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Teaching Tip Tuesday: Listening Assignments

October 23, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Teaching Tip #11: Listening Assignments

I think it’s really important to get our students listening to more music. Sometimes I get really into it and assign awesome, hard-core listening assignments (like listening to a whole bunch of pieces by a specific composer, and writing down things you like about each piece, and such). But sometimes I think it’s important to just throw in a quick, simple listening assignment that goes along with whatever the student is working on.

Simple listening assignments are great ways to teach about music history, famous performers, the musical periods, or about musicality and interpretation.

Have a beginning student playing the super simplified “Ode to Joy”? Have them listen to the REAL deal and see how joyful it sounds!

If a student is learning a classical piece, have them listen to some good recordings of the piece and get some interpretation inspiration!

One of my students played a simple piece in her method book that sounded a bit impressionistic – in fact, it was almost exactly like the first line of Debussy’s Reverie. We talked a little about impressionism in music, and I played a line or two of the piece for her, and then assigned her to go home and listen to the whole piece.

I recently had a student playing in her Faber & Faber “Popular Repertoire” book the song “What a Wonderful World.” Well, she had never heard the song before, and didn’t know who Louis Armstrong was! So I assigned her to go home and look the song up on YouTube and take a listen.

Listening assignments can be simple and spur-of-the-moment, but they will really help our students become better musicians (and maybe enjoy playing their pieces a little bit more!)

Teaching Tip Tuesday: Teach those chords!

October 16, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Teaching Tip #10: Teach those chords!

I have recently discovered the importance of teaching chords. Lately I have been really trying to get all of my students, all ages, playing major and minor chords all over the piano and in different inversions. A huge help in this has been in using my technique booklets – My Muscle Builders Book and My Muscle Builders Book 2. My students have amazed me in their chord-playing and I really think it is helping them become overall better musicians.

Understanding and being able to easily play chords, in different inversions, helps students in learning their pieces. SO, so often their method book pieces have a melody line in the right hand and chords in the left hand (whether block chords, broken chords, or whatever figuration the notes are in). When students don’t understand chords well, each measure can be a struggle to learn. Many students need to stop and “figure out” the notes of each measure. BUT, if they are good at chord-reading and have a good understanding of primary chords used in a key, all you need to do is have them take a look at the piece and point out the basic harmonies. They will see that a piece may only consist of C, F and G7 chords, and will be able to learn it SO much faster because they are already pros at playing those chords.

Many of my students have also started playing a bit from fakebooks, and it is so fun to see them use their chord-playing knowledge to fill in the harmony (all on their own!!) of a fun, familiar song. I really have been enjoying this awesome Disney Fake Book (Fake Books), and it has a great variety of songs, some easier ones that my students have been enjoying, and some harder ones that I have been having a lot of fun with as well!

So teach those chords! Let’s create a generation of great, well-rounded musicians, shall we?

Teaching Tip Tuesday: Highlight It!

October 9, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Teaching Tip #9: Highlight It!

Happy Tuesday! I’d like to thank all my great readers who keep coming back even after such intermittent posting on my part 🙂 I’d like to get back to sharing some simple teaching tips each Tuesday that have helped me in my own studio – and hopefully they can give you some ideas to help in yours! Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference.

Today’s tip is about highlighters. I love to keep a highlighter marker near my piano to use during lessons. Then I have my students use it to sort of analyze a piece they are working on, and to isolate and highlight a specific thing they need to work on.

I have a student who just learned a piece in their book very well – that is, he learned all the notes perfectly but I didn’t hear much change in dynamic levels. So I had him take the highlighter and go through the piece and circle all of the dynamics.

Slurs are another great one – have your student highlight the slurs or phrases in a piece to help them remember to play them nice and legato.

Whatever a student is learning or struggling with at the moment is a great thing to circle or highlight. Having the student actually do the highlighting puts them right in the middle of the learning process; rather than watch you circle the things that they missed in their music, they have the opportunity to take a good look at their own music and figure it out on their own.

What are some simple ways you involve the student in the learning process? Do you have any particular ways you typically like to mark up the student’s music?

Lesson Plan Added: Traffic Jam! (and our giveaway winner!)

