Is everyone else equally crazy this time of year?! We just finished our Music Progressions evaluations this weekend - hooray! (So that’s my excuse for a dearth of posts this week.) I told my students I would even give them one week off of playing scales as a reward for all their hard work. They were thrilled! Now I’ve been thinking through some new things I want to try next year. I think I’m finally ready to take the plunge and offer an “official” computer lab in my studio. We do various technology-related things throughout the year, like recording CDs, participating in the Clavinova Festival (another one of my students just won a new Clavinova this month! That makes three from my studio now. If you have a Clavinova Festival in your area, I highly recommend it!), notating compositions in Finale, etc., but I’ve never offered a full-blown computer lab.

So, I’ve been exploring the Music Learning Community website more indepth and considering whether I should develop my computer lab around it to start with. I’ve heard wonderful reviews of it from lots of teachers and I know my students love the free games they play on it. The site offers “more than 450 web-based, fully interactive, multimedia learning games for music students — beginners through Level 4.” Pretty impressive!

Anyway, I’m putting this on my list of things to explore and figure out this summer. If any of you offer a computer lab or use Music Learning Community in your studio I’d love to know how it works for you and if you have any tips for someone just starting out.

Megan has set up a wonderful Web Assignments page on her website where she posts a new web assignment for her students each week. The page is set up like a traditional blog, so you can subscribe to the RSS feed or, better yet, have your students subscribe to the RSS feed and complete the web assignments as part of their weekly lesson assignment!

Check out this new Technique Achievement Poster that D’Net designed! This would be a great alternative to placing individual Scale Charts in each student’s assignment book. I think it would be especially motivating to see the progress posted on the studio wall!

At the end of each year I schedule the last week of lessons as a Year-End Evaluation day with each student and their parents. Prior to the evaluation I send a questionnaire home for the parents and students to fill out and I fill out an evaluation of each student that I discuss with them at that lesson. The evaluation form I use is posted here. I change the questionnaires a little each year depending on the feedback I want to receive, but the general layout of the forms remains the same. The images below are linked to MS Word documents so that you can edit and adapt them for your own use.

Year-End Student Questionnaire:

Year-End ParentQuestionnaire:

While trying to think of a way to help my students learn key signatures better, I thought of my elementary school days when our entire class daily chanted our phonics charts and multiplication table charts. Those sounds and facts were drilled into me and I will never forget them! It occurred to me that perhaps a Key Signature Chart could serve the same purpose. So I decided to create one so that I can give it a try.

The chart is designed so that one side has all the sharp keys and the other side has all the flat keys. My plan is to have my students say, “This is the key signature of C Major and a minor. It has no sharps and no flats.” Another example would be, “This is the key signature of B Major and g-sharp minor. It has five sharps - F#,C#,G#,D#,A#.” I thought it might also be helpful to have a blank chart to test students on their knowledge once they’ve learned all the key signatures. Here are the various key signature files I created that are available to download and print for free (the larger size can be used as a wall poster; the smaller size can be placed in the front of a student assignment book):

Key Signature Chart - 11×17″
Key Signature Chart - 8.5×11″
Key Signature Chart-Blank - 11×17″
Key Signature Chart-Blank - 8.5×11″

This is kind of a “duh!” idea, but when I attended our local music teachers association Mid-Winter Retreat two weekends ago, the guest speaker was sharing about how she introduces new pieces to her students. She said, “Of course I always start out by having them make a list of all the terms in their piece and what they mean…” Of course. As in, this is something that every good music teacher already does, right? I shifted my eyes around to see if everyone else was nodding their heads as if to say, “old news.” But inwardly I wondered, “why haven’t I ever done that? What a good idea!” Sure, I’m forever pointing out symbols or terms and asking students what they mean. Invariably I get a blank look as if to say, “how should I know…you’ve never told me.” And invariably, I never am quite sure whether I discussed that particular term with that particular student.

Having the student list all the terms and definitions as a matter of habit at the onset of every new piece seems like a systematic way of precluding such situations. Of course, then the student will lose the paper or it will get chewed up by the dog or colored on by the little sister and then the student will be required to make a new list (at which point the student will look at me imploringly and ask if they really have to write a whole new list and I will remind them that their parents pay me good money to devise such torturous tactics and this is my newest one…). And maybe, just maybe, by writing down these terms and definitions over and over and being drilled on them at their lesson each week they will eventually know them by heart. It’s definitely worth a try!

