As I was working on some plans for the upcoming year of lessons the other day, it suddenly occurred to me that I could design some flashcards and print them fairly inexpensively using VistaPrint. I don’t know why I’ve never thought of that before, but now I’m so excited about all the possibilities for utilizing these cards!

As you can see, I used a colorful design for the back of the cards (the same one I use for my students’ manuscript books) and intentionally made them all the same so that I can use the cards for memory-type games. Then I used a blank staff design for one set of cards and a blank keyboard design for another set. I have several specific game ideas in mind that I’m hoping to post about in the coming months after I try them out and see if they work! In the meantime, though, I thought I would post the files here in case anyone else wants to get their own printed so that you can customize them for use with your students.

Follow these simple instructions to have your own flashcards printed in no time at all!

1. Right click on the above three flashcard images (one at a time) and select “Save As” or “Save Target As” in order to save the image files to your computer.
2. If you don’t already have an account at VistaPrint.com, click on over there and select the “Get Started” button for the postcard option.
3. Click on the upload your own design button. Navigate to where you downloaded the above images and upload them as prompted (they are sized exactly for the postcard printing).
4. Upload the colorful music image for the front and the staff or keyboard image for the back. (This is so that the glossy finish is actually on the back of the flashcard and you can use a marker to customize the other side without having to worry about smearing.)
5. Finish the order process until you get to the checkout page. When given the option, set up an account so that your images will be stored for future use.
6. Do a quick Google search for something along the lines of “free postcards vistaprint coupon code.” This should turn up several options that will allow you to either click on a link or enter a coupon code to get 100 postcards for free. (Even if you use the option where you have to click on another link, your postcard designs should still be in your cart, so just navigate to the checkout page and they should now show up as being free.)
7. Complete the checkout process, pay for the shipping (there will probably be a small fee for uploading the images as well, but this is a one-time fee for these images), and start dreaming up all the creative ways you can use your custom cards!
8. Repeat the same process for the other set of cards as well. I ordered my sets separately because even though you have to pay for shipping twice, you can use the coupon code again this way to get the cards themselves for free. If you put them on the same order then the free 100 postcards will only apply to one set of cards.

Let me know if you end up getting some of these printed for your students and/or if you have some creative ideas for using them!

For the last week of regular lessons this spring (the week before the Year-End Evaluations), I let each student choose whatever he/she wanted to do for the lesson. It was kind of fun to see what they chose! Some opted for a bunch of improvising, some wanted to play through their regular assignments, some wanted to do listening activities, and a great many wanted to play games!

Landon and Hayley both wanted to do games for their lesson, so we played several different ones. They really liked working together on this rhythmic dictation one. I just gave them a set of note and rest rhythm cards and then played a 2-measure rhythm pattern on the piano. They had to lay out the cards to correspond to what I played. It was a bit of a challenge at first, but they caught on really quickly! This is a great activity that is easily adaptable for individual lessons or with multiple teams in group lessons. Click here to download a set of single note and rest rhythm cards.

Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based on what we’ve done and any specific feedback that I’d like to receive, but they follow the same basic layout.

In addition to having the student and parent complete their questionnaires, I also complete an evaluation of each student:

Even though it takes a pretty good chunk of time to go through and complete the evaluations, it’s a very helpful process for me in that I have to really think through where the student is at in each area. I usually jot down specific notes related to their progress in each area, as well as circling the appropriate rating. Perhaps the most helpful part, though, is thinking through specific ideas and recommendations for the following year. I know that if I waited to do this until I do my lesson planning for the year (in August) the details for each student would be much more sketchy! Thinking through ideas for future improvement and soliciting the same from the students and parents gives me a great framework to work within when I do my lesson planning and brainstorming for the year’s practice incentive theme.

Feel free to download and use and/or adapt any of these forms for use in your studio!

At our fifth Briefing Session this year, the theme was “A Galaxy of Theory Concepts for Creative Minds.” Each student had to present a musical concept of their choice. The presentations could be simple or elaborate – basically as creative as the student wanted to be with it. It turned out pretty fun, and I was impressed with some of the concepts the students chose!

Having become recently convinced of the incredible importance of the position of the thumb for proper technique, I was wracking my brain to come up with a creative way of presenting it so that students would remember it and be motivated to work on it in their playing. Thus was born the “slide position.” It’s quite goofy, but has managed to have very good “sticking” power in my studio, so I thought I would share it here.

I created this Piano Thumb Position poster. (I’m sure someone could easily create a more attractive poster, but I had to do this on the fly in a couple of minutes, so sorry it’s a little tacky – at least it got the point across!) The presentation started with me showing them the picture of the flat slide and asking if they would like to go down such a slide. How fun would it be? How effective would it be? Of course, they probably wouldn’t go anywhere because it is laying flat on the ground!

