How Get Your Kids to Practice More

Daily Practice Reinforcement

At Y Piano we love to use positive reinforcements to encourage consistent piano practice. Currently we use a prize bag to reward our students but this doesn't always work because many younger students have a hard time waiting & working over longer periods of time to earn the prize bag.  Additionally, older students are not always motivated by a prize bag. Thus we have come up with a more immediate solution for those parents who are having a difficult time getting their students to practice. In fact, this may eliminate the need for "nagging" which we know parents HATE to do! It's much better for everyone if students take the initiative to practice every day on their own.  

We have tested out a pilot program with a few student families with spectacular results! We took a few students who may love piano lessons, but hate to practice and either refuse and argue with the parents about practicing or conveniently forget to practice on a daily basis. We eliminated "punishment" and empty threat tactics (because they don't work and the students just get more upset) and replaced them with daily positive reinforcement reward boxes.

Here's what you need:

-Reusable small plastic gift box (pictured below)

-Raffle type tickets

-5 Gold coins

-Tiny toys and candy (i.e. such as you would find at places like Party City)

-Timer

(For anyone who doesn't want to go through the trouble of gathering the materials, we can provide you with a starter reward set for $20)

Here's how it works:

1. Determine a base time of how much we want the student to practice such as 5 minutes

2. Explain to the student that if they practice the homework we actually assigned (not just old easy songs) until the timer beeps, they will receive a mystery prize.

3. Each day put something in the prize box, either a tiny toy/candy or a gold coin or a raffle ticket.

-On the raffle ticket you can write some small reward that you can offer that day or at a later date that they can redeem such as ice cream, 30 extra minutes of TV or video games, 30 extra minutes of staying up late, trip to the park, having a playdate, get out of a chore etc.

-Or put a gold coin (RARELY). If they collect five gold coins, they get a big reward that you can determine. Gold coins should be rare and unexpected so really stretch them out and maybe only put them in when you see they did a fantastic job. Rewards for collecting 5 gold coins should be BIG.

Try not to be predictable in what you put in the box so the students stay excited.  Over time you want to spread out the toys and candy and reward them with more raffle tickets.

4. After successfully completing 1 or 2 weeks with your base time, bump it up by 1 minute. Now set the time for 6 minutes for example. Continue this process until the students are in the habit of practicing almost daily for at the goal time (i.e. 30 - 45 minutes for younger students, 1 hour for older students).

Teamwork, Not Nagging

So here is the number one frustration parents have about piano:

"How do I get my kid to practice without being mean or nagging? They just won't practice on their own and I'm thinking of cancelling lessons altogether. And this makes me very sad also."

 I totally get it, I was the same way as a kid. Unfortunately only a small percentage of students actually practice on their own, usually because piano is an escape for them or it has become a habit, and even then still a smaller percentage practice the correct things that were assigned. Here are a few ideas that worked for other parents:

Help them create a habit by:

1) Setting a specific time for each student's practice. 

2) Sit with the student for each practice session for about a month until it becomes a habit. Guide them through the practice, helping them figure out how many times to do a song and pointing out when they are rushing or being careless.   This might take longer for younger students. (I have one family that just makes it a point of taking turns sitting with the student every day for practice - with mom, dad or even nanny rotating turns so it's not too much work for either parent, they have done this for over a year now and the student (now in 2nd grade) has reached  level 3 songs - very fast progress!)

3) Prize bag from the teacher only works at a certain age and for only a certain amount of time. It's more effective for the parents to find something the student really wants to work for.

4) Even more effective than working toward some "bonus" reward is to take something they already have (such as TV, video game privileges or scheduled play-dates and other activities) and make them conditional based on practice. So they have to now earn something they already take for granted. But this only works if the parents really don't give in if practice doesn't happen.  People are more loss averse than gain orientated. So students will more willingly work to not lose something rather than gain something extra (just like us adults!) 

5) It's always great to find a song they are passionate about to get them excited to practice, although that doesn't always work since the songs they want might be too difficult for their level at the time. 

6) You can also try to make a suuuper big deal when they sit down and practice longer by themselves without a reminder.  It's amazing how much exuberant praise can motivate a student to do it again and again, very addicting for anyone really.  You just really have to catch every opportunity to do so.

7) Keeping in the same vein of praise, when they do practice, even after you have to remind them, praise them on specifics like "Oh, i loved  how you played that song! I really enjoyed listening to it, it made me so happy! Can you play it for me again? I would really appreciate it!"

