eye-hand span in effective sight reading. To date, few studies have explored the eye movements of beginning musicians during music reading/playing activities. This study sought to compare the eye movements and eye fixations as these relate to sight-reading/sight-playing performance outcomes between three groups of beginning adult piano students (control; pitch-chunking experimental; rhythm-chunking experiential groups). Scores of pretest sight-playing performances confirmed that a convenience sample of control and experimental participants (N=75) were equally matched. Following the pretest, the control group (n=23) rehearsed sight-reading examples without intervention twice weekly, for three weeks. The experimental groups engaged in either rhythm-chunking drills (n=25) or pitch-chunking drills (n=27) for six 10-minute researcher-led sessions prior to rehearsing the sight-reading examples on their own during the same three-week timeframe. A sight-playing posttest was given following the treatment phase. Students’ pretest and posttest data were gathered using the Aurora 120Hz screen-based eye-tracking hardware along with recordings of their performances on a Clavinova CVP 430 digital piano and video camera. Anonymized performances were scored by two evaluators, using a modified Watkins-Farnum rubric; they ranked highly on inter-rater reliability (r=.95). Eye tracking results were analyzed individually for eye fixations and pattern groupings, and these were corroborated with video and audio recordings to determine eye-hand span. The groups’ mean performance scores were compared using ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation tests to identify significant differences between the groups’ continuity, pitch, and rhythm performance. Within group t-tests compared pre- and posttest results. Overall, the experimental groups performed significantly better on the posttest than the control group with improvements in rhythm and continuity. Eye-tracking data revealed fewer eye fixations, along with more instances of musical chunk recognition and a slightly larger eye-hand span for both experimental group participants, even if there were flaws in the performance. Results of this small pilot study suggest that chunking drills can be effectively employed during lessons and classes, even for a short period of time, to help beginning adult students improve pattern recognition on the score and sight-reading performance at the piano.