Piano Teaching Tips

Category: Piano Teaching Tips

How I Use Easter Piano Worksheets to Conduct Spring Assessments for Beginners

How I Use Easter Piano Worksheets to Conduct Spring Assessments for Beginners

Spring is the perfect time to assess how much students have learned over the course of a school year. Easter Piano Worksheets is a comprehensive resource that helps teachers to assess students’ knowledge of theory fundamentals.
Inspire Your Teens to Level Up With Video Game Style Music

Inspire Your Teens to Level Up With Video Game Style Music

Help your teen and tween students stay excited about piano with these fun-to-use, super accessible video game style pieces. I’ll show you all sorts of ways you can use Saga Land in your studio. Perfect for online lessons and digital pianos too!
5 Reasons to Use Junior Superstar Scales with Young Beginners

5 Reasons to Use Junior Superstar Scales with Young Beginners

Young beginners can feel excited when starting piano lessons. It is important to capitalize on that early enthusiasm and help students to progress quickly. Even young beginners can benefit so much through learning to play pentascales. It’s a great means to isolate important skills such as keyboard geography and recognizing intervals.

Teaching Pre-Recorded Video Piano Lessons: A Free Mini-Course

In this free mini-course, I’m answering all of your questions about pre-recorded video lessons. And there are some fantastic questions! I’ve also included demonstration videos of pre-recorded video lessons to give you an idea of how easy they are and what a great addition to your skillset and lesson options they can be.
Practice challenge chart with piano keys and gingerbread men

How to Host a Piano Practice Challenge

I love challenging my students to practice a specific number of pieces, measures, pages, minutes, days, at a predetermined tempo, or accomplishing a specific goal or goals over a short period of time. Why? Because practice challenges are highly beneficial to students in a number of ways. Learn how practice challenges benefit students, and how to host your own!
Young piano student enjoying playing the piano

Cultivating Motivated Students in the Piano Studio

How to motivate students—the age-old dilemma. It’s wonderful to have internally motivated students. They come to lessons prepared and enthusiastically soak up every morsel of teacher wisdom you can offer. But what about the other students? The ones with little to no weekly progress and an ambivalence that can make you want to stand on your head just to get their attention. Or what about a student who started strong but fell into a rut and now seems disinterested? How can we motivate our students to want to practice, study, and persevere in piano studies so they obtain a lifetime of enjoyment?
Little girl enjoying playing the piano

How to Teach Keyboard Geography to Beginning Piano Students

Teaching keyboard geography to young piano students is one of my favorite parts of teaching beginners! Showing them an easy way to remember the piano keys opens up a brand new world to them, and I’m happy to play a role in that learning process. Please enjoy this free piano pedagogy workshop on how I teach the piano keys to beginning piano students.
Piano student who doesn't want to practice

How to Help the Piano Student Who Doesn’t Practice

Do you teach students who don’t practice? In this article, we’ll define the student who doesn’t practice, list reasons why this piano student doesn’t practice, and discuss specific things we can do to help the student become an excellent and motivated practicer. There’s even a list of things you can start doing in your lessons today to motivate and encourage your students and help them learn how to practice!
iPad and coffee on a desk with a plant

Eliminate Filler Words from Your Piano Teaching Vocabulary in 6 Easy Steps

We use them to verbalize our hesitations. We use them because we’re thinking, or we’re not sure what to say next. We use them as a way to let people know we’re still speaking. We use them because maybe we’re not feeling confident about what we want to say. What are they? Filler words. Learn how to eliminate them from your vocabulary and become a clearer and more succinct communicator and teacher.

Welcome!

Hi! I’m Melody Payne, a pianist and piano teacher, educational resource author, a fun-loving wife to the most wonderful and talented hubby I could ask for, and a lifelong learner who loves to share. I want to make your life as a music teacher easier by writing and sharing helpful and relevant music teaching articles, and by creating educational resources with your very own students in mind. If you are a parent who wants to enroll your child in piano lessons, I’d love for us to get started building those skills that can give your child a lifetime of musical enjoyment!

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