Quote to Learn From
Every time I attend an inspiring session at a conference, I love to take notes. Then when I want to incorporate something into my studio, I pull out my notebook and read through the awesome ideas I wrote down. Today I wanted so share a quote that came from my notebook...
Incentive Charts – Free Printables!
My studio semester begins next week - so many little things left to prepare before the first student arrives! One of my projects this summer was beginning a point system (based off Spring's post here) to reward practice but keeping track of points in student notebooks...
New Assignment Sheet – Free Printable
Over the last semester I became dissatisfied with my current assignment sheet method - just writing everything out on a piece of notebook paper and writing a mini practice chart at the bottom of the page each week. I believe that assignment sheets are very important,...
Piano Ensemble Camp
Most students come to their piano lesson alone, practice alone and perform alone. Not the most exciting hobby when there are all the team sports and dance groups around is it? So our solution? Piano ensemble camp! It allows us to still teach private lessons as we...
Super Summer Practice Club
Our summer session of lessons has begun and I thought my students needed a change of pace from piano points, so I've started a "Super Summer Practice Club." The goal of this is to get students at the piano or at least thinking about piano as many days of the summer...
Piano Points and Practice Bracelets Update
I shared with you recently about a couple incentive programs I launched in my studio. The Piano Points system was explained in this post and I shared about my idea for practice bracelets here. I thought I would give you an update on how these have been working for...
Piano Assessment
Each year when I was younger, my piano teacher gave me a piano assessment. This wasn't a competition against anyone else but rather scored me on a personal level of achievement over the year. Receiving the feedback from my teacher as well as another unbiased...
Practice Bracelets
Do you ever have students come to a lesson with one day of practice marked on their charts...and that one day was the day before or the day of their lesson day? Obviously, they forgot about piano the moment they left your studio, and didn't remember again until the...
Effective Practice
Why are we constantly searching for ways to motivate our students to practice consistently? I think Philip Johnson sums it up perfectly when he says: "If practicing fails, then the lessons fail. It's that simple, and it's that important." We know as teachers that...
Intrinsic Motivation in the Piano Studio
Okay take a break for a few minutes and watch this video. Now as a piano teacher we hope each student is motivated by a love of music and our dream is that they enjoy the music enough to practice so they can grow and develop their skills at the piano. Yet every piano...
Fitting Technique into Lessons
You dash through their favorite pieces of the week, introduce or review a concept with a fun activity, then sight read through a new piece when you glance up at the clock and realize you're over time already! Parents are waiting outside the door and it's time for the...
Piano Points
As we started back to lessons after Christmas break it became evident that my students needed a little extra motivation. Christmas music and Christmas recitals were finished, and most students got out of their practice habits over the break. Of course I wish that...