This week I completed a professional development course that was a bit more intensive than the typical 2 hour workshop usually on offer. “Teaching Piano to Today’s Beginners Course” is an online course that has 4 modules to work through with homework activities – a good 8 hours of content to go through!
It was reassuring to see that many of the things recommended in this course are things that I already do with my students. This includes using backing tracks with pieces to make them more interesting / help keep to a steady beat, breaking down new pieces into chunks and focusing on small parts at a time, using colour to visualise different parts of a song etc.
What I don’t use but could consider looking at more is “whole body learning”. I’ve seen this concept a few times before, and some method books I use do have some elements of this embedded in