July 22, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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We have a winner! The lucky reader who will receive a free copy of my “Night & Day” lesson plan is…

Congratulations dianne c! Please send me an email with your email address so I can get you your download link!

And I am excited to announce that there is a new Mighty Musicians lesson plan available for purchase today in the Teaching Studio Store!

“Traffic Jam!” is a lesson plan all about rhythm and beat in music. We learn that music is made up of a pattern of short and long notes, and that there is an underlying steady beat. Students are introduced to half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes in a fun way, we create our own Rhythm Traffic Jam by clapping and speaking the different rhythms. We listen and sing to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, we write our own 1st Symphony. We listen and move to another fun song about traffic. We use our fingertips to play a pre-staff notation piece on the piano. Here are a couple of previews:

Like our other lesson plans, this one comes with a fun student take-home book and many other great resources and take-home extras. It is 51 pages and is in downloadable e-book format. You may purchase it on this post, or visit my new Teaching Studio Store page!

Traffic Jam! Lesson Plan: Music Has Beat & Rhythm
Price – $10.00

Have a great day!

Updates on Summer Sightreading!

June 26, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Hi folks! Thought I should check in on my Summer Sightreading Challenge! How are you all doing?? (Haven’t lived in Texas QUITE long enough to get the y’all down…)

So I was doing great for a couple of weeks. I sightread through almost all of my Debussy book. LOVED playing the entire Suite bergamasque and think I may have to learn that one one of these days. Some other faves were the Ballade and the Mazurka. Wasn’t a huge fan of Pagodes (that was kind of a beast). A week or so ago I got to L’Isle joyeuse (near the end of the book) and just didn’t have the heart to attempt it that night. I moved onto some simple and SHORT Handel pieces, which was SO fun and such a breath of fresh air after all the craziness of Debussy. I almost felt like it was cheating a little to count a Handel one-pager as one piece, just as I counted a 15-page Debussy as one, but I suppose it all evens out. 🙂

I am loving the sight reading! I think that no matter what level of sight reading you are at, you can always improve, and the only way to improve is just to do it. And do it often. And if you do this challenge or a similar one your sightreading will improve so much! I think it is also a great confidence-booster – knowing you have the abilities to play through so many pieces helps you realize that you really can learn any piece you put your mind to.

I hit a bit of a road block in my sight reading last week, being swamped with preparations for my piano camp I am teaching this week. We are still teaching the 3- and 4-year-old “Early Explorers” class that we have done in the past (and more lesson plans will be made available to purchase…just let me get past this next week or so!), but we are also teaching a brand new class for 5-and 6-year-olds called “Mighty Musicians.” Today went so well, I think the whole class is going to be a hit! Our theme today was “Night & Day” – we did a fun overview of all the musical elements used to tell a “story” with music, and did some super fun activities using Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. Lots of fun.

Well tell me how your sightreading is going!

Upside-Down Compositions

April 26, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Sometimes my best (and most successful) teaching ideas are the spur-of-the-moment ones that I just sort of think up at the last second. Today I had a student arrive without her books (and she had not practiced much this week), so I grabbed my staff flannel board and some black felt notes.

I first had her review the notes in a C Major five-finger scale (a great note-reading review as well as a review of her scales!) by building the scale on the flannel board. I then had her build a C Major chord as well (my students surprisingly mix up chords and arpeggios all the time – I tell them to sing “ar – pe – ggio!” while playing the three notes of the arpeggio, and to sing “chord” when playing a chord – it seems to help a bit!).

I then allowed her to make up her own short song with any notes in the bass clef. She LOVED this (I have found that most young children LOVE making up their own music….let’s take that and run with it, shall we??) and came up with this song:

I then had her play it on the piano (an EXCELLENT note-reading exercise – and she did very well considering she is in level 2 of Faber’s My First Piano Adventures…barely into note reading!). I told her afterwards that we were going to do something super cool with her song. I added an upside-down treble clef at the end of her song…

…and then flipped the whole thing over!

She was excited to see that this had created an entirely new song in the treble clef! We had fun playing it and seeing what it sounded like (naming all the notes as we went…great review!).