Another e-mail newsletter I subscribe to is “Get Ready to Lead!” by Dr. Jeff Myers of Passing the Baton, an international organization founded for the purpose of “equip[ping] adults to personally mentor and coach the next generation of culture-shaping leaders.” The newsletter is both inspiring and practical, offering specific tips that teachers can apply in their teaching or in their personal lives. Here’s an excerpt from this week’s newsletter that I thought was a good reminder of the importance of constantly learning and growing. (It was followed by an excellent list of “Sixteen Simple Ways to Become a Lifelong Learner.“) The article is entitled “The Plateau Effect: Don’t Let it Happen to You!“:

As a teacher, I have a heart for learning. Unfortunately, for far too many educators, ignorance is bliss. A study done by Steven G. Rivkin, Eric A. Hanushek, and John F. Kain in 2005 showed that…

…There appear to be important gains in teaching quality in the first year of experience and smaller gains over the next few career years. However, there is little evidence that most teachers continue to improve after the first three years.

This is not new information. I recently reviewed a doctoral dissertation by Henry Joseph Hector, published in 1972. Hector reviewed 44 studies on teacher effectiveness and found that…

…Only 5 studies out of the 44 reviewed showed support for the contention that teachers continue to improve their performance with increasing age or experience throughout their careers. Thirty-nine studies found no continued growth in teaching performance as the teacher aged or gained more experience. These studies used an assortment of criteria for measuring teacher effectiveness; yet, the older or more experienced teacher performed at a lower level than the younger, less experienced teacher.

Interestingly, a teacher’s level of education has little to do with his effectiveness. Those with masters degrees are not necessarily better teachers. Rather, teacher effectiveness has to do with:

* Curiosity (”Why do you think that is?“)
* Growing (”You won’t believe what I just learned!“)
* Vulnerability (”I don’t know but I’ll find out.“)
* The pursuit of wisdom (”I promise you that I’ll keep learning as long as I’m teaching.“)

No matter your role in life, ask God to give you the courage to be curious all over again. Learn, grow and pass what you know on to others.

You can subscribe to Get Ready to Lead! on the home page of the Passing the Baton website.

In September of last year I made several sets of scale blocks. I’ve been using them periodically during lessons, but I decided to make more of a concerted effort to use them as a teaching and reinforcement tool with my students. Joey just finished learning all of his major scales, thanks to the aid and motivation of the scale chart in the front of his assignment book. Before we move on to the minor scales I told him that I want him to be able to immediately recall how many sharps or flats each key has and what they are. For example, I would say, “A Major” and he would reply, “3 sharps - F#,C#,G#.” I decided that step one toward that goal would be memorizing the order of sharps and flats. Enter: scale blocks!

After discussing how to figure out the pattern initially, Joey arranged the blocks in the correct order. I timed him and it took 25 seconds. I gave him 2 more chances to beat his time and he decreased it substantially each time, with a final time of 7 seconds. Next week at his lesson he’s going to see if he can beat that record! We repeated the same process with the flats. Part of his assignment this week is to write the complete order out on the staff in his manuscript book each day of the week in both bass and treble clef while saying their names out loud.

We both had fun and decided that using scale blocks is a great way to memorize the order of sharps and flats!

I’m going to continue trying to squeeze out my creative juices to come up with other fun ways to use the scale blocks. Does anyone else have any ideas they’d be willing to share?

A while back I started instituting this Mystery Song Game idea and it’s been a ton of fun! When a student finishes one of their method books I give them one week to prepare for the game. The following week we take turns with one of us playing a song and the other one turning around or closing their eyes so that they can’t see the book. The one not playing has to guess which song the other one played. I give the student extra points (or balls, dollars, etc. depending on what our incentive program is for the year) if they correctly identify the song I play and if they play a song well enough so that I can identify it. This way they have the potential to earn quite a few points and they are very motivated to do a lot of reviewing that week, which, of course, is the whole point of the game!

Just the other day I had a student who was struggling to understand the concept of the dotted quarter note. These NoteBlocks would have been an incredible help! I just finished watching the demo and can see lots of ways that these would be useful in both individual and group lessons.

Thanks to Tanya for directing me to this great teaching tool!