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!

Here’s a generic version of a Student Evaluation Form I developed to use at my Year-End Evaluations each spring. I also have each student and parent fill out a separate questionnaire asking for their input on various questions. I made this form more generic so that it can be used at any time of year.

I use the space under each area to write additional comments about what I think the student has done well or what needs improvement. I keep a copy in my file for the student and give the parent a copy to keep for their own records. You can click on the picture of the form to download your own copy for use in your studio.

Inspired by this Bag O’ Blocks and several others like it that I’ve seen, I decided to try making my own scale blocks. I could have just bought this wonderful set from Music Educator’s Marketplace, but I wanted to have several octave sets and couldn’t afford to buy more than one.

So, I began my creative endeavor with the following supplies:

60 one-inch wooden blocks, matte finish craft paint, 4 one-inch paint sponges, small paint brush, a can of clear acrylic sealer (also matte finish)

Step 1:

Make sure I know what I’m doing. I drew up this little diagram so that I would know which blocks needed to be painted white-black-white-black and which ones needed to be painted white-white-white-black.

Step 2:

Start painting! I painted white first that way if there was overlap, the black would cover it up.

Step 4:

Keep painting! Since there were two sides that didn’t need key names, I decided to paint them in my studio colors: red and yellow. The longest part of this project was painting all the key names. It would have probably worked (and definitely been faster!) to use a paint pen, rather than a brush, but I didn’t have any on hand and didn’t feel like making a run to the store.

Step 5:

The paint dried very fast, so as soon as I finished the last key name I took them outside and sprayed them with the acrylic sealer. I left them out to dry for about 10 minutes, then turned them over and sprayed the other side. After about another 10-15 minutes, they were done. (I definitely advise using a sealer. It was amazing how much better the blocks looked and felt after they were sprayed with it. I can tell they will last longer this way!)

Step 6:

Bag them up, with two complete octaves per set, and think of lots of ways to use them! I’ve already used the scale blocks at least 5 times this week and hope to post some specific ideas in the future. They are such a blast!

Just came across this list from MTNA that I thought was great! After spending part of the afternoon working on ideas and objectives for my summer piano camps (yes, I confess, I’m just now getting around to planning them), I can see how these will be really helpful in determining what kinds of activities to incorporate. And of course, it provides some great structure to work within for private lessons throughout the year.

Ten Essential Skills for Promoting a Lifelong Love of Music and Music Making

1. Ability to internalize basic rhythms and pulse.

2. Ability to read—musical literacy.

3. Ability to perform with physical ease and technical efficiency.

4. Ability to hear the notes on the page.

5. Ability to work creatively—improvise, compose, harmonize and play by ear.

6. Ability to understand basic elements of theory, form, harmony, etc.

7. Ability to respond to the interpretive elements of the composition in order to express the emotional character of the music.

8. Ability to conceptualize and transfer musical ideas.

9. Ability to work independently and problem solve.

10. Ability to perform comfortably individually and with others in a variety of settings.

Do you know about the FJH New Release Club? I’ve been a member for several years now and love getting the newest releases every quarter. As a member of the club, you get a 50% discount off of each item you receive in the quarterly packet. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date on new materials. I just found out that you can sign up to be a member of the club on-line. So, if you’re interested in getting these great new releases from composers like Nancy & Randall Faber, Melody Bober, Kevin Olson, Timothy Brown, Elizabeth Greenleaf, Mary Leaf, and many more, check it out and sign up for yourself!

Check out Karen’s latest post on how she helped a group of students learn the basics of composition in 11 easy-to-understand steps. This can be such a challenging area for some students, so Karen’s list will be a wonderful tool to help them get started!

At the beginning of each lesson, I’ve started having my students draw a popsicle stick from a container on the piano. Each popsicle stick has one of the following written on it:

1. Chords

2. Rhythmic Dictation

3. Rhythm and Pulse

4. Vocabulary

5. Melodic Dictation

6. Sight-read

7. Play A Game

8. Written Theory

9. Description

10. Scales/Intervals By Ear

11. Scale Patterns

12. Intervals

13. Note ID

These are all areas that I want to work on with each student, but of course can’t fit into their regular lesson time each week. So at the beginning of the lesson, they draw a stick and we spend 5 or so minutes focusing on that area. Last week one of my young students drew the “Melodic Dictation” stick. I knew he couldn’t handle the wonderful Melodic Dictation worksheets that I use for my older students, so I had to come up with something else for him to do. This is what I came up with:

I grabbed some of my circle magnets and told him that I would play five notes and he had to arrange the magnets on the magnetic board according to the direction that he heard me play the notes - either up, down or repeating. I started out with only those three options. He caught on very quickly, so I told him I would try a couple more advanced patterns. I would mix the notes so that sometimes they might go up and sometimes they might go down. He had to listen carefully and again arrange the notes in the direction that he heard them move.

Not only did he do a great job with this, he also had a ton of fun doing it! I’ve continued to use this with other students that have drawn the “Melodic Dictation” stick and so far they’ve all caught on quickly and enjoyed this fun activity. It seems like a great introduction to help students become successful with melodic dictation exercises!

Here are a couple of resources I’ve found for good deals on magnetic boards and magnets:

Magnetic Boards with Magnets - 1 board, 2 magnets, 1 marker

Magnetic Boards-6/pk

Magnetic Board with marker and 2 round magnets

Color Dots Magnets - 15/pk

Ceramic Disc Magnets - 51/pk

Easy Grip Mighty Mini Magnets - 24/pk

Here’s a helpful list of songs that can be played using only the black keys on the piano. From almost the very first lesson, I like to have students working on picking out songs by ear. This will be a great list to keep on hand!