Blog Archives - Piano Program

Piano Program Box, February

Looking for some fun online resources to use with your teaching this month (and many months to come)?

Here we are, February 2021 – which means most of us have been teaching online for 11 months now. It can be challenging. But I’ve been focusing on the amazing progress my students have been making online, not only in their individual repertoire pieces but in all aspects of their music education. In fact, we’ve been covering more topics online than we would have during in-person lessons. The challenge of teaching online has given way to an abundance of well-rounded music education.

February’s Piano Program Box has four different resources. You can get access to all of the resources by joining the Box, or by purchasing them separately from the shop. I know you will find them useful in your online and in-person teaching!

Music History Resource that center’s around Mozart’s variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman”: I love music history – and it’s definitely an aspect of music education that needs to be integrated into all levels of music education. Too often I find that many students don’t experience music history until the university level, and even then, only as a music major. That needs to change! This powerpoint file will help you introduce your student’s to a vacation set that Mozart wrote around the tune “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman”. Use this powerpoint to present to a group of your students online, or in individual lessons. Students will learn a little about Mozart and his life, and aspects of this variation set. They’ll learn that they know the tune to the main theme! Get ready to show your students what a variation set is, and how Mozart changes each variation just a little. See this in the shop here.

Listening Map for “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman”. Once your finished the powerpoint presentation, this listening map is an excellent resource for getting your students to come up with their own descriptive words for each variation. The PDF file is editable, so you can have students complete online, and/or print for studio lesson use. Get this for free here!

Sight Reading Cards with a fun valentine’s theme. I LOVE giving students the chance to sight read simple concepts. This set of 30 cards will work for beginning and even intermediate students. Each sight reading card starts on the landmark notes of middle C, treble G, or bass F. There are 4 notes per card (all quarter notes) and each card has steps, skips (of a 3rd) or repeated notes. Some cards have a combo of steps and skips and/or repeated notes. For your younger students, you can have them sort by landmark note or sort by skips, steps, repeated notes before you have them play some. For the beginner/intermediate students, you can turn it into a game by seeing how many cards they can sight read in 3 minutes. Use them back to back in the next week of lessons to see if they can improve their score. See this in the shop here.

Candy Hearts – Elementary Piano Solo. Candy Hearts is a fun, elementary piano solo. The lyrics reflect on being excited about a valentine’s party at school and all of the candy hearts and valentines ready in a box. The middle section takes on a somber mood when the student realizes that school is virtual today (after all, it is 2021)! Never fear, the ending is a happy one, when the student realizes that their teacher prepared a pack for them with fun crafts and valentines for the zoom class. “Hoorary for my zoom class for school!” This was written for all students who are adjusting to our new normal of online, or hybrid school for this year, whose parties may look just a little bit different! Pedagogically, the pieces focuses on a legato right hand, with broken chord accompaniment for the left hand. The middle section has tenet markings for heaviness to show the disappointment. The beautiful cover comes with the piece. The studio license allows you to print and/or email as many copies as you’d like to your students. Watch a video of the piece & see it in the shop here.

It was such a pleasure to speak at the MTNA National Conference in Orlando today! I loved seeing old friends and making new ones. I hope that I was able to inspire you to start thinking about how YOU can use the flipped classroom approach in your studios.

I hope everyone grabbed a printed handout at the conference, but if you didn’t, that’s OK! I’ve highlighted everything I covered in the talk here in this blog post, with links to the resources that I use to create my online courses and resources for my students.

Dream big everyone – let’s create new and exciting resources for our piano students that will continue to educate students for years to come.

Here are the resources that I use. (Click on the titles to be directed to the webpage.)

Teachery

If you want example of amazing customer service, this is it! I’ve been using Teachery for my course platform creation for several years now, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s easy to use, intuitive, clean, and integrates payments seamlessly. Their customer service is one thing I absolutely love – Jason, the owner, replies back to questions within minutes of asking. I love the care and attention that he gives to his customers. Yes, you will have to pay a monthly fee to use this service, but if you are creating a course for your own studio, perhaps you can charge a technology fee to offset this. You can create course modules, link to video content, link to PDF files, embed additional files, set up comments, add affiliates, and much more. I love this platform. If you are curious about Jason, the developer, you can read about an interview that I did with him in this blog post.

PianoProgram Music Theory Course

This is the music theory course that I created for my own students, and I also offer it for sale to other students and piano teachers. I have levels 1-7 created, and I’m working on developing levels 8-12 by the end of this year. You can have your students purchase the levels individually (a steal at $15 per level per student), or you can purchase a studio license for all each level or for all levels. I’m going to be offering a studio bundle license for all MTNA members soon, where you can purchase all of the levels for a one time fee. Interested in receiving the offer or just want to know more? Fill out the form below and I’ll email you more info.

Google Classroom

Free. Need I say more? You can link your google classroom to your students’ google accounts (or their parents’ accounts) to interact with your students at home. Assign videos to watch, or PDFs to read, or multiple choice tests through google forms. Encourage student interaction through discussion comments, or set up a practice challenge. Honestly, the possibilities are endless through this platform.

Quizlet

Create a quiz about anything! Quizlet uses a flashcard format, as well as other format, such as matching, memory games, etc. If you don’t want to create your own set, there are other sets created by other teachers that you can use.

Kahoot

Such a fun way to get your students to interact together! This is always a blast when I use this during studio class. Create your content beforehand (or use another set that another teacher has already created), and then do live games with your students when you have them all together for lab time or studio class.

Evernote

Organize and share notes, files, videos, recording, etc. with your students.

Go Formative

I don’t use this resource (yet) but it is used by a lot of public school teachers and integrates well with Google Classroom.

Ipad apps

The iPad apps that I mentioned during my lecture were: Tenuto, Piano Maestro, Note Rush, Notion, Heads Up, Quizlet, & Book Creator.

There are hundreds more apps that you can also use to create your own content, or use content that others have already created.

FreshBooks

Some of you were interested in the invoicing system that I use for my studio. This is it. Not exactly a flipped classroom concept, but automatic credit card invoicing for lessons saves me TONS of time. With that time, I get to create more flipped classroom lessons for my students. 🙂

Acuity Scheduling

Ditto the above. This is not a flipped classroom resource, but having online scheduling saves me so much time. I know some of you were interested in this concept – this is what I use!

I’d love to answer any more questions you might have about using and creating flipped classroom resources for your studio. Feel free to email me at any time!