Students who practice wrong notes and rhythms at home bring those mistakes to class. Often you will spend more time getting them to unlearn those wrong notes than if you’d just spent the time spoon-feeding them the right notes in the first place.
Teaching students how to practice means teaching them to assess their own playing. Tools like SmartMusic can help with this by providing feedback to students when you can’t be there, but you’ll also want to spend some class time working on listening skills and going over the ideal practice process.
We’ve built a free lesson plan anyone can use with SmartMusic to help teach students how to practice.
Our “Teach Students How to Practice” Plan Includes:
- A list of standards that show the value of the plan
- A sequence of activities using scaffolding techniques to help make sure students understand the material
- Space for you to customize things to fit your needs
- Differentiation strategies such as letting students choose their own homework assignment
The plan includes a suggested homework assignment that involves creating a special “sight-reading assignment” in addition to a regular assignment. The homework also suggests building a custom rubric so students can assess themselves in the comments section.
Additional Related Resources:
To complete their tasks, your students will submit the sight-reading assignment at the beginning of their practice session as a diagnostic assessment, then submit a “final” take so that you – and they – can hear the progress made during the practice session.
Again, even you don’t have SmartMusic today, you can easily get started free and make this the first lesson.