I decided to send her home with some blank staff paper and I assigned her to write a short song (using the notes of a predetermined five-finger scale, to keep it simple and easy to play in one hand position), and then to flip it over and play the upside-down version!

Here is one we did in the C Major five-finger position:

You flip it over and you’re in a nice F position – easy for small hands.

Voila – a fun and simple note-reading/five-finger scale/composition exercise! Goodnight all!

Little Musicians

April 24, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Yesterday was the last day of our current session of our Early Explorers music class and it was such a blast that I just had to share!

Our theme was “All About Me.” We taught the children about all of the different parts of our bodies we use to make music and learned how we are each musicians!

We had this cute little musician on our flannel board that we put together one piece at a time, doing a fun song or activity to go with each of its features. Children got to take turns coming up to choose which body part we would learn about next.

For example, when the smile was chosen we talked about how music can sound happy or sad, and how it can make us feel happy or sad! We introduced our friend Major/Minor Frog (a last-minute idea that the kids loved). We listened to a piece by Mozart with alternating major/minor sections and the children enjoyed hopping around happily and catching flies during the major sections, and then being sad, grumpy frogs (who couldn’t find any flies to eat) during the minor sections. We saw some awesome frowny faces during the minor sections. They loved it!

By the end of the hour we had our little musician all put together! The children then got to color their own picture of themselves – they each got a blank outline to fill in/color (just like our little musician) and it said “I Am a Musician!”

What a fun class it was! The kids really enjoyed it. Preschool music classes are such a joy!

Giant Floor Staff!

April 20, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Happy Friday everyone! I hope you’re all having a lovely day and have a fun weekend planned. As for me, I am sitting here in my pajamas enjoying the beginning of my weekend and a day off from teaching piano.

Those of you who have purchased my graphic to make a Giant Floor Keyboard will be excited to hear that I now have a Giant Floor Staff graphic available! My vinyl floor staff turned out great and I am so excited to use it in my music classes and camps! I have already gotten some good use out of it in my private lessons. It is so great to have a super fun and different way to help my students learn the notes on the staff, which allows them to get off of the bench and move around.

I debated about putting a clef on there or not…and ended up not. I wanted to be able to use it for bass clef or treble clef notes. I think I may try to make some big clefs that I can put on there when needed, but for now it has worked fine without.

It is nice and big (about 90 inches long 28 inches tall, not including the white border) and is perfect for children to walk, stand, jump, and run on (I know this because my four-year-old son got some great use out of it this morning….also, it is nice and sturdy!!)

Just like my Giant Floor Keyboard, I had it made on www.bannersonthecheap.com. They have excellent prices, high-quality products and super fast delivery time. Totally an awesome deal, and the ease and quality is worth the money, in my opinion!

I created my own custom-designed 3′ x 8′ banner by uploading my staff image. Stretch the image to fill the banner area (leaving a small white margin around the outside, if desired) and select the box to center it horizontally. Click “Save and Continue” and you are all set to order your Giant Floor Staff. Easy peasy.

You can use fun letter name beanbags…

…colorful craft foam notes (hmmm, makes me want to play Twister)…

…or simply allow children to walk right on there and be the notes themselves!

Students of all ages and levels (even preschoolers) will get so much use out of this giant staff!

The graphic is available for purchase here as well as on the “Printables & Downloads” page.

Giant Floor Staff Graphic
$3.00

Giveaway Winners! & Lesson Plan Available for Purchase

April 17, 2012 Jennifer Boster

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Thanks to ALL who entered our giveaway!! We have randomly selected two winners, who will each receive a free download of our Spectacular Spring! Lesson Plan. The two lucky winners are:

Congratulations, Mitmer & Dani! Mitmer, please send me your email address so I can send you your free lesson plan!

As for the rest of you, I am excited to announce that our Spectacular Spring! Lesson Plan is now available for purchase!

The lesson plan is $8.00 and may be purchased here:

or on the Printables & Downloads page.

Enjoy! I’d love to know if any of you use our lesson plan and how it goes. Stay tuned for more fun lesson plans made available (we are thinking the next one will be our Forte/Piano lesson plan, all about Transportation…..), and possible other giveaways!