This year I included this scale chart (this is slightly updated from the chart I posted here – I removed the chord inversions and included more tempo markings for arpeggios) in the front of each student’s assignment book. What a tremendous tool it has been! We have gotten through so many more scales than we normally do (and I don’t have to constantly flip back through all the previous weeks’ assignment pages to recall which scales each student has already done!) and the students are much more motivated to learn their scales. They are taking much more initiative to increase the speed of their scales as well.
For the younger students, we do pentascales, but I still check them off on the chart. For most of them I just skip the eighth note column and have them use the metronome for the quarter note. I’ve also had my little ones start doing cross-over arpeggios where they just play the root and 5th note of each chord in each hand, then cross the LH over the RH, play the root and come back down. (i.e. for a C arpeggio, they play: LH C-G, RH C-G, LH cross to C, RH G-C, LH G-C…hopefully that makes sense…) They depress the damper pedal while they play and really love creating such a “grown-up” sound. 🙂
This is one page I plan to include in the student assignment books every year from now on!
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