How do other teachers go about teaching the I – V7 chord pattern? I use a scale book primarily. I do explain it to them and some students get it; others have no clue and cannot convert the pattern to any other key! When I introduce the I – V7 chord progression, it’s after the […]
Monday Mailbag
Monday Mailbag – Practice Your Way to a Party
Could you expand on the Practice Your Way to a Party? I am looking for a good summer incentive program. Each of the students set their own goal for how much time they wanted to practice each week. Once they reached specific goals, they got to color in circles or triangles on a page at […]
Monday Mailbag – Practice Incentives
What are some of your incentives after students receive their “diligence dollars” or “treasure chest points.” Do you have something “big” for them to spend them on, or do your students receive smaller prizes? I am trying to dream up something that would get my older students excited as well as the younger ones. It […]
Monday Mailbag – Teaching Pentascales
When do you introduce the five finger pentascale to a student? Any information regarding pentascales would be greatly appreciated. I usually introduce pentascales as soon as the student has learned the names of all the white keys and understands half steps and whole steps. We start with the C-Major pentascale, and I teach them the […]
Monday Mailbag – Treasure Chest Piano Practice Incentive
I was directed to your site from an Internet search I did to find more info about piano pedagogy. I think I originally found it on www.toddfamily.com/policies. Anyway, can you tell me more about your Treasure Chest idea? Sure! One year for my practice incentive program, I did a Treasure Chest theme. Students could earn […]
Monday Mailbag – Creating Worksheets
Which program do you use to create such cool worksheets? I created this worksheet in MS Word, using Finale for the scale and key signature snippets, and then importing them into MS Word. This was actually my first time using the export feature in Finale, but I had a visual in mind of how I […]
