.png "Piano Festival Music Slower Expressive Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern")
Romantic/Modern/Recent Calm R4
This year in my piano studio, I have a lot of siblings coming to lessons. This makes it super convenient for them to practice duets together. I was happy to discover so many fun arrangements for intermediate level students at 8notes.com that I think they are going to love!
The solo version of "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean in Faber's Show Time Disney Book 2A is a piece that almost every student who has tried it in my studio loves!
At piano group lesson week this fall I'll be reviving some of my Musical Min It to Win It Games from a previous post but also adding on a few new challenges for my intermediate students.
Divide students into teams or have them compete individually. Tally points for each round. Each team that successfully completes the challenge in less than a minute earns a point. The first team to complete or to have the most correct answers earns a bonus point.
Write down the name of a song that begins with each of the ascending intervals. Then add as many more songs as you can to the list before one minute is up.
Romantic/Modern/Recent Calm R4
This lesson plan includes practice tips for the Saorla Rising in B Minor in Wunderkeys Intermediate Pop 2 Performance Book by Andrea and Trevor Dow.
Choose the link below for lesson plans and activities that correlate with pieces in Wunderkeys Intermediate Pop 2 Performance Book by Andrea and Trevor Dow.
The theory, improvisation, and music and movement activities can be done in private lessons, group lessons, piano lab, or assigned for at-home practice.
More about the nightmares later...
First let's talk about focused practice!
Practicing the piano with specific goals in mind is significantly more effective than simply measuring the time spent and calling it good. This month, for my studio challenge, I'm inviting students to level up their practice by using focused practice strategy games during their practice. Obviously, effective practice includes spending time at the piano bench, but practicing with purpose not only helps the time pass quickly, it also helps students to be more productive so that progress happens in less time.
I enjoyed many delightful moments teaching my own six children piano when they were young. In fact, piano preschool with 2 of them and a few neighbor children was the thing that prompted me to start this blog over 15 years ago. Now, most of them have moved out or moved on to their own favorite hobbies, which don't include piano.
At first, I was sad about letting my dreams go of helping them reach new levels of proficiency in piano and felt I failed in some regard since they insisted on quitting to move on to athletics instead. But I love how Nicola Cantan described in her recent Teacher Turboboost the different archetypes of piano... appreciator, jammer, chamberist, unwinder, performer, teacher. Many students may be like my own children and music lessons will help them become mostly music appreciators (although it was fun to see a couple of my daughters teach young beginners for a short time).
I'm hoping my new granddaughter will live close enough when she's older that I can create some piano memories with her too. Can't help but dream of that when I see her perfect little, long, slender fingers!
.PNG)
Several years ago, I posted some free printables and songs that I use to really help my students remember their tempo terms. Today, I revisited that tempo terms post to prepare for our group lesson on sightreading tips and added one more Lento tempo term poster to the mix.
Sometimes it's so tempting to jump into new music at a fast pace, but practicing at the speed of no mistakes is super important so that muscle memory is paved in your brain with correct notes instead of errors.
This month at group lessons we will focus on sight reading strategies For the studio challenge, I invite students to level up their sight-reading skills by choosing a challenge to complete below.
Every month I invite my students to complete a musical challenge. The online resources below include some options for this month's Rhythm Challenge.
I recently discovered The Piano Prof YouTube channel hosted by piano professor Kate Boyd and am loving so many of her tutorial videos related to intermediate level music! She explains with such clarity and includes music samples demonstrating the concepts. I love using flipped learning and her helpful explanations are a great resource for my piano lab time lesson plans that correlate with method book pieces.
Watch starting at 6:00-6:30
I love to introduce the concept of chord symbols early on to my piano students. The freedom of playing from lead sheets not only allows them to play more interesting music early on with basic primary chord progressions, but it also opens the door for them to create and improvise using different left-hand patterns.
Remembering all of the traditional chord symbols can be a bit overwhelming for younger students.
I created this Free Printable V Chord Family Reunion Game to help my piano students solidify their knowledge of triad and seventh chord inversion symbols that are introduced in Piano Pronto Movement 2. It can be played with a music teacher and student for a quick lesson opener or be played with a larger group at group lessons. If you were choosing the family reunion fun would you rather parachute or hike? In this game you get to do both!
Posts
All Comments
