New Scale and Arpeggio Visual Teaching Aids

Here are some new studio aids I'm in the process of developing. Over the past year I've been using strictly visual aids for teaching scales to my students. I've found that picturing the scale patterns by seeing them laid out on the keyboard is much more effective than trying to read the scale books. This was most dramatically demonstrated this spring when I had some transfer students who used scale books and were struggling with learning and executing new scales as we got to the keys that had more accidentals. One week I decided to remove the scale book and replace it with visuals- and what a difference it made!

I just recently discovered Natalie Wickham's excellent scale charts on her Music Matters blog. I'd been using visual scales before, but was a bit disappointed that the version I was using didn't have all the sharp and flat key signatures. Natalie's version has every key! I'm excited to start using them with my students- thank you Natalie for your work. :)

I love these visual scale aids, but I had been unsuccessful with finding any type of visual aid for learning arpeggios...so I'm making my own! Here is a picture of how they're turning out. If you notice, I use the 'traditional' 5-3-2-1 LH fingering- any thoughts on that? I'd be happy to revise to include 5-4-2-1 if some teachers prefer that...

I've gotten through all of the Major keys at this point. It's taken me a bit longer to work these up than I originally anticipated, but I hope to move on to minors soon. If you think these would be helpful for your students, please feel free to print them out! My only stipulation is that you let me know how they work and give me some good feedback! :)

In addition to this, I've designed my own scale spinners! WOOHOO! I've wanted to do something like this for a while. I love the musical dice that Joy has over at Color in my Piano, but as I teach from two locations and in students' homes and take a bag(s) with me, anything 3-D isn't likely to last too long! You're welcome to use these as well. They're a bit more detailed (they have all the flat and sharp key signatures on them) so if you're looking for something a bit more simplified, please let me know and I'll see what I can do!

Both of these documents are available under the printables tab of my blog.

I didn't get nearly all the work accomplished last week that I was hoping to, but I got some projects started. Stay tuned for more updates and hopefully some completed projects this coming week!

Group Lesson Activity: Best and Worst Practice Habits

While I haven't been nearly as productive this week as I had planned, I did want to share some of the fruits of my labors from group lessons. Here is one activity I used in all but my very earliest beginning group:

I found this great Top 10 Best and Worst Ways to Practice list posted on Marcia Vahls' Piano Perspectives blog. I loved the post and thought it would be a great item to present to my students.

I designed a colorful handout for each student to put in their binders, but I also wanted to spend a bit more time focusing on these concepts so that they'd hopefully retain them! So I ended each group lesson with an activity using the list- I printed off and cut out both lists and mixed them up. Up on the wall was a column for "Best Ways to Practice" and "Worst Ways to Practice". Each student had to pick one of the pieces of paper, read it, decide whether it belonged under the "best" or "worst" heading, and place it in the right spot. Sometimes the individual student decided, other times we all voted just to make it more fun! :)

As each group of students left and were given the handout I had designed, it was really cool to see them actually reading it, saying "Oh, I do that!" and sharing it with their parents.

I'm going to be further discussing these ideas in lessons over the coming weeks, but more on that later (I'm still tweaking)! In the meantime, the handout I designed for the group lesson can be found under the printables tab.

Chord Construction Madness Game for Major Chords and Inversions

Next week is group lesson week here at the studio. While planning, I realized that I wanted to do some kind of an activity for some of my intermediate students that emphasized chords and inversions. After thinking for a bit, I developed this game.

There's nothing ingenious about it, but I'm hoping that it will help reinforce major chords and inversions. At their turn, each student draws three cards. The first names the chord, the second specifies the inversion, and the final card details how they will create the chord: either by spelling the chord, writing the notes on the staff, or playing the chord on the piano. I hope this will be a fun activity in our upcoming group lessons and for individual lessons in the future as well.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement! The document can be found under the games section of my printables page.

Keyboard Note Template for Teacher Use

If you have beginner students who need a little more work with note names, I've designed this template for use in a variety of ways. I plan on using it for flashcards, worksheets, and maybe even some little sticky labels to put in students' notebooks. It took very little time to put together, and I'm excited about the multiple ways I can put it to use!

Anything great is better when shared :), so I thought I'd post this on my blog for other teachers to utilize in designing their own activities. There are two pages- the first has just blank keys, and the second has stars on keys to drill specific notes. You can download the template by following the link on my printables page. It is a Publisher file, so please let me know if you need another format. You should be able to re-size the keys to whatever works best for your current activity. Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Note Name Worksheet

Yet another worksheet for my beginner students. I've taken on an awful lot of beginner students in the past month, and I'll be using this in my upcoming group lessons for students who are just learning the names of the keys.

I got the inspiration for this worksheet from Susan Paradis' wonderful piano teacher resource website- thank you Susan! I wanted to design a worksheet that drilled note names while keeping with the St. Patrick's Day theme for March.

You can find this worksheet over on my piano printables page.

Let's Think Spring with a Pentascale Worksheet!

For group lessons this month, I'm really going to be drilling key signatures, the circle of fifths, and...pentascales! This is one of my favorite concepts to drill with my young students. Teaching them the simple pattern (Start-W-W-H-W) we discover new pentascales together and experiment with transposition. I'm always amazed at how quickly they pick it up and how well it sticks- usually! :)

But for those who need a bit more practice, and as a good review, I've designed this worksheet that drills a few simple pentascales, as well as tonic and dominant (a concept that always seems to be a little harder for my students to grasp!). If you don't teach pentascales outside of the Piano Adventures series, your students should be ready for this sheet by the time they're in Level 2A and begin learning D, A, Cm, and Gm. If you teach pentascales earlier, then this worksheet can be used anytime. it's available for download on my printables page.

Let me know if you have feedback or suggestions!

Finger Number Worksheet

I have taken on several beginner students in the past month, all of which seem to need a little extra work with getting comfortable with finger numbers. In trying to come up with multiple creative ways to help them drill the finger numbers, I came up with this worksheet.

After tracing each hand, the student gets to use a little bit of artistic creativity! I've only created a worksheet for the RH so far, but a corresponding LH sheet will follow soon! These worksheets are available for download on my printables page.

Lily Pad Interval Game

Interval recognition is key to good sightreading skills, and with that in mind I've designed this simple game for my students. You can use it with individual students, or in a group lesson setting as a game for teams.

Print the lily pads using card stock. Place the lily pads on the floor or table top. (You can pick and choose which lily pads to use depending on the students skill level or if there are specific intervals that need work). Then give each student or team a stuffed frog. Hold up an interval card (Jennifer Fink has some great 'interval tower' flashcards available at her website here) and see how fast the student or team can identify the interval and make their frog leap to the correct lily pad!

I'm looking forward to trying this game out in upcoming group lessons, but please give me any feedback you may have from using the game and if you have any suggestions. I wasn't too pleased with the image quality on the lily pads. You can find the game on my printables page.

Rainbow Landmark Note Worksheet

I don't know about all of you, but I am more than ready for spring! We had more snow this past week- yuck! To take my mind off of the snowy landscape outside, and to find just one more creative way to help my students learn their landmark notes, I created this worksheet:

It's perfect for spring and for St. Patrick's Day! Please feel free to use the worksheet in your studio, and send me any comments or suggestions you may have.

Chord Challenge Worksheets for St. Patrick's Day

If you have students who need a little more practice building major and minor chords, I've designed these worksheets for use in the coming month:

Students are given the root note of the chord on the first cloverleaf and are asked to build the rest of the chord in the remaining leaves. You can print individual sheets for each student, or laminate each sheet and reuse it for multiple students. There is a major and minor worksheet. They are available under the printable section of my blog.

This is my first attempt at designing a worksheet and offering it for general use, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!

PA Primer Reference Sheet for Teachers

I blogged about this a few weeks back, but it's taken me this long to finally get started on the project! In the coming months, I hope to create teacher help-sheets for each of the Piano Adventures levels with information on what students learn in each book, the concepts they should have a firm grasp on before moving ahead, some common struggles many of my students encounter, some of the more popular songs, etc.

At this point, I only have a few students in the Primer Level, but it's the one I'm most familiar with, so that's where I started. I attempted to color-coordinate each section; for example, I used purple since that's the color of the Primer books, pink for the technique portion as it's the color of the Technique & Artistry Book header, green for the supplementary section as it's the Performance header color, and so on and so forth. As you can see, this form is pretty empty at this point, but I wanted to post to get some feedback.

Please feel free to use this form in your own lesson planning and pass along any suggestions on how I could tweak it or what else I might want to include in a given category. You can download the form here.