In my “not-a-piano-teacher” life I don’t have a lot of pet peeves. Okay, so it bugs me when tourists take pictures with their massive iPads… and when my socks slide down inside my boots… but other than that… I’m pretty even keeled.
But inside the piano studio, there is something that drives me absolutely bonkers! Want to know what it is?…
When a piano student reaches the end of his method book and cannot easily play the pieces at the beginning. Ugh… I just totally did a little “shake it off” wiggle to lose that mental image…. and now that song is stuck in my head. Which reminds me of another pet peeve named Taylor Swift…. but I digress.
Piano Piece Passports and How to Use Them
It makes perfect sense to me that if a student has reached the end of his method book, then the pieces at the beginning should be ready to perform at the drop of a hat. It is for this reason that I don’t “check off” a piece (I use POP instead… read about that here).
Another strategy that I use, and that I’ll discuss in the rest of this post (and share a free printable for!) is “Piano Piece Passports”.
What is a Piano Piece Passport?
A Piano Piece Passport is a way of providing a moment of reflection before moving on after a piece is completed. A Piano Piece Passport is made up of a Passport Cover (link below) followed by 3 sticky notes. The cover is taped to the sticky notes and then the entire booklet (passport) is taped to a completed piece. On each sticky note inside the Piano Piece Passport is a student reflection pertaining to the completed piece.
The 2 Step Process To Using Piano Piece Passports:
Step 1 – Filling out the passport questions.
After a piece is “completed”, the first step in this activity is to answer one of the following questions on each of the 3 pages (sticky notes) on the Piano Piece Passport. These questions are just samples. You and your piano student can certainly have different discussions.
1) What was the most difficult part of this piece and why?
2) What was helpful when learning this piece?
4) My favourite part of this piece was ______
3) I still have a question about (or trouble with) ____
4) My favourite part of this piece was ______
5) If I were to teach someone to play this piece, I would be sure to _______
These simple little questions provide two very important things 1) a moment of reflection for your student where he actively reviews his own learning and 2) a chance for insights on your part…. are there common themes emerging from piece to piece?
Step 2 – Revisiting each piece and stamping the passport
As your student completes regular review of his pieces, ask him to also refer to his passport and to reflect on each answer on each of the sticky notes. Every time you assign a “passport piece” for review, add a passport “stamp” (or small sticker) to the passport cover to show how often he has “traveled back in time”.
Because We Love Ya… Here’s the Printable
If you want to add Piano Piece Passports to your students’ review, you can print the template below. Simply cut out the squares, attach them to a set of 3 post-it-notes, use one post-it note per “reflection question” and tape the bundle to the top of each completed piece.
Click here to download and print Piano Piece Passports. These fit your average 3×3 post-it notes. Have fun!
Barbara says
March 24, 2015 at 5:07 amIt’s so nice to know that it’s not just my students who have this issue. My students are equally surprised when they can’t play an earlier piece with a sticker on it. This will certainly give them incentive to keep playing their favorite pieces out of the book and as they answer and review the questions it will give them another avenue for remembering the piece. As always, a big thank you for sharing your awesomeness:)
Andrea says
March 24, 2015 at 10:01 amYou’re most welcome Barbara!
Bethany says
March 24, 2015 at 6:21 amThis post made me chuckle. As a current student looking at beginning teaching, I totally understand this frustration. Personally, I love going back and playing old pieces! If I find one that I can’t play anymore, I’ll sit down and work on it until I can. It kinda bugs my mom because I’ve got old piano books stacked up all over the place… 🙂 My sister, however, rarely goes back to play old pieces, and on the rare occasion, she gets discouraged because she can’t play them anymore. Maybe the passport will help her in this area. Thanks for sharing!
Anna says
March 24, 2015 at 7:40 amYes, I get the same results here too. I purposefully try to have them begin the lessons by playing a “warm up” song from earlier in their books. They look just as shocked (as I feel) when they can’t play a piece they’ve passed months ago. One problem is they aren’t interested in playing it again, enough to re-learn it. Sometimes I work w/ them to put their own fun lyrics to it and that often helps get them trying it again. The other day with an 8th grader, I challenged him to play the treble clef part with his left hand, then vice versa. I felt a little sneaky (heh heh), but he suddenly was interested in the challenge, so it was a win-win situation for both of us! I’m excited to try the Passport idea. It sounds fun as many kids might not even really understand what passports are even if they’d heard of them, so I think it’ll be intriguing to them. 🙂 Thank you.
Andrea says
March 24, 2015 at 10:02 amGreat idea to add a “twist” to the old piece to spice it up and make it new again Anna!
Eva says
March 24, 2015 at 8:44 amThis is a great idea! Thank you .
What I have been doing is keeping a repertoire list in the back of my students notebooks . I ask them to play on piece from the list each time they practice, and to keep those pieces polished. I also ask that they review older pieces in the method books. I thought that would address the problem, but for some students , it doesn’t. It will be fun to make those little passports to help bring the memories back.
Andrea says
March 24, 2015 at 10:02 amHope it works for you! 🙂
Jolene Berke says
March 24, 2015 at 10:26 amHave you looked into Vista Print or elsewhere to actually market and produce these? I am too lazy to print, cut, stick, etc. But if you sold a stack of these “already made” post-it notes, I would totally buy. Print questions right on them? I could ask my printer if he can do…I just think you are giving us all these great, free, ideas. And I know you do sell things on your site….but I would look into producing some of these things and selling to teachers. There are not enough good sites / places for us to buy specifically piano teacher items….just a suggestion! Thank you for the great idea! Love your site, ideas, and blog!
Tamara Koop says
March 24, 2015 at 2:17 pmTotally agree with Jolene! You should look into getting all your brilliant ideas, games etc printed and marketed! I would buy them!
Eleanor Baldwin says
March 24, 2015 at 9:33 pmIn addition to an assignment book, I give each student a spiral called The Magic Book. Their assignment is to put stickers or drawings on it to make it look as magic as possible. Then whenever they know a piece perfectly, they write the piece, the page number and the name of the book in The Magic Book. Whenever they haven’t practiced (and I live in a beach town so it happens fairly often) I casually tell them they have another week to work on the assignment if they review several songs in their Magic Book. They are so happy that there are no guilt trips, they happily play their favorites and we keep score on the ones that still sound good. Sometimes I draw a cartoon of a happy cat near the title and they go bananas.
Amy says
March 25, 2015 at 4:41 amOkay – sorry I don’t quite understand the construction of the Passports.
Passport card on top of – or underneath the sticky notes? (Or both?) Sticky notes attached to the whole thing – and meant to stay attached? By tape?
Donna says
August 11, 2015 at 6:06 amI’m glad you asked, because I don’t really get it either. I’ve read it several times and can’t figure out how it all goes together. Maybe could you attach a picture of how it looks in a book? And, do you put one of these mini-packets on each song in the book?
Thanks, Donna
Briana says
March 25, 2015 at 7:01 amHi!! Wondering if you can send a black and white copy of this to me? I want to print it out but don’t have color ink. Thank you so much for this great idea!!!