How To Make Practice FUN
One of the questions I attempted to answer in my March Ask Me Anything YouTube video is the following:
How can we make practice more fun?
In general, I think it’s important to realize that most students, most of the time, will not consider practicing fun. By definition, practicing is repetitive work to learn how to play an instrument - a task that takes years of discipline to truly master. It’s my opinion that the most important thing that teachers and parents can do in the first years of lessons is help students develop a habit of regularly practicing so that when the repertoire becomes more difficult, they already have that habit in place.
The two ways I primarily encourage my students to practice are
assign motivating repertoire that they want to play at home (see my previous post here) and
encourage frequent performance (see my other previous post here).
I am not opposed to families and teachers using extrinsic rewards to encourage regular practice habits, especially in the years when those habits are being formed. Julie Knerr Hague of Piano Safari wrote a great “mini-essay” on this topic that I would commend to you. Click here to read Mini Essay 2: Should Piano Study be Fun, and are Sticker Charts Bad? You can access more free pedagogical resources at the Piano Safari website here.
That said, there are a few ways that we can approach teaching that might increase the “fun factor” for our students a bit:
Only send students home with tasks they have already experienced in the lesson. I know that doesn’t seem fun, but if a student doesn’t know how to practice or is intimidated by how to break down a task, he certainly won’t be having fun.
Use backing tracks, accompaniment tracks, or duets with a family member that the student plays along with so they do not feel so alone, and their music feels “bigger” than it otherwise would.
“Gamify” practice. This can be as simple as a game called “Cross the River” where you put three small items (stuffed animals, pencils, whatever!) on one side of the piano, determine your goal, and each time you repeat the piece/section/measure achieving your goal, you move one item across to the other side.
🎶 Nicola Cantan has a list of 23 similar games on this blog post here. 🎶
This last point is the one I forgot to mention in my Ask Me Anything video. I will admit, I’m not always great at this, nor am I a teacher who regularly uses a lot of games in lessons. (We still have a lot of fun and derive a lot of joy in lessons!) However, let me recommend two more resources that can help you gamify time in lessons and assignments you send home for practice.
Nicola Cantan’s book “The Piano Practice Physician’s Handbook” helps teachers diagnose practice problems and offers practice strategies to cure said problems. Some of her strategies are already gamified. Several others could be easily adapted. Regardless, they have funny names and are very creative and could be seen as more “fun” than just regular repetitions.
Philip Johnston’s book “The Practice Revolution” focuses more directly on gamification of practice, applicable to any instrument. In my opinion, the book is a bit difficult to wade through, but there are great ideas within. My favorite game is called “Seven Stages of Misery.” Yes, you feel miserable when playing it, but the pathetic title gives it some flair.
At the date that I am writing this, I just learned of the Piano Safari Practice Strategy Cards linked here. I have not used these yet, but the illustrations are engaging and using these cards might be one more way to make practicing a little more fun.
Music teachers - do you have other ways that you make practice more FUN for your students?
Please, share them with the rest of us in the comments below!
Oh, and you can watch the whole video here:
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