Chrissy Ricker
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My Favorite Teaching Tools: Part One

3/25/2019

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Let’s talk teaching tools!  

Is there a game or gadget that you find yourself reaching for again and again to use with your students? Is there a product you always have in stock and on hand for lessons?



​I thought it would be fun to do a series of blog posts about my favorite teaching tools. Today’s teaching tool might be a bit surprising, since it is low-tech and something that you probably already have in your home. However, it is one that I find myself using more and more with my students. Today I will be sharing the many ways I use one of my very favorite teaching tools…the post-it note!

Big ones, small ones, the more colorful the better—the post-it note is a tool I find myself reaching for more and more in my lessons. Here are some of the ways I use post-it notes with my students:

1) Marking pages in students’ books.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but several years ago I started using post-it flags to mark the pages of each piece I expected my students to practice during the week. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for my students to find exactly what they should be working on when they sit down to practice at home.

This can be especially helpful for my youngest students. My elementary school-age students can’t always look up their assignments in their practice binders independently, or find pages quickly in their books without help. I have them mark their pages with a colorful post-it and have them practice turning to the correct page in their lessons. This makes me much more confident that they will be able to practice the correct music at home—even if mom or dad isn’t sitting at the piano with them.

2) Covering up extra information in the music.
Do you have students that get overwhelmed when looking at a new piece of music and just don’t know how to get started? Do your students practice the first section of a piece over and over when they really should be practicing page 2?

​Enter the post-it note! Hide whatever you don’t want your students to see when they are practicing at home—then move the post-its the following week.

3) Isolating tricky measures for practice.
There are lots of fun ways to use the post-it as a practice tool. Here are a few ideas:
  • Cover up everything except for one tricky section in the music, and have students put a tally mark on the post-it each time they play it correctly.
  • Use post-its for “backwards practice.” Put post-its on the last line of a piece to cover everything except the last measure. Once your student has played the last measure correctly 3 times, move the post-it backwards so only the last two measures are showing. Keep working backwards until they can play the whole last section of the piece correctly.
  • Work on tricky transition spots or places students pause by placing a post-it before and after the trouble spot and practicing between the post-its without stopping or slowing down.
  • For younger students: a trick I use to get my beginner students to play a piece more than one time (without losing their focus or complaining!) is to cover everything except the first measure with a post-it. Once a student plays the first measure 2 times, they can move the post-it and play measures 1 and 2. We keep moving the post-its measure by measure until students have played the entire piece. Little ones enjoy the thrill of moving the post-its to find out what comes next so much that they don’t realize they have played the piece several times in a row!

4) Practice reminders.
One of the most recent ways I have been using post-its is to help my middle and high school students to start taking more responsibility for their own practice goals for the week. My students have assignment binders where we write detailed practice plans for their pieces; however, I find it helpful for students to write their top 3 goals for the week on a post-it and stick it directly on their music. This helps me to see how well students understand their assignment, since they have to summarize it in their own words. And since the post-it is on the music, they are sure to see it during the week even if they don’t check their assignment binder. (And, let’s face it—many of our students neglect to check their assignment books during the week, right?)

So what do you think? Do you use post-its with your students? Do you have a teaching tool you just can’t live without? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

 


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Free Printable: "March Madness" Technique Flashcards!

3/19/2019

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My students love playing flashcard-style games to drill note names and rhythms. So, I had a thought--why not create a similar game to practice technique? So, today's free printable is a set of technique flashcards with a basketball theme that you can use with students of all ages to make practicing technical movements fun! 

There are many different ways to explain technical movements to students--however, the analogy I have found most helpful for most of my students is that of a ball--bouncing, rolling, dropping, or rocking. It helps my students to make the connection between technical movements at the piano and sports--just like they do drills and warm-ups at basketball or soccer practice, drills and warm-ups are equally important at the piano.

I think drilling these movements away from the piano also helps students to focus on how each movement should feel, without having to worry about what notes are being played. You can do this movement with an imaginary ball, or a real one if you like!

Here are the technical movements introduced in each flashcard and how I teach them:

1. 
​Swing and drop. This technique helps students to practice relaxing their arm and shoulder and using their arm weight to drop onto the piano keys. How to do it: have students swing their arms to fully relax. You can check for relaxation by lifting the student's arm and gently shaking it--have them do the same to your arm so they can feel how heavy a relaxed arm is. Once the arm is relaxed, on the count of 3 drop onto the piano keys (or your lap for practice). Just like a ball being dropped, there will be a slight rebound at the bottom--this will keep students from "pushing" into the keys when they play using arm weight.

2. Bounce the ball. This is the technique I use to teach students to play with a relaxed, non-legato touch with a flexible wrist. It is also the beginnings of playing staccato. How to do it: have students pretend they are dribbling a basketball. Make sure they are moving their arm slightly and keeping their wrist flexible (you can demonstrate how silly it would look to dribble with a tense arm and wrist).

