Have you ever had a student who played note perfect in a festival or on an exam, yet their mark was disappointingly low? Have you wondered why?
Do you remember the moment, piece of music or teacher who helped you know that you’d fallen in love with music?
One of my favourite content creators, Jennifer Foxx, recently sent out an email which said, “Music is a work of heart.”
How important is it to play music with your whole heart? Are you ensuring that your students have room in lessons to discover how it feels to play with an emotional investment?
The challenge is for us ‘fine-tuned’ piano teachers to get beyond a focus on just technical skills and theoretical/historical knowledge, beyond playing printed notes and symbols, to help students explore the deeper, more personal reasons they are learning to play piano music — to help them feel music and play with depth.
Quite often this happens when we teach music they love. But for any piece of music, it can happen when we help them find personal reasons to connect with and love it.
Playing with your whole heart and finding personal connections to music helps to elevate it above playing the right notes at the right times and turns a performance into an unforgettable, artistic experience.
Perhaps playing note perfect isn’t enough. To play music that draws in the listener and communicates a feeling, the student needs to make it personal.
I’ve developed an Elements and Outcomes sheet (available in my FREE printables) to help piano teachers keep track of concepts covered like time signatures, key signatures and tempos. At the bottom, there’s also space to make small notes on skill, knowledge and affective outcomes.
It’s the affective outcomes that are the most difficult to define, and the most important. With everything we have to cover in piano lessons, sometimes it’s easy to forget to have these soul-searching conversations, so having the sheet does give a welcome reminder.
As teachers, we strive to cover:
1. Skill outcomes.
In a nutshell, skill outcomes refer to the technical facility that is developed in a piece of music. Smooth playing of a chromatic scale, playing a long line with seamless thumb tucks, playing bouncy staccatos or a clean legato, or even mixed touches in a piece (articulation).
On the Elements and Outcomes sheet there is room for you to identify physical skills in each piece to help you teach and assess your students’ progress in this area.
2. Knowledge outcomes.
Closely linked to skill outcomes, knowledge outcomes are also fairly easy to teach and assess. In fact, sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of covering only skills and knowledge components.
The cognitive aspects of music are things like: the theory, the historical context, knowing the difference between polyphony and homophony.
As you assign a piece, use the Elements and Outcomes sheet to outline what knowledge you are hoping the student takes with them, and use it to focus your teaching moments on those points. Over time, instead of actively teaching, listen to what your student has to say on the topics to assess what they have learned.
3. Affective outcomes.
Affective outcomes are much more difficult to teach or measure. Assessing the essence of the musical experience, the aesthetic side of music, is quite difficult. How do you measure a student’s appreciation of Bach or the level of personal connection they feel to a piece of music?
Yet, the reason most people want to invest time into learning to play the piano is because of the personal draw of the music, itself.
Take time to discuss with your student what they love about a piece of music. Make note of it.
What is their favourite moment in a piece? Why?
How does the piece make them feel?
What are the elements of music that give the music that sound?
What is the cultural significance of the piece historically? How can the student use that knowledge to explore their own culture?
As ‘fine-tuned’ piano teachers, let’s go beyond teaching just musical skills and knowledge. Let’s guide our students to the heart of the music, too.
I believe that teachers who develop the ability to guide their students to find the ‘heart’ in music have the best student retention. Ultimately, our goal should be to help each child experience music for as long as possible, to take it as far as possible, and for music to come to mean something special to them.
To help you remember these essential conversations with students, print my FREE “Elements and Outcomes” repertoire sheet. It’s designed to support a comprehensive teaching approach that includes how to feel the music we’re playing. It’s free, and ready for you to print!
Click here to get your FREE printable ‘Elements and Outcomes’ sheet!
Learn more about the free printable here and how it can help you optimize your planning time for piano lessons! Get Organized with Piano Repertoire ‘Elements and Outcomes’ sheet [Printables]
When teachers focus their repertoire programs on skill outcomes, knowledge outcomes and affective outcomes (how a student feels about their music), it’s called Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance, or CMP.
Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance is an educational philosophy that strives to nurture well-rounded musicians by teaching skills, knowledge and appreciation through repertoire. The book pictured above is an excellent starting point.
My club is a mixture of pre-reading rote all the way up to intermediate piano music.
I price it affordably to make it easier for teachers to join who may not get to use all of them right away. It’s still a really great deal if you only use 3-6 of the eSheets this year. It also helps you build your music library. Curious? Click here!
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I appreciate shares, comments and likes. Happy teaching! ❤
Video of the Week
Mystery Bay (Intermediate, Level 5). Imagine a mysterious tree-covered island shrouded in mist. What kind of secret does Mystery Bay hold? In this piece, revel in the long lines and dynamic surprises that create delicious suspense. Available as part of the 2024 MaxMusic Piano eSheet club and as the studio-licensed Mystery Bay eSheet!
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