First Lesson Poll Results & our new topic

Another week come and gone – I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend, and I hope that some of you are enjoying nice, warm spring weather (because here in Utah it is spring one minute, and a crazy winter blizzard the next!!)

Thanks to all who participated in our poll this week – I think it’s safe to say that nobody feels completely confident when they teach their very first lesson (and about a third of us felt completely clueless!), so you beginning teachers out there, take comfort! And if you are just starting out, be sure to check out this week’s posts on Teaching a First Lesson for some inspiration and ideas. Now to the poll results:

Our topic for this next week will be:

Method Books & Repertoire for Beginning Students

Holy cow, what a huge topic! But what an important topic. We are going to need a lot of comments and input on this one. We would LOVE to compile some sort of chart or list of different method books for beginners/elementary students, and the pros and cons of each – it would be an awesome resource for all of us. It will probably be an ongoing project. So, in light of that, here is what we’d like to hear from you:

• What piano methods do you use for your students, or what methods do you like?
• Tell us some pros & cons of that method. Some ideas of things to mention:
• reading approach (middle C vs. multi-key vs. intervallic)
• theory that is included
• skills included (such as ear training, transposition, harmonization, form, composition, improvisation, etc.)
• quality of repertoire
• included technology (such as listening CD’s)
• overall look & quality of series
• What type of student would you assign it to? For example, I would give this method to a student who is 6-8 years old, who has a pretty good attention span and is a great practicer, but plays too much by ear.