Picture this: your next student is about to arrive. It’s the student that never practises. Lessons can be a slog, repeating the same thing from week to week. This sucks the joy out of lessons for both students and teachers!
There are two main approaches for teaching students who don’t practice:
- Find a way to get the student to practise more
- Plan lessons so that the student doesn’t need to practise
Getting the student to practise more (or at all!) will require you to work with the student and their parents.
Here are a few strategies I use to encourage more practice:
- Pick a piece that the student really wants to learn
- Implement practice challenges
- Be clear in exactly what and how many times I want them to practise e.g. play these 4 bars 3 times before our next lesson
In an ideal world, all our students would practise between lessons. But, having been the student who didn’t always practise (my poor Saxophone teacher!) I know that it’s not always because they don’t want to learn or are bored with lessons. It might transpire that the parent is happy with how things are.
Here are a few strategies I use with students who don’t practise:
- Plan lessons around activities that don’t need practice between lessons
- Listening skills
- Improvising
- Composing
- Pick pieces that will be “quick wins” i.e. only very slightly challenging, so the student is able to learn/master it quicker
- Work on multiple pieces, but in very short sections at a time
If you’re looking for new music to keep your students engaged, keep your eyes peeled for something new coming very soon!