Practice makes perfect if...
At the end of the summer, I like to come up with a theme for lessons and I also like to refresh students' approach to practice when they return for the fall session.
Because of family trips and summer camps, I asked my student families to sign up for a bundle of 5 lessons. Despite being sprinkled sporadically over three months, they all made some progress. It’s because they defaulted to the practice strategies that we prescribed together at each lesson. Of course, those with more years of lessons have become seasoned at diagnosing what strategies to use and rarely require input from me.
Students eventually become expert practice diagnosticians because in essence...piano lessons are really practice lessons.
And that’s because practice is essential to what I call the magic motivation loop.
When you practice with the strategies that work, you make progress and when you make progress you're motivated to practice and when you practice…
You get the point.
As a teacher or a parent, I bet you share the same goal that I do? You intend that students learn to practice in the most efficient way to produce the most effective results so they grow to be independent musicians.
In case you’re visiting LeilaViss.com for the first time (welcome!) I’m a fan of blogging about what I learn about practice from experts and scientists and from my own experience as a player and teacher.
When you’re ready to reserve a block of time, here are the most recent posts from the past of what I’ve learned that boost student practice habits. By the way, many of them have free infographics that you can print off and share with your student families.
Past posts and resources about practice
The Science Behind Practice and Motivation
Turn Practice into Progress with Practice Pouches
Why Kids Don’t Practice and What to Do About It
Maybe Measuring Progress is Measuring Something Even More Important
Practice Tips for Teachers, Students and Their Parents
Rethinking Practice Notes by Roberta Wolff
The One Thing That Guarantees Solid Home Practice
The 5 Ps and 10 Tips for Performing
Overcoming Overwhelm Six Weeks at a Time (podcast)
Practicing in the Dark (podcast)
These two resources dive into teaching practice and tracking progress :
Before or after you dig into the posts linked above...PLEASE read on because there are some important things I learned recently. And what’s really cool is that what I share below reinforces and sheds fresh scientific light on what I’ve blogged about in the past.
New information about practice
The virtual National Keyboard Conference On Keyboard Pedagogy was held a few weeks ago and was packed with enlightening sessions. The app platform the organizers used called Socio allows easy access to the archived sessions. It’s been nice choosing a few to listen to on my daily walks or runs. You can still register and catch most of the sessions here.
Two sessions that I made a point of listening to were presented by Dr. Barbara Fast. Dr. Fast serves on the piano faculty at the University of Oklahoma as Director of Piano Pedagogy and Piano Area Chair, where she coordinates the group piano program as well as teaches graduate and undergraduate piano pedagogy.
She is known for her research and insights into practice and recently co-authored a book called iPractice Technology in the 21st Century Music Practice Room. In essence, the book provides new practical tools that bridge the gap between familiar, easy-to-use technology and practice to enhance musicianship and motivate students.
You can find it here. I can’t wait to dig into it more.
There were three big points I took away from her presentations and from her book:
1.
Mobile devices can be and should be used as a practice tool.
In fact, this quote that some may find quite radical is from the first chapter:
Instead of “Put your cell phone away,” the rallying cry for music teachers can instead be “Keep your cell phones out!”
-Jennifer Mishra & Barbara Fast, iPractice Technology in the 21st Century Music Practice Room
In her session, Dr Fast brought to light the positives of using tech tools to help students manage time and monitor progress. Her premise: since students usually have their phone with them, why not use it as a practice tool.
Her suggested ways of using the cell phone in practice included
Students record their home practice and make self assessments
Teachers record student playing during lesson time to reference at home
Students use apps to help with focus like Forest or Donut Dog.
Students borrow tips from the Pomodoro Technique.
2.
Our brains work the hardest when we encounter a new task like starting to practice.
This is when the most learning takes place. Unfortunately, the brain’s normal reaction to anything that is hard is to avoid it. To remedy this issue, Dr. Fast recommends that we change up our practice habits and therefore stated repeatedly throughout her session:
Practice makes perfect IF you change it up!
-Dr. Barbara Fast
3.
To change things up, we need to rethink blocked practice.
Blocked practice is when one piece or section is played repeatedly, then another piece or section is played repeatedly and then the next. This strategy may appear to produce progress because things get better after the repetitions. But, research shows that this type of practice doesn’t make things stick and leads to frustration. Instead, it’s been proven that interleaved practice or interspersed practice (what Dr. Fast calls it) is more beneficial.
Interleaved practice is leaving a practice skill to return to it.
Interleave practice means returning to a piece or section of a piece repeatedly throughout one practice session while in between practicing another passage.
-Mishra & Fast, iPractice Technology in the 21st Centruy Music Practice Room
When hard parts are woven between or rotated among or mixed up with other assignments, the brain forgets and then works to remember the hard stuff. That struggle to relearn is when the learning sticks! Check out the book Make it Stick to learn more.
