Piano students who’ve been studying with me for a long time put in the practise they need to and generally ask for assistance through rough practise scheduling spots. They’ve stayed in lessons with me because of their love for daily practise and their commitment to managing their daily schedule to make practise a habit. So, this post isn’t about them.
Instead, I’d like to talk about piano students who enroll in piano lessons with me for the first time and what it takes to get these students practising. Particularly young piano students who can’t use practise apps because of restricted or parent supervised access to devices and to internet access.
What Actually Helps Young Piano Students Practise?
I think it’s about getting the piano parents on board with practise and working with them. Then, gradually easing young students into a supported independence with piano practise.
Daily practise tends to be a goal and not an immediate achievement for most piano students I teach these days. It takes students anything from a month to a year to organize their busy lives to make time for music, and it’s only after this that they settle down to learn.
Lesson Notes and Weekly Assessments Helped
- Very clear-cut homework assignments that both parents and students can access.
- A weekly evaluation of student achievements in different sections of music learning.
- An overview of where this achievement ranks vis-a-vis student goals.
- Lesson recordings of homework assignments to highlight accomplishments and lesson practise sessions for guided home practise when students aren’t able to follow practise instructions on their own.
This means a lot of thought given to weekly assessment and some out-of-lesson time. Time well spent because this seems to bring some ease with getting students to talk about and address the real reasons they don’t practise.
Why some of my beginners took time to settle into daily piano practise
- Too much to do every day because students and families were overscheduled or committed to too many activities.
- Daily home routines that were erratic with student schedules constantly changing. So, forming the habit of practise becomes challenging.
- Disturbances from stay-at-home family members who categorize piano as a fun activity rather than what it really is – an enjoyable ‘learning’ activity that involves thinking and effort. This is a challenge for quite a few piano students. It’s harder for piano students than for music students with portable instruments. The piano is a big instrument and cannot be taken into a quiet room when the piano room is busy. This is where parents can play a role in creating an undisturbed practise environment. And teach their children how to find a calm island and quiet space even when the piano room is busy with other activities.
- Busy parents who are unlikely to have the time to read homework and progress reports with lots of detail.
- Piano teachers (ME) with a need to provide feedback that says what needs to be said and unable to find a way to say what is needed in a brief and clear way that piano parents can understand. This last and MOST IMPORTANT point actually has the power to get parents to change the first three points and make a difference.
Lesson Notes in our Teacher-Student Family WhatsApp Communications
The Learning Pace – Students get evaluated based on a learning pace. Either Paced for Progress or Easy Learning.
Paced for Progress is the most popular and students on Easy Learning seem to be using our Recorded Assignments (RA’s) to move up the pace.
Image from beginner level lessons.
A Big Thank You to a very helpful piano teacher friend Elizabeth John Louis, the founder of the Juliane Ehrenberg Music School – for her idea of using feedback emojis and moving my communications to parents and students from Gdrive to WhatsApp Student Family Groups. It worked!!!
I took this idea forward and used it to highlight achievement at the student-selected learning pace. Either a conscious choice or one made by the way they practise. And used it to provide details of music skills that need to be practised at home. My Lesson Notes format also helps me highlight some points mentioned below.
- Progress weekly in rotation, in different areas or music skills is good as it helps students focus on all music skills over time or realize they have a high level of skill in specific areas.
- Steady progress in piano technique and using all parts of the lesson – whether it’s our RA’s (Recorded Assignments) or Student Community Events Online – is important and makes a HUGE difference.
- Having a student choice Lazy Week or No Assessment Week now and then is good. It’s a clear message to students that they have some say in what they do. It’s important to let students guide the pace of their own learning.
Motivating Adult Students
My adult students get feedback live during their piano lessons and performance video recordings in class seem to work well enough for them right now. Adults interested in piano examinations need higher sight-reading goals while others might prefer less sight-reading and a more relaxed and self-paced learning. It’s different for each student.
This change in the Lesson Notes I send my young students – both children and teens – is new. They’re an outcome of experiments with providing weekly feedback to my piano students this year, as well as some discussion with a community of piano teachers I belong to at TopMusic.
Achieving my TopMusic Teacher Certification in 2023 gave me many ideas on student motivation and I’m thrilled because this brought much change to the duration and quality of my student’s piano practise in 2024!
Other posts from The Piano Lesson Diaries here.
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