3. Roll the ball across. This technique is the foundation for legato playing, as students learn to transfer their arm weight across their hand as they play each finger. How to do it: have students pretend they are rolling a ball across the piano keys. Tell them to notice how their arm moves along with their hand as they roll.

4. Roll the ball forward. This technique helps students to lift their wrist in preparation for phrasing. It is also a good way to help make sure students are playing with a relaxed wrist and arm. How to do it: have students imagine that their hand is resting on top of a ball as they roll the ball forward. This movement should help their wrist lift naturally. It may also be helpful to imagine that they have a tiny ball on top of their hand, and as they "roll forward" and lift their wrist they are rolling the ball off the front of their hand and onto the piano keys.

5. Rock the ball. This technical movement teaches students the feeling of forearm rotation. How to do it: have students imagine that their hand is resting on top of the ball as they gently rock the ball from side to side.

Once students are comfortable with these movements, you can use these cards in different ways during your lessons. Here are a few ideas:
  • Use the flashcards game-style. Flip each one randomly and have students demonstrate the technique. Start with one or two cards and add more as students are comfortable.
  • Use the flashcards as students are playing their scales. Choose one of the first four cards and have students incorporate it into their playing of that scale.
  • String several flashcards together. For example, have a student: 1) drop the ball, 2) roll the ball across, and 3) roll the ball forward. These are the technical movements required to make a lovely legato phrase! 
  • Match up the flashcards to a student's music. Go through a piece that your student is currently learning and choose which technique might be helpful in each part of the music. For example, are there loud notes where a "drop" would be helpful? Are there staccato or legato passages that would require "bouncing" or "rolling across"? Where might a "roll forward" help to shape a phrase?

Click HERE to download your free "March Madness" technique drill flashcards!

What do you think? How do you teach technical gestures to your students? Do you have any tips to help make practicing technique fun? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments!



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Living Composer Project--Month 2 Wrap-Up

3/7/2019

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Read about the Living Composer project and download the worksheets HERE. Read the Month 1 Wrap-Up HERE.

This month, we continued our studio-wide "living composer project" by researching a couple of our favorite living composers. In hindsight, it shouldn't surprise me that my students were most interested in researching the pop and film composers they have learned about. This led to a few pretty funny debates. (Is Harry Styles of One Direction really an important living composer? LOL!)

However my students did uncover some interesting facts about many of the composers we have been studying, including:


  • John Williams got his start in the music business as a jazz pianist and studio musician. He performed in nightclubs and recorded soundtracks for composers such as Henry Mancini.
  • Koji Kondo, video game composer, is also a pianist and once performed live onstage with the band Imagine Dragons.
  • Deadmau5, DJ and electronic composer, owns a $5 million home in Canada. (A very interesting fact to the 10-12 year old demographic!) His real name is Joel Thomas Zimmerman.
  • Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (of Frozen fame) co-wrote the songs for the movies Frozen and Coco, and they are married with two children.
  • Alan Menken has written the music for many Disney movies, including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. He has won two Academy Awards for his music.

It was a bit more difficult to find facts about the pedagogical composers we are studying--after all, most of them don't have Wikipedia pages or fan sites! However, we did find a few fun facts:

  • Nancy and Randall Faber, husband and wife team, live in Michigan and have written over 300 publications for piano students.
  • Martha Mier is 82 and lives in Florida. She has written hundreds of piano pieces for students; the most well-known is her "Jazz, Rags, and Blues" series.
  • Jennifer Eklund lives in southern California and has a master's degree in historical musicology.

This month we also did lots of sight-reading by living composers in our lessons. One of my favorite ways to work on sight-reading is to play duets--so I pulled together a few fun duet books to use with my students this month. Here are the ones we used (click on the picture for more information about any of these books):
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​"I Like Duets, Book 1" by Valerie Roth Roubos.

This is fun, easy book of equally-leveled duets that sound a bit contemporary. My students especially liked "Chipmunk Chatter."


"Ready to Rock" by Chrissy Ricker.

Hey, I'm a living composer, too! I enjoyed using one of my own duet books with my students this month. This book has elementary solos with teacher duets. "Showdown" and "Rockin' Out" were the favorites with my students this month.

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​"Dancing with my Shadow" by Lisa Donovan Lukas.

This is a lovely collection of elementary pieces with teacher duets. My students enjoyed sight-reading the title piece, "Dancing with my Shadow."


​"Simple Sensations" by Robyn Fehrenbacher.

This is another great option for elementary students with teacher duets. My students enjoyed sight-reading the happy song "Island Dance" from this collection.
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This coming month, each student will be choosing one composer to focus on and will play and listen to several of this composer's works. We will also be choosing music for our spring recital this month--so I am hoping to have a wide variety of living composers represented on the program!

What do you think? Do you have your students research the composers they are studying? Have you discovered any new-to-you living composers recently? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
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    Author

    Chrissy Ricker is a pianist, teacher, and composer from North Carolina. These are her thoughts on teaching, composing, and all things music.


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