These three points confirm the six scientifically proven practice strategies I blogged about in the past. And, I’m sure they validate much of what you do in your lessons. However, it also gave me food for thought on how to instill interleaved practice into my students' practice habits. It made me wonder how I could break this information down for novice practices and younger students so that they would follow Dr. Fast’s recommendations at home
Here’s what I’ll be implementing this fall
1.
Model more ways to use technology in the lesson.
Dr. Fast’s point of using technology as a tool for practice validated my use of Tonara, a platform that I used to deliver multi-media assignments to my students and provides a communication pipeline through the chat feature. It allows students to track their practice time and earn points to boost their way to the top of the leaderboard. You can get a free trial and 20% off with this coupon code: viss20.
Before you object because you believe phones are a major distraction for most students, Mishra and Fast state:
As with any practice strategy, students need guidance to make appropriate choices and practice strategies using technology are no different. It’s important for teachers to guide and model effective strategies using technology [in lessons.]
-Mishra & Fast, iPractice Technology in the 21st Century Music Practice Room
Here’s how I will refresh my implementation of technology for practice:
Utilize and model Tonara IN the lesson more often so that students become comfortable using it.
Require (bribe with some Music Money!) that students send me at least one recording of an assigned piece each week via the chat.
Enforce a method for students to remember to listen to the audio recordings and YouTube Videos that I add to their assignments. You’ll see what my plan is below.
Encourage students to track their practice time with Tonara. OR, provide tactile items like a Pomodoro timer or sand timer if parents prefer that students practice without a mobile device nearby. I get it, everyone is different and the temptation to check social media feeds or texts is too much for some.
Front of binder
2.
Assign the hardest part first.
This phrase got me thinking about another phrase often used in the world of productivity.
Eat the Frog.
-Brian Tracy
It comes from productivity consultant Brian Tracy’s Eat The Frog method which he based on a quote from Mark Twain:
If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.
3.
Provide a visual of how to interleave hardest parts or EAT-the-FROG parts with other assignments.
As I mentioned, I record all assignments in Tonara and students are required to access them there. Some faithfully use the app to track their practice and enjoy seeing their names on the studio leader board. Some do not visit their assignments in Tonara and to their credit, do a pretty good job of remembering their assignments and practicing them to make progress.
I understand that accessing their account is not always easy if they need to borrow a parent’s phone but they are missing out on listening to the videos and audio recordings I attach to their assignments. Studies continue to show that listening is almost equivalent to practicing when it comes to learning music. Have you read The Music Advantage by Dr. Anita Collins yet?
The auditory processing system is the largest information gathering sense in our brains.
-Dr. Anita Collins, The Music Advantage
The hardest thing about practice is getting started. And remembering what needs to be done can be the second hardest thing to do.
To get students looking at their assignments in Tonara and boost their home practice so that it is as effective and efficient as possible, I’ve created a Practice Spotlight Planner. To make it as easy as possible to find their task list, the spotlight planner will be placed on the front of their binders beneath the clear cover. It will be especially useful for students who don’t visit Tonara as often as I would like. They will use dry erase markers to jot down their assignments and record their practice from week to week.
At the top of the page, students will mark off every time they listen to an audio recording or watch a video.
Next is space for them to write down in shorthand, the designated HARD PARTS or the EAT the FROG parts to be practiced during the week. I decided on two just in case students have more than one.
Back of the binder
Students will be instructed to practice EAT the FROG assignments (interleave) at least 3 times and rotate these times between other assignments with prescribed practice strategies. The Practice Spotlight Planner includes a sheet that describes top practice strategies we use in the studio that will be stored on the backside of the student binders.
To make EAT the FROG practice time as tolerable as possible, I will encourage students to EAT the FROG for a certain amount of time with a sand timer or perhaps I’ll get a couple of tomato timers to echo the Pomodoro technique. Of course, I won’t make them practice the hard parts for 25 minutes. It may be that one or two minutes is all early learners need, and 5 to 8 minutes for advancing students. They will store the timers in their practice pouches. Speaking of which, I ADORE these mesh Jarlink pouches about this size. I have smaller ones, too and they work.
This entire process will only make sense to my students and they’ll only continue the process if I model this system in the lesson. I’m committed! I’ll be sharing this post with my student families so they understand why I’m implementing all this silly frog stuff.
I greatly appreciate what Dr. Fast shared in her presentations and her new book with co-author Jennifer Mishra! I highly recommend the book and make sure to listen to Dr. Fast’s sessions--they are archived until November. Like I mentioned earlier, you can still register to attend the virtual conference and catch most sessions here.
As scientists continue to discover more about the brain, I hope you eventually reach your goal of spending less lesson time on how to practice and most of your time on how to play piano.
As teachers, it’s our privilege to share the joy of music-making and it starts when our students have practice in the bag.