Then I showed them the regular slide and asked how they would like that one. Of course, it would be much more fun and exciting because they could get up their speed and enjoy a nice ride! Similarly, when playing the piano, we want to channel the energy and weight from our arm through our thumb into the keys on the piano. The best way to accomplish this is by keeping the thumb in “slide position.” I made them all hold their hands up in a playing position and told them to pretend that there is a little man in the crook of their thumb trying to slide down onto the keys. This is when they really started laughing and making fun of me. Oh well, I use it to my advantage and get onto my students when they are not providing an enjoyable ride for our invisible little man.

Super goofy, I know, but now we all have a common terminology – slide position – and they know exactly what I mean when I say or write that they need to keep their thumb in slide position when they are playing scales, technique exercises, pieces, etc. And that’s what counts, right?!

While I was perusing Heidi’s blog, I came across this super cool idea! She put together Piano Preschool Lapbooks that include a variety of music flashcards and visual aids. I LOVE these and think that I will add them to the list of ideas to incorporate into the preschool piano camp that I’m putting together for this summer. There are so many great ideas…how will I ever fit it all into a 1 hour session for 6 weeks?!

For those who missed it, I updated last week’s Free Piano Scale Fingering Diagrams post to include the melodic minor scales. Originally I didn’t create melodic minor scale fingering diagrams because I figured there wouldn’t be much demand for them. So much for that theory! Based on the feedback and requests I’ve received, I went ahead and created these melodic minor scale fingering diagrams as well. The upper layer of numbers (black and white) is for the ascending scale, and the lower layer of numbers (gray) is for the descending scale. This seemed like the best way to reflect the fingering and key changes within the scale. Let me know if you have a better suggestion!

Minor Scales – Melodic

…well I was wrong! As I mentioned yesterday, in looking through some of the websites that teachers sent me, I found some really gems. One in particular merited an immediate subscription to the blog feed and a mental note to come back and peruse in more depth for some specific resources. If you haven’t seen it, you have got to check out Jen’s Piano Studio Blog!

Jen has some wonderfully creative and helpful (and free!) game and activity ideas and worksheets that you can download and use in your studio. I really love this Major/minor scale identification manipulative activity set with little feet representing the half and whole steps. What fun! I also love these Symbol Search worksheets. What a great way to help students identify all the symbols they should know in a piece of music. I’m sure you’ll have as much fun exploring this site as I did!

For some reason, some of my students really struggle with scale fingerings. I’ve been trying a variety of different tools to help them remember and master the fingerings. One of my students suggested placing diagrams in the back of the assignment books with fingerings for all the scales. I thought that was an excellent idea, so I created the diagrams below for that purpose. Next year, I’m planning to include a complete set in the back of every assignment book.

Feel free to download and print these free piano scale fingering diagrams for use with your students (let me know if you catch any mistakes or have any ideas for improvement!):

Major Scales

Minor Scales

UPDATE:

Originally I didn’t create melodic scale fingering diagrams because I figured there wouldn’t be much demand for them. So much for that theory! Based on the feedback and requests I’ve received, I went ahead and created these melodic minor scale fingering diagrams as well. The upper layer of numbers (black and white) is for the ascending scale, and the lower layer of numbers (gray) is for the descending scale. This seemed like the best way to reflect the fingering and key changes within the scale.

Minor Scales – Melodic

Another teacher recently sent me an e-mail asking if I have a listening worksheet that I use with my students. Well, yes…and no. I have a listening worksheet that I used to use with my students. Does that count? I dug through my files and uploaded this free Music Listening Worksheet in case anyone else is interested in using it with their students. I developed it for use with one of my practice incentives several years ago where students could earn extra points for turning in a completed sheet.

Now that I think about it, I should do something like this again, because my students really got into it and probably listened to more music that year than any other! Actually, I’m tossing around the idea of doing a listening/music appreciation-themed incentive next year, and if I do, I’ll probably pull this out and incorporate it into the theme. It’s so important for students to be exposed to music of a high caliber, but this is an area that I often overlook in my emphasis on learning to play the piano. This was reaffirmed to me a couple weeks ago when I did our Super Fun Listening Activity and so many of my students exclaimed about how fun it was or asked if they could just do that for their whole lesson. It’s so inspiring to hear good, beautiful music; somehow I think this should be a regular part of our lessons as music teachers…I would welcome any thoughts or ideas on this topic!

Several of my student’s moms commented on how much they liked the timeline that I used for our listening activity last week. This is one of the best timelines I’ve found! I love that it incorporates not only music history, but also little glimpses into other things going on in the world. Surprisingly, the timeline actually came from the back of the Hal Leonard Student Journal. I just tore out the pages and glued them together chronologically, then laminated it for durability. It has served me well for many years!