There’s one question that I’ve been forgetting to ask my piano students lately. But I started asking it this week and it’s made a world of difference.
I realized that I spent a lot of my time teaching to my piano students… and not enough time learning with my piano student. I was forgetting to ask “How will you remember this?” or “How should you remind yourself?”. I was just telling them how!
I write all over my students’ books, but the markings I write on their books are markings that make sense to me. What works for me might not always work for my student.
All of my hints and reminders and memory tricks mean nothing if they don’t speak to that particular child. If your piano student is the one actually creating the memory tricks… they are, of course, more apt to remember!
Ask These Questions… And Delight In The Answers!
Ask these questions and you may just be surprised at the answers! By using the answers you get to guide your teaching, many of the same-old same-old things that your piano students continually forget to do may just melt away…
“What should we write on your page to help you remember?”
“Can you show me where we should put a reminder?”
“What would make you notice this part in your piece?”
“What do you think of when you see this?”
Imagination Is A Good Thing!
I had to laugh at some of the answers that my students came up with. Me: “What would make you notice this part in your piece?” Ben: A giant bat!
Okay… 🙂
But that giant bat we drew meant he never ever forgot that F#… apparently it was much more effective than anything I had written or circled in his book. Who knows what imaginative ideas your students will come up with that will change the way you teach… just by asking a simple question!
You’re so right! I usually hand over colored pencils to my students to ask them to pinpoint areas which need improvement & to actually draw/write in markings themselves. Today, one of my singing students said, “Let’s circle this part! We circled the other two sections last time and that’s why I got them right today!” I was so pleased.
I love the idea of drawing a giant bat! The wackier, the better, I suppose – and aren’t bats much more interesting than colored circles and lines?
Lol! I love this. Wish I had thought of it before, but I’ll certainly use this approach moving forward.
I’m always looking for ways to get the student thinking/learning on their own.
I had a teenage student who was always forgetting to do her theory pages. I asked her, “What can we do to help you remember?” She jokingly responded, “Well, I guess if you wrote it in bold print across the top of my music and highlighted it with bright pink marker, then I MIGHT remember.” So, I did just that. The next week, I was greeted with, “Mrs. Brown that actually worked! I did all of my theory pages this week!”
When teaching students a new song, I frequently ask them how they think they should practice, which section is going to be the hardest, what might work to fix a persistent rhythm problem, what they might do to help them remember a key change or missed note, etc.
Our role as piano teachers is to give the students the tools AND teach them how to use them. If they never get to the point of being able to completely learn a piece of music without any assistance from me, then I have completely failed and wasted all of their time and money.
I think we as piano teachers KNOW this, but we so easily forget. Thank you for the helpful reminder 🙂
Good job writing this up! We use the Crayola erasable colored pencils in my studio and keep them in a piano themed large plastic cup. The kids love them! The kids are in charge of picking their color and marking their own music. There is something to be said about practicing “ownership”, when the student has made choices of how to write on the music, what to write, and color chosen (which is oh, so important over here!).
Thank you for this reminder. During yesterday’s lesson, I asked a young girl (her 2nd lesson) “what should we do to help you remember?” She said that red is for the right hand and green reminds her of the left hand. So I gave her a green highlighter and red coloring pencil and she marked it up. She tried her piece again, and it worked!! The question made a world of difference. Thank you so much!!
This is so very true. I have always had my students write in many of their own markings and reminders on their music for this reason because I often felt they were just sort of going blank when they would see my many notations during their home practice. It does help a lot. And since I’ve been teaching online and not in person, it’s become something they HAVE to do instead of me. I’m not there! It comes down to the quote, “ Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Thank you for your good advice!