Category Archives: Lessons that have happened

23/60 Teaching by Finger Number/Note Letter

Please don’t. I think it is is such a BAD idea… What has provoked this post, is taking on a number of young piano students recently. They turned up with numbers written over EVERY SINGLE NOTE in their pieces. Ugh. … Continue reading

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21/60 The invisible pencil

It’s not the pencil that is invisible, come to think of it – the title is a bit misleading. I’ve inherited a number of young piano pupils who are very weak at note-reading, so the challenge is to encourage them … Continue reading

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2017/12 Prep Tests and Teaching by Rote

Rote is how I learned to play piano – I had a “knuckle-rapper” teacher to start with. “It goes like this, dear” she would say, playing the first phrase. If I copied it right, all was well and good. If … Continue reading

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2017/7 Beethoven’s Fifth for Ocarinas

Last term I achieved a long-held ambition. When I stumbled across an arrangement of the themes from the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for ocarinas I simply burst into laughter. Then I decided that it was something that HAD … Continue reading

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2017/6 Group exercise – Key stage 2

Following on from the last post about the beanbag/percussion game, I tried the same thing with the next class who were Year 3 and 3 (aged 7 and 8). I moved through the preliminary steps more swiftly, and added an extra … Continue reading

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2017/5 Classroom Percussion – Group exercise for Early Years

Here’s a lesson that went rather well today. I remembered one of the games I tripped across while looking at Drum circle activities, on youtube, posted by a drummer called Kalani. (I was so impressed by him, that I bought … Continue reading

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2017/3 A Snail song for young children

I found this song and game on youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Oz5wOq8qLY no, back a step, I found the song on www.singup.org which is a great song site, but you need to PAY MONEY to join it (but loads and loads of resources). … Continue reading

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2017/2 Teaching Ukulele TAB

I’ve a couple of ukulele classes to teach this year. One group, of year 5 and 6 children, have already done ukulele as a class instrument a couple of years ago, so I didn’t want to just follow my tried … Continue reading

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