Category: Lesson Planning

Choosing the Right Piece of Music for Every Student

9/20/2019

One of the best things about being a twenty-first century piano teacher is the abundance of musical choices. Never in the history of music have we had more sheet music or a wider variety of styles and genres at our fingertips. We can browse online from a seemingly endless selection of music for our students and even print on-demand!

However, one of the most difficult things about being a modern piano teacher is--you guessed it--the abundance of choices! It can be tough to balance our desire to find new, exciting repertoire for our students to play with the desire to use high quality materials that will make our students feel successful and sound fabulous. With so much music to choose from, how can we tell if a particular piece is well-written and a good fit for our students?

Today, I’d like to share my own suggestions for how to assess a piece and decide if it is right for your student. Every student has different tastes and abilities--so hopefully these ideas will help you to find the right piece for every student in your studio!

First, know your levels. Choosing a piece at the right level for your student is the first step in making sure that your selection will set your student up for success. You will see a variety of terminology used by different publishing companies to describe the various levels of piano music. However, here is a general guideline that shows the most commonly-used name for each level, along with its corresponding method book levels and the designation publishers use for popular music at that level (in quotation marks):

Elementary (Beginner) - primer, level 1 - “five-finger”
Late Elementary (Late Beginner) - level 2-3 - “big note”
Early Intermediate - level 3-4 - “easy piano”
Intermediate - level 4-5 - "easy piano"
Late Intermediate - level 5-6 - "piano solo" or "piano-vocal-guitar"
Advanced - out of method books - “piano solo” or "piano-vocal-guitar"

Most publishing companies try to make a teacher's job easier by clearly listing the level of a piece of music on the front cover. However, if the level of a piece isn't clearly marked, here are a couple of resources that can help you determine it:

The Pianists Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature by Jane Magrath
This is an excellent resource that covers thousands of the most-taught piano pieces from the beginning to early advanced levels. Although you won't find the most recently composed pieces listed here, it is a must-have for leveling and choosing repertoire written around 1990 and earlier.

Sheet Music Plus Level Guidelines
Sheet Music Plus is a large, online music retailer. They have created a chart that lists characteristics of pieces at each level with examples from the standard piano literature. It will give you a good overview of what musical elements you can expect to find in pieces at each level. You can also click on a level to browse all the music they have available at that level--which is very helpful!

Next, I like to ask myself three important questions to judge whether a piece is well-written and appropriate for the student I have in mind.

1. Is the piece fun to play? A piece that feels good under the hands and matches your student's current technical abilities will be fun to play! You might ask:

Does this piece fit the hands well, with no awkward maneuvering or excessively tricky fingering?
Does this piece take into account the hand size, finger dexterity, and technical abilities of your student?
Does this piece use a tempo that is attainable for your student?
Does this piece use rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns that your student will recognize?

2. Is it fun to listen to this piece? Students (and parents) enjoy music that sounds good, no matter what level your student is currently at. You might ask:

Is it catchy? Would your student be excited to play this piece?
Is it unique? Does it contain elements that would make it interesting to a non-musical listener (i.e., a parent) in a performance setting?
Does it tell a story, communicate an emotion, or paint a picture for the listener?

3. Does this piece teach the student something? Although we want our students to enjoy the music they are playing, we also want the pieces we choose to contribute to our students' overall musical growth. You might ask:

What will the student learn by playing this piece? Does this piece reinforce your student’s current piano skills?
Does this piece stretch your student in some small way, either artistically or technically? (My rule of thumb is that a piece can have one or two new ideas--beyond that and there is potential for a student to be overwhelmed.)
Does this piece serve as a stepping stone to other works you hope your student will study in the future?

What do you think? How do you assess a new piece and determine if it is a good fit for your students? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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Thoughts on Student Motivation

8/26/2019

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This time of year, I see lots of posts in piano teacher discussion groups about practice incentives and student motivation. How do we get our students excited about the new year of piano ahead? How can we keep them practicing consistently with a host of other activities competing for their time and intention?

The issue of motivation can be tricky. Although extrinsic (or external) motivation, in the form of incentives and rewards, can be helpful in the short-term, ultimately we want the motivation for practice to come from within our students. We want our students to practice because they love music and enjoy playing the piano.

Does this sound like an unrealistic goal? In researching the subject of intrinsic (or internal) motivation, I discovered an interesting article on self-determination theory, the psychological theory that explains the emotional needs that must be fulfilled in order for us to be self-motivated to continue an activity. Psychologists theorize that self-motivation to continue any activity, whether it is following an exercise plan or sticking to a new hobby, boils down to three main emotional needs that must be fulfilled. These three emotional needs are:

1. Autonomy: feeling in control, having choices
2. Competency: feeling successful, making progress
3. Relatedness: feeling a connection to the outside world, having a sense of community

By helping our students to fulfill these three basic psychological needs, we can help them to become self-motivated and increase their enjoyment in practicing piano.

So, how can we help our students to fulfill their needs for autonomy, competency, and relatedness in our piano lessons? Here are my thoughts:

Autonomy:

Give students choices within each lesson. From choosing what piece to play first in the lesson, to creating their own practice plan for the week--choices help students to feel in control of the learning process.
Encourage students to keep a "wish list" of pieces they would like to learn to play. Having a choice in the repertoire that they learn can be extremely motivating for students.
Help students to set their own long-term goals for piano study. Every student's musical journey is different, and every student has different interests. Let students know that their goals are important and that you value their input as you develop their curriculum together.

Competency:

Help students feel successful at every lesson by providing activities that are geared towards each student's strengths--not just those that challenge their weaknesses. This may mean including aural or rote activities for students that struggle with note reading, for example.

Make sure that assignments are clear and easy to follow at home, so that students can see progress at every practice session.
Give students "easy wins"--pieces that they can learn quickly and independently.

Relatedness:

Encourage students to play familiar pieces, such as the theme from a favorite movie or video game, or a parent's favorite classical piece. It can be exciting (and motivating) to play a piece that your friends and family instantly recognize.
Create social opportunities for your students within your studio, such as informal group classes or partnering students to play duets.
Encourage students to make music with their friends. This can include accompanying friends that play other instruments, joining a band at school or church, or just jamming along to a chord chart with a friend who plays guitar.
Finally, arm your students with the musicianship skills they need for a lifetime of music-making with others. Sight-reading, lead sheet and chord chart playing, knowing how to improvise on a familiar tune by ear--these are all practical musicianship skills that will help your students be ready to make music with others anytime, anywhere.

What do you think? How do you motivate your students? What are your thoughts on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

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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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Choosing the Right Piece of Music for Every Student

Thoughts on Student Motivation

My Favorite Teaching Tools: Part One

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