Busy Hands Keep Students Focused
Keep your students focused during lessons
If you want to keep your students focused during piano lessons, keep their hands on the keyboard. Don’t just try to engage them with conversation about their work at hand- help them to experience it.
Staying focused requires keeping their hands busy for the whole lesson. Hands-on learning makes lessons meaningful and real, not theoretical.
The wrong way
I had a lovely first piano teacher, but she liked to explain things to me for the majority of our time together. I clearly remember that the only time my hands were on the piano was when I played the song I’d practiced during the week, and that was in the first 5 minutes. The rest of the time was my teacher explaining or demonstrating how something needed to sound.
She was kind and she knew how to play the piano, but all that explaining ended up being written in cursive in my assignment book. It was lost on me. Once I got home, it felt like I was just playing the same thing again or worse, learning my new song was a huge mountain to climb…it didn’t feel like I was ever-progressing because each new week seemed hard.
What happened was a classic misjudgment. Children, teens and even adults don’t absorb everything they hear. We all need hands on experience to learn.
Learning by doing
In my small group classroom, after everyone has played aloud what they practiced during the week, they sit at their own pianos and get right to work on their new assignments. I know where the challenges are in their songs. I watch for their approach, and when they come to those harder parts, I’m able to guide them through the process of decoding so they know they can do it when they get home. It’s not real pretty when they leave the classroom, but their confidence in their own ability to succeed makes going home and practicing far superior to my experience as a beginner.
Real learning happens when hands are busy
Keeping hands busy is a great teaching goal that develops skills rapidly in small group classes. It helps students get started learning before the best of learning happens, during practice time.
