music teachers please….

[1805]

Hi. I have an interview coming up for some more teaching. It's years since I had an interview!
I assume they're going to ask me the "how do you motivate a pupil who is not practising" question.
Do you have any great suggestions?
I have…
-use music they like / backing tracks
-get them in a group
-set small, achievable targets
-sticker rewards for younger pupils
-put in for concert/exam - depends on pupil though for this one.
-inspire them with your own playing and you tube clips
What else can I say (and do!!)?

Congrats on your interview!

I’m not a music teacher, or especially musical myself, so apologies if I’m not much help. I do however have a reasonably musical year 6 child (G6 piano & G5 singing).

What really helped my DS practice-wise was having a teacher spend time explaining to him clearly what a good practice should ‘look like’. DS felt rather demotivated at one point as he’d fallen into the trap of playing the bits he was already good at and rushing over the tricker bits. For example, a good tip for him was not starting from the beginning of a piece every time a mistake was made (it seemed a bit self-punishing at times!), as this just meant the first part of the piece was the most practiced and the last section the least practiced. Now DS knows it’s far more effective to focus on trickier sections and the piece can be refined as a whole. Then he can keep the whole thing sounding ‘fresh’.

It was also very reassuring for DS to understand that it’s normal to get a bit frustrated at the tricky bits, and that it’s also normal for progress not to be linear (he used to really panic when he started struggling with a section that previously he’d been playing well, so it made a difference when he realised this happened to others too).

Recognising all this meant DS was far more motivated to practice as he could clearly see he was making more progress without spending extra time on it.

Sorry if all this was obvious and a bit ‘teaching granny to suck eggs!’

Good luck for the interview

That's great to hear Bobkitten, thank you.
I always explain to my pupils that practice will go better some days than others, and not to panic!
I also take time to point out how much progress they have made - "remember when you found middle G difficult to play? Now you can play 7 notes higher! Great work!"
G6 piano in y6 is very good! Well done to your dc!

Strategies will definitely need to be adjusted according to age and/or stage but I think regardless of age, there usually comes a point where children need to hear that practice can be boring, frustrating and make them want to give up. Hearing that not every musician enjoys practising is useful, as is the information that sometimes it's a case of needing to just get on with it so the effort can go into the music rather than into complaining about practising.

What @Bobkitten said about being explicit about what practice looks like is essential. Saying 'practise bars 4-8' is useless and can be quite demotivating whereas a more specific instruction, 'play bars 4-8 tongued at 85bpm and increase the speed a little bit each time until you get up to 100bpm...' is more likely to be followed. Having a definite end goal for a task can be good for children who like 'to do' lists. Make sure the shape of a practice session is clearly described too e.g. warm up by doing blah blah X times then play through your favourite Y. Spend X minutes on playing through Y scales and choose one to focus on. Work on the speed/fingering/articulation of today's focus scale until X....
It's the sort of thing that probably needs to be provided to the child and to the parent as a hard copy so parents are clear on what you consider practice to look like. My DCs like to have the freedom to only do 'fun' music in some of their practices. 'Fun' is anything they're playing because they like it or have chosen it rather than something they're preparing for an exam/assessment. One of my DCs likes to do a couple of 'fun' sessions each week whereas the other needs that less.

Recognise that any playing is a positive and if that means slower progress through grades, it's not a problem. If a child chooses to play their instrument for fun, that's a good thing. Ergo, if a few weeks need to be given over to playing Coldplay on the viola, so be it. Involve the child in conversations about what they want to be able to do on their instrument. If they want to be able to play jazz trombone and to improvise, follow their interests and set aside the Mozart requiem. After all, it's possible they'll come back to the Mozart in the future but if they give up the trombone at 13, they might miss out on the jazz and the Mozart.

