Returning piano student Questionnaire helps focus goals for new lesson year

It’s all about engagement.

The best way to keep your students interested, to draw them in, is to tap into their knowledge about themselves–to ask them pointed questions that will help you better understand them as young musicians.

I’ve tried various things in the past (writing “report card” responses, for example). But I’ve learned that asking the student to give me the report is the most effective way to create piano lessons that keep them hooked.

This year 100% of my students who returned last year are returning again.

I owe this in no small part to the fact that I gave them questionnaires to fill out at the beginning of last year’s lessons, to help me understand their likes (and dislikes) and in general, to find out what makes them ‘tick’ as developing musicians.

I highly recommend adding questionnaires to your piano lesson routine. Here’s the simple outline:

1. Short answers guide future choices

On the first page, ask students to give feedback that will help you to personalize their piano lesson experience–music styles they like (or don’t like), and their individual take on what they feel works and doesn’t work.

Below, I outline what I’m curious to learn about my students’ piano lesson experience and follow each question with a list of some of their responses.

I’m impressed with the amount of thought they put into their responses.

Favourite pieces so far (name as many as you can remember).

• Rainbow (Maxner)
• Beach session (Dow), Shades of Blue (Bober), Haunted Music Box (Maxner), Boogie Woogie Man (Maxner)
• The Icing on the Cake (the song that has four pages)
• Menuet (Petzold)
• Polonaise (attr. Bach)
• Für Elise (Beethoven, arranged), Taps
• Morning (Grieg, arranged)

Some have chosen favourites based on style, which indicates that they’re motivated by the sound of the music. Others have chosen a piece that took the most effort and practicing, which indicates that they’re driven by challenge and the feeling of accomplishment. I’d imagine that it’s often a little of both. But understanding this helps you know how to interest them going forward.

Favourite styles of music.

• Romantic
• Pop, country, rock and roll!
• Pop, funk, country, rock, blues
• 12 bar blues
• Fast music
• Slow music
• Classical music, minor music

Knowing this will help in the selection of new repertoire. While it’s good from a teacher’s standpoint to offer students a balanced slate of music from different stylistic periods, knowing their favourite style will help you be sure that you keep a piece in circulation that targets it to keep up interest.

Also, if a student is adverse to a particular kind of music, I feel that there’s no reason to belabour it. Let it go for now. That’s the luxury of teaching individual lessons. We get to customize their learning experience. Maybe sometime in the future they’ll grow and be open to explore beyond their present-day boundaries.

You’d like to do more of THIS in piano lessons.

• Learning technical things
• Rhythm cups, flash cards
• Rhythm cups and the Pattern Play
• Improvising
• Rhythm cups and drums
• Rhythm cups, 8 rainbow tubes (Boomwhackers)
• Faster pieces

This is an excellent question to find out what each student loves about their piano lessons. Anything listed here can be programmed more into the lesson time.

Can you name any pieces you truly didn’t like learning or practising?

• Most students answered “no”
• Star Trooper

It’s important to find out what your student didn’t connect with. This kind of information will help you to steer clear of the dangerous zone of losing a student’s interest.

What in piano do you feel you do really well?

• Dynamics, learning pieces on my own (YOYO)
• Rhythm cups
• Reading the music
• Tempo
• Practicing
• Learning by ear

It’s not enough to know something. It’s better to know what you know. For this reason, I feel it means more for the student to be given the chance to identify what they do well, rather than me telling them as their teacher.

What in piano do you find extra tricky?

• Learning multiple pieces at once
• Dotted-quarter-eighth rhythms
• Technical things, key signatures (the harder ones, less common)
• Long pieces
• Fitting a piece together
• Playing between white and black keys quickly
• Recitals

Rather than following up the question “what do you do well” with the reverse, “what don’t you do well,” I felt it sounded a little kinder to say “what do you find tricky”.

I remember as a student that I mixed up F and G notes written in every octave. I never had the opportunity to explain that to my teacher, so the stumbling point lasted long into my lesson experience, longer than it should have.

There may be little hidden stumbling points with some of our students that we are not aware of. They may be too ashamed to admit some things that they don’t understand. By giving them the chance to identify things that trick them, you are opening yourself up to finding ways to problem-solve with them, to collaborate to help them secure the concept as a learner.

Is there anything in piano that you dread doing?

• No
• Long pieces
• Scales
• Recitals
• Improvising

Knowing what the student dreads can help you either de-emphasize those things in lessons or to find a way to help the child get more comfortable with them. Depending on their answer, you may wish to tap into their parents’ knowledge to help with a strategy.

What strategies help you have really good practise sessions?

• No TV without practice
• When I have a friend coming over later 🙂
• When daddy helps
• Remembering to do it
• After school is best

It’s key to learn as much as possible about how your students practise at home. By asking this question, I hoped that each student would put their finger on what encourages success at home, to help them ‘buy in’ to making that strategy a habit.

What strategies help practicing go smoothly?

• When daddy helps (me one hand, dad other hand)
• Focusing
• Keep repeating
• Better when I am pumped up!
• Candy

This follow-up question asked the student to dig deeper, to further contemplate practicing. It opens a potential conversation between teacher, student and parent to create a plan that will work.

2. Check boxes allow student to rate lesson experiences

The second page of my questionnaire allows each student to rate on a scale of five (1 being low and 5 being high), a number of specific activities and music styles we experience in piano lessons. Because these are unique to my piano studio and not easily transferrable to yours, I’ve listed them here as an example only. You could customize this for your own students.

N.B. The student can mark any one of these “n/a” if it’s not applicable.

• Weekly challenge.

• Building rhythms with note cards.

• Silliness siestas/brain breaks (a resource from Colourful Keys).

• Rhythm Cups (a resource from Wendy Stevens).

• Ear training games.

• Improvising with Pattern Play (a resource from Forrest Kinney).

• Scales, triads and arpeggios (technical work).

• Composing original music.

• YOYO (You’re On Your Own pieces).

• Baroque music (Bach, Handel, etc.).

• Classical music (Clementi, Beethoven, etc.).

• Romantic music (Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc.)

• 20th Century music (Bartok, Kabalevsky, etc.).

• Popular music (anything popular goes).

• Music by my piano teacher (Maxner) – be honest 😉

3. Year-to-year comparison

I plan to compile this questionnaire year-after-year and compare and contrast each single student’s responses over time. Have the student’s preferences remained the same? Have they grown? Have some things that used to trick them now become easier?

As I continue to grow as a teacher, I continue to search for ways to listen better to my students, to let them be a guiding force in how piano lessons play out.

With experience comes wisdom, and my current thoughts are telling me that I mustn’t forget what it’s like to be a child in piano lessons. To keep my head in that game, what better way is there than to ask them directly what they feel about their experiences?

Do you have any suggestions for other questions? Please leave a comment!

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Video of the Week

Autumn Afternoon (Early Advanced, Level 7). Autumn Afternoon is a slow jazz waltz that allows much room for the imagination. It gives opportunities for students to explore pacing of dynamics within the larger structure, and shaping RH phrases as well as the LH waltz pattern. Levels: US, Late Intermediate. AMEB, Level 6. ABRSM, Level 6. RCM, Level 7. Available as the studio-licensed Autumn Afternoon eSheet!