More about practice...

Continuing the theme from the last post, let's talk some more about practice.  Specifically, how does one get a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grader to practice.  Today I once again had the joy of having my third grade strings class (all twenty of them - holy cow!).  I'm already seeing the patterns in who practices and who does not.  Part of me thinks that there is not much to be done about that at this point.  But part of me thinks that there has to be some solution to get students motivated to practice.

So here is the plan:

Today's class was about using one and two fingers on the D string for the first time.  I spent a good five minutes just going around and correcting hand positions (why do students have great hand position until you ask them to move one finger?  Suddenly I had kids using the wrong hand, turning their hand around, and shifting way up the neck of the instrument!.  Once I felt we had some measure of success with basic finger placement I had everyone play a couple exercises out of the book just using E and F#.  Once they had been through those (though admittedly it was toward the end of class and I was trying to push for just a little more time), I gave the students their challenge - figure out "Mary Had A Little Lamb."  Yes, it's in your book, no it isn't called that.  No, I don't want you to find it in the book.  Yes, I am serious.  Yes, I do think you can do it, you know all the notes now.  No, really, this is completely possible.

The best part was that there were quite a few students who looked genuinely excited to give it a go.  That doesn't mean everyone, or even a majority, but it was nice to see what looked liked some enthusiasm for going home to practice.  The other best (bester? Bestest?) part? Even if most of these kids only give it a halfhearted effort, I would be willing to bet it's more practice than they've been doing. Given that some kids still can't figure out which hand to hold the violin/viola with, anything to get them playing has got to be an improvement.  I don't expect many of them to come back Thursday morning and really be able to play "Mary Had A Little Lamb," but I am hopeful that most of them will try.

This also highlights my beef with many strings method books - why, oh why do method books start on open strings and then immediately move to G on the D string?  Is going from no fingers to three fingers really the best way?  Instead I have my students find the E exercise (#14 in Essential Elements 2000 for Strings, Book 1), then once they have mastered that (and don't get nearly so many thunking sounds), we go backward to the F# exercise (#11 in EE2000).  Once they have the hang of that, we go to the G exercise (# 10 in EE2K - and I believe I will be calling it that from now on).  Once they have the idea down for each of the first position notes on the D string, then I have them fill in all of the exercises in between that we have skipped.  I also have several exercises that I wrote myself that I pass out and have the kids work on using only open D and first finger E.  All in all there ends up being quite a bit for students to work on in this very beginning stage of using only a few fingers on one string. 

I'm including a link to the scores for  my D& E exercises - hopefully you'll get some use out of them!
Exercise1  -  Exercise 2  -  Exercise 2.5  -  Exercise 3  -  Exercise 4


I will try to remember to update our "MHALL" progress after Thursday's class. My fingers are crossed!