My DC both respond to things like the #100daysofpractice challenge on Instagram, a Pinterest-worthy habit tracker or the Andante practice app. Because they're my own children, I can offer incentives that teachers can't e.g. if you manage to do 100 consecutive days of unprompted practice I will buy you a pair of the overpriced joggers you've had your eye on. Being able to communicate with parents re: a suitable incentive for a long-term goal might be worth considering or you might be able to offer a sideways incentive e.g. after 50 days of unprompted practice, we'll spend a lesson making working instruments out of junk/I'll teach you how to play the

@SE13Mummy makes a great point about communicating what practice should look like to parents, not just to the child. It’s been really helpful for me to be involved.

I’m also laughing at the incentive for a long-term goal - DS managed to bag himself a royal python after several months of good practice . It wasn’t so much for the time spent practising itself, but rather for the attitude shown during practice - the anger and frustration when things didn’t go right straight away was holding him back. Having that incentive really helped him keep his temper under control and 18 months on, his progress has been much faster as he is (usually!) calmer about mistakes these days.

This has also had a positive effect on how he copes with non-music related work; it’s worth mentioning that to parents to get them on board!

I might look into the Andante app as well. Once children get a bit older, I imagine it’ll going to be easier to practice to satisfy an app rather than your parent!

This may be something you're taking as given, but teacher friends have had success with giving pupil a practice chart with a list of things to do and a box to tick each time you practice them.

What I say to my own kids is get the instrument out each day and make something better. Even if it's 5 minutes it gets them in the habit and doesn't set a daunting target. Usually the main hurdle is starting at all, they enjoy playing once they've overcome the inertia or they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

I'm a bit slack on using technology.
What tech can I be recommending to primary pupils?
I use speedshifter and backing tracks already.

thirdfiddle
instead of stickers, I had a pupil once who was obsessed with penguins. So I had her draw a bit of a penguin every time she practiced. I had split the drawing up into body, head, wings and feet. So if she practiced 4 times, she got a whole penguin. Obviously she could have cheated, but it seemed to work!

what instrument(s)?

for motivation:

• listen to great examples of that instruments (film music, disney/star wars/harry potter is full of them)
• improvising
• blank sheets so the student can write down their own ideas
• playing blind (covering hands or eyes depending on the instrument)
• 'copycat' play short sequences and ask student to copy or mirror
• turn sheet upside down and play what's up now (great fun in a small ensemble)

if it's one that needs tuning: a great app to help with that (like guitartuna)

rythm games (aka don't-clap-this-one-back)

redcandlelight
brass. Primary age.
Always good to hear ideas from others.

You sound very creative - good luck with the interview :)

For brass, buzzing exercises or silliness can be encouraged. With DC2, I once drew a picture of the horn, valves, curly bits of pipe etc. and divided it into about 50 segments. Every 5 minutes of playing = 1 segment coloured in. DC2 found it motivating to be able to colour in the segments, especially if it meant finishing a valve so would do multiples of 5 minutes in order to do the colouring. They'd been playing for a few months by then and this was over a summer holiday.

I used to teach brass.
we also did a few breathing things like blowing pingpong balls

brass is great for farting noises that primary dc find hilarious

My youngest likes experimenting on her bassoon, playing different notes on the reed, squwaky noises, weird trills, it's just her enjoying the possibilities, you could challenge them to find out done weird and wonderful sounds on a brass instrument. Initially, I used to help her get the instrument out as otherwise ten minutes was used just getting ready. I would aim for her to do practice every day, even if it was only five minutes. I second getting the teacher to write down what a good practice consists of and making sure you write good notes , not just the name of the piece helps. We get precise instructions from the teacher, down to mm speeds, tounging etc, it must take a bit of time but really helps. My eldest only really discovered the power of practice rather than just playing when due to a slight mistake on his teacher's part, she entered him into an exam with not much time but it paid off as he rose to the challenge. I think it might be stating the obvious but non musical parents might be used to swimming etc where you don't need to do anything in between sessions and still get a bit better. (Arguably you would progress much faster at swimming too if you went every day but most of us can't be bothered to do that!)