8) Schedule concerts for the family (even just for mom and dad) and have the students sell tickets, create a program, etc...and remind them to practice for the performance. Even videotape the performance,-- it will make them want to do better since they can see themselves. Or turn playdates into scheduled concerts, kids practice more when they know they can show off to their peers. Weekly "concerts" would keep the pressure to practice at the top of their mind.

Here is another fantastic article about helping students succeed at piano:  http://piano-lessons-toronto.com/testimonials/

How Many Piano Lessons Per Week Should You Have?

Sometimes, after seeing their child super-enthused about their lessons, parents ask me if we should do more than one lesson during the week.  My answer: It depends.

Here is my quick answer:

1) If the student practices correctly throughout the week on a daily basis and does not master the material within a few days of the lesson, one lesson is enough per week.

However,

1) If your student is very young and tends to forget everything the next day (especially if there is no parent to work with them on a daily basis and practice together),
2) If you have difficulty enforcing regular practice,
3) If the student practices so much that they finish their assignment and get bored after 2 days,
4) If the lessons are not long enough to cover theory, duets, etc. because the student's attention span doesn't last past 30 minutes
5) If the student does not pay attention to correct technique and practices incorrectly all week
6) If you're in a rush to learn quickly

then a second lesson would greatly benefit the student.

From my observation in my daily teaching, these are the general reasons for my recommendations:

1) In the ideal situation, enough material can be covered during the lesson to challenge the student for the whole week with daily practice of 30 minutes to 1 hr.  But given that piano lessons tend to be shorter these days (30 minutes), we often don't cover enough for the students that really practice that much.  Also, in the ideal situation the student heeds the teachers pointers and advice on how to practice correctly with correct technique. I would rather a student not practice at all rather than practice the wrong way!

2) Some students just have a hard time absorbing everything in one 30 minute lesson. The younger students especially seem to wipe their memory clean the moment they get out of a lesson and on to the next activity. It helps if a parent is knowledgeable about the piano and can sit with the student every day and remind them of what was covered during the lesson and help them practice.

3) Many parents have a lot of difficulty enforcing daily practice of 20 minutes or more. If your student doesn't practice during the week, they completely make no progress by the next lesson and we end up using another lesson reviewing the same material.  It almost makes more sense to just schedule an extra lesson or two during the week that you may consider as "supervised practice".  Otherwise the parents rarely get to enjoy any return on the tuition they have paid for the weekly lessons.

4)  With young students, 3 days practice can mean quite a lot of progress and having lessons twice a week really keep things moving along. I find it works really well with a highly motivated child that practices so much that they finish everything I assign within a couple of days and are at risk of getting bored and losing motivation. 

5)  Often, we limit lessons to 30 minutes because the student's productive attention span doesn't last that long.  Unfortunately this does not give us enough time to go over technique, finger exercises, theory, duets, rhythm study, etc. I feel like many times my students are getting half the education I received because I can't possibly fit everything into 30 minutes. For this reason, I really do wish my 30 minutes students had lessons twice a week.  Students with 1 hour lessons don't encounter this problem.

6) Many students don't really pay attention to HOW they should practice and are often a bit on the lazy side when it comes to correct technique which is the utter backbone of playing an instrument. I don't have this problem with adult students because the understand the importance of moving their fingers and wrist and all that the way I tell them too. Kids, on the other hand, don't really understand or care and often don't want to suffer through training their hands physically to play correctly. In this case, extra lessons can prevent bad habits or incorrect playing. Imagine if the student is playing something incorrectly. It would be better if the mistake was pointed out after half a week instead of after one full week.

7) Some students are in a rush to learn quickly, for whatever reason. Since I have observed that more lessons almost always equal faster progress, in this case I would also recommend extra lessons. However, if no one is in a rush and just enjoying the experience of learning piano, there is no need for extra lessons.

Traditional Piano Books Too Fast for Modern Students

As I have taught over the years, I noticed a troubling trend with my students in their progress with piano lessons. We would start out with a beginners book and they would do fine for the first 10 pages or so and then the curriculum would jump and my students are stuck and frustrated. There is no slow gradual build up of concepts and there is not enough repetition to master every concept introduced.

Here are some tips for piano teachers facing the same problem:

1. Don't stick to the book.

Consider the book as your guide but supplement with a lot of printouts or other books to encourage mastery of a concept before moving on to the next one. If you have to, draw your own music. For example, start with writing letters for notes on lined music paper. Once the student masters the ability to follow the letters and match them to piano keys, substitute the letter C with the musical notation for middle C. Keep the rest of the song looking the same. Do a few different examples of songs with this. When they have mastered C, substitute an additional letter with notation, such as D. Continue in this manner to ensure mastery of notes. I would suggest one letter substitution each with for young students (3-7) and two letter substitutions for older students (8-11). In this case you will see that the slow method results in faster learning and mastery. This method is especially recommended for students with autism.

2. Provide many additional songs that demonstrate the concept you are working on.

Whether you are teaching new notes, rythm or technique, stick to that concept and provide a lot of material to practice on until you see that the student has mastered it and is comfortable moving on to a new concept. The importance of providing copious amounts of additional material is that students will get bored if they practice the same song over an over. Keep it interesting with different songs illustrating the same concept.

3. Use bigger notes and lined sheets.

I cannot tell you how many students jumped in their progress when I bought them piano sheet note books with extra large spaced lines and drew big fat notes. Some kids have eyesight issues that no one knows about yet. Others are so small that it's hard to see small notes so far away from them. You want to be able to show the difference between each note and in order to do that they have to be big.

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Yeva is a Los Angeles piano teacher that teaches in student's homes and specializes in piano lessons for autistic students.

Ear Worms Suck

"My head kept humming...I drifted downtown, and presently discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle...jingled all through the evening, went to bed, rolled, tossed, and jingled all night long."

--Mark Twain, from "A Literary Nightmare"

You probably saw the title of this blog and thought "Ew!" Well, let me reassure you...Ear worms are not real worms.....but they may be just as bad!

Have you ever had a song stuck incessantly in your head, driving you nuts? THAT's an ear worm. Some people also call it a brain worm. Whatever you call it....it still sucks.

Now can you imagine being a piano teacher that teaches the same little jingles over and over every day? The simple kind that, as a rule, always get stuck in the brain. Here is just a sampling of what runs through my mind almost on a daily basis:

Yankee Doodle

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Alouette

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Jingle Bells

Ode to Joy

Among others....

So far, the only technique I found helpful is to think of the song and play it from the beginning to the end in my head, forcing myself to keep moving through all the parts of the song without getting stuck on one. This works about 50% of the time. The worst is when I don't know the whole song and can't complete it.

It seems to have worked for some of my piano students, too. They often get songs stuck in their heads from practicing. I'm curious to see if anyone else has a good technique for getting rid pesky songs?

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Yeva Delband is a piano teacher in West Los Angeles and specializes in teaching students with autism and other special needs. She has created her own method for teaching piano to very young learners and students with special needs, including ABA techniques in piano lessons.

"I Call This One 'Single Lady' "

It's amazing how much we sometimes underestimate and suppress kids.

Who ever said that you had to be named Mozart to compose as a little kid? And were his compositions that brilliant at that age? I beg to differ. All he did was mash together pieces of songs that he had been exposed to from an early age....there's nothing brilliant about that at all. In fact, all of my young students have done the same thing when GIVEN A CHANCE. Most teachers, I think, don't believe that little ones are capable of creating any coherent music. But they actually are, especially when they've been exposed to basic structure in songs they've played. It's just like when they learn how to speak.

I usually start out by letting the student (even as early as 3 years old) experiment with sounds for about 5 minutes during the lesson. If the banging really bothers you, bring ear plugs. But I would rather you listen how they slowly discover cause and effect and patterns.

Next, I usually get blank sheets of paper and ask them to press notes they want and I write the letters (or colors or numbers) for them. Then I let them decide on a name. It's amazing how much ownership over a piece encourages them to participate and do more composition and be more active and aware during lessons.

If the student is learning to write letters already, I then allow them to write their own letters. If you're still just using colors to denote notes, give them markers or crayons and let them draw circles of colors in the order that they make up a song.

Once they are learning how to read real music notation, I first write the notes for them but when they are comfortable I encourage them to write notes themselves.

The best part of this process is that the piano student has ownership of the activity and feels like they are directing something themselves. And of course, the titles they come up with can leave you giggling for days. One little five year old made up a song and played it for me. When I asked her what it was called, she turned her big eyes to me and disclosed: "I call this one 'Single Lady' " I was practically crying from laughter!

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If you're looking for piano lessons in West Los Angeles or more music resources in the area, check out my site Brentwood Piano.

If you are looking for tutors & music or art instructors in Los Angeles, especially those trained and experienced in working with special needs students, check out Able Scholar.

Elderly Couple of 62 Years plays piano