Wow, it's been a while...

Greetings internet!

I should have realized that keeping up with this blog would become a challenge once the school year really heated up. Thankfully I come bearing good news.

As with many music teachers I find myself constantly fighting the practice battle with my instrumental students. Even the ones who are motivated. In some ways u feel like I am making proofread on that front through music selection and bribery (I may have offered baked goods in exchange for stellar performance in our most recent concert), but in many ways I feel like it is the same uphill fight to get students to pick up their instruments, let alone put in quality practice time.

Thankfully I was in Pinterest the other day and came across a fantastic article from NPR about practicing and how students might be motivated to do more of it.

Getting kids to practice music without tantrums or tears - via NPR.

I will definitely be employing some of the ideas from the article, and I already emailed the link to all of my band and orchestra parents.

I am especially intrigued by the idea of using practice beads as a visual reminder of what has been covered and accomplished. To use them as described would definitely take some training by both the teacher and parents, but it is something I am seriously considering adapting to use in my classroom.

So there is my thought for this evening, hopefully I can get some rest tonight!

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!

Practice makes... Something...

Today I got a piece of news that I love to hear.  A student of mine, a beginning violist, spent something like an hour and a half the other night practicing on her own in her brand new strings book.  She came in this morning and told me she's already done the first 11 pages (the class is still on page 5).  I love to hear that a student is so motivated and willing to push themselves beyond what we are currently working on as a group.  I wish I had more students like that, students who are so eager to learn and do and create that they don't wait for instruction to be given to them; instead they want to blaze a trail on their own and ask for help only when they feel they need it.

Of course, like all things, this comes with a caveat.  While it's great that she is so motivated, I worry about any bad habits she might develop forging ahead on her own.  I also wonder how faithful she is being to proper technique, and how in-depth her practice is going.  Is she actually working out the notes and rhythms to be able to play them correctly, or is she glossing over some things just to get to the end?  Is she focusing on tone quality and a good, characteristic sound, or is her viola just making whatever sound it makes and that's it?

I feel like I need to overhaul my method of teaching students how to practice.  Clearly it does not do to only have one or two students motivated to practice, which is precisely what I am hearing right now (strange, both students whose parents have told me they are extremely motivated are third grade violists...). Practice needs to be something that is both useful and fun, otherwise it serves no purpose.  But how do you get a student to understand that practicing is fun?  And that down the road they will reap benefits that they currently cannot see?  I remember the feeling of standing in my parents' basement holding my brand new trombone in fifth grade and honking away for 5 minutes or so before getting frustrated that I didn't know how to do anything.  I wasn't a strong enough music reader to be able to pick up much from the texts, and I couldn't decipher the more advanced music in our method book.  I tried halfheartedly to pick out a few tunes by ear, but felt like the instrument was too cumbersome to be able to accomplish anything.

I don't want my students to feel that they don't know enough to make the next step on their own.  I also suspect that in a perfect world the motivation to practice and the benefits of practicing go so obviously hand-in-hand that all students grasp the importance of individual work.

Unfortunately, I suspect that so often in this world of standardized testing and group-think that the importance of each group member working out their own difficulties and facing their own barriers is downplayed.  The worst part is that students are avoiding practice because of the things they don't know during a time when the information they need to improve and succeed is more available than ever before.  In a brief search of YouTube I know I can come up with pages and pages of trombone lessons or clarinet lessons or violin lessons.  I'm fairly certain we can even find lessons on the serpent or ophicleide if we wanted.

But do students know this?  And more importantly, do they understand the incredible power that can give them?  Granted, watching internet videos, no matter how hi-def and in-depth, will never replace having a good teacher; the hands-on supervision of a lesson or ensemble can't be duplicated by the internet.  I find myself thinking that maybe my practice focus needs to shift on teaching students not only how to play and how to practice, but also how to find guidance and inspiration outside of class. If I can get a handful of students each year to find inspiration to work on their own who wouldn't otherwise do so, that would be a major victory.

I wish someone had told me just how much I could accomplish on my own with the right tools when I was in elementary music.  I can't help but wonder where that might have taken me.

Thoughts?