FACE Worksheets

I've been having so much fun with my new laminator! It is probably one of the most versatile investments I have ever made for my studio. Not only can I use it to protect flashcards and game pieces, but I've recently started laminating my worksheets to eliminate paper waste.

Her are a few that I've created in the past week (and laminated of course! :) ). I can't wait to start using them with my students this week.

I have a fair number of students who are in Piano Adventures Level or have recently started Level 2A. I created these worksheets to help drill the treble clef space notes. Using FACE is an excellent way to reinforce spatial recognition as students use both 3rds and 5ths to identify these notes.

My goal is to drill these notes and then continue by translation that knowledge onto the keyboard, which is part of the purpose of the final worksheet. Note recognition doesn't mean anything unless they can translate it onto the keys, in my opinion at least!

As always, please feel free to provide feedback and use any of these worksheets for your own personal studios (click on the printables tab and scroll down to find these worksheets).

Re-Thinking Practice: Week 1

If you read my post on the group lesson activity on practice I planned, you already know that I have made it my goal to emphasize practice over the remainder of the spring piano term in my studio.

Taking the ideas introduced in group lesson and branching out from there, here's how I've been implementing the concept of better practice in my studio this week.

First, I enlarged and printed off the handouts I passed out to my students and hung them on the wall in my home studio- hopefully as an eyecatching reminder that I can reference with my students in the future.

Then, I spent some time thinking about the number 1 item on both charts and created a handout for students to fill out at the beginning of their lessons this past week to help them think about better practice. I plan to do this each week to help my students internalize good practice habits. I got all kinds of responses from my students- all the way from one student who took almost 20 minutes to fill her sheet out (I finally had to call it to a close since I wanted to get some playing time in!) to one student who looked a the sheet and 10 seconds later told me, "I don't know how to answer any of these" (yeah right- I don't think he'd even had time to read any of the questions, much less think about answers ;) ).

Finally, I'm getting creative and developing some alert stickers for my students! This weeks' stickers centered around spots in the music where students may have experienced a 'fumble', or sections where they speed ahead and forget to pay attention to details or wrong notes and rhythms

(a turtle reminds them to slow down, or they'll receive a 'speeding ticket' ). I'm hoping that putting these fun stickers on the music will make my students more conscious of their mistakes and help them be better listeners while they're playing.

This afternoon I'll be working on the handout for week 2- and some new stickers :)

Quick Tips for Better Practice

I have a student coming this afternoon whose mother just had her third child, meaning that he's been doing a good deal of practice on his own over the past month. He's a younger student as well as a quick learner, but I've been noticing that his practice habits lately haven't been as disciplined as I'd like them to be. He loves to speed through the music without taking the time to count or take in other details (I have a feeling he'll be getting a fair number of my new 'speeding tickets' but more on that in an upcoming post). So I took a few moments this morning to write up a short handout I'm going to staple into his practice notebook for him to use over the week at home. Hopefully this will help him be a bit more conscientious when he sits down to practice!

What do you do to help younger students whose home practice sometimes leaves a few things to be desired?! Anything you'd add to my list?

It's Good to be Back (to Regular Lessons)

Last week was group lesson week. I always enjoy the break from the usual lesson routine, the chance to see my students interact, and the prospect of a bit more free time (though this usually never turns into reality as project after project clutters up those rare free spots!).

However, while I enjoy the group lessons, over the years I've come to enjoy the individual lessons much more than group lessons. I used to hold group lessons every month, now I've dropped it back to once or twice a term. Why? First of all, I got tired of putting so much into the planning when my students weren't turning up. The parents wouldn't be willing to commit to a monthly schedule change, so I'd plan and plan only to have a few students come to each group lesson and all those who didn't meant a loss of income for me for the week. Second, I thrive on routine. While it's good to shake things up every once in a while (or else I can get way too addicted to my rut) I find that too much of this means I'm one frazzled girl. Third, I feel like students benefit most from the one-on-one time, and that frequent breaks from this routine impedes the focus and flow of progress.

Finally, I just love the personal interaction. As each of my students has returned for lessons this week, I've felt like I've been catching up with a long-lost buddy! We discuss what they've been up to, and it's so good to re-connect- even if it's been only 2 weeks since our last lesson.

So the long and short of it is, while I enjoyed the week of group lessons, I'm happy to be back in the routine and re-connecting with each and every one of my students individually.

How do you personally feel about group lessons vs. individual lessons? Do you prefer one format over another? Do you feel your students benefit more from one or the other? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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!

Great Website for Inexpensive Game Pieces...and Lots More!

While searching around for some studio game accessories, I came across this great website. Not only are there some neat game pieces available like dice, play money, pawns, chips, sand times, and spinner sets (all at very inexpensive prices), check out the beads and findings section! There is also a page with charms, decorative brads, and under the 'ephemera' page you'll find a kitchen sink pack, tickets, paper bits, and an alphamania pack....have I sold you on this website yet!? There are so many great items for games, studio prizes, teacher projects, etc...I am super excited about taking advantage of several of these great deals for my own studio. Happy shopping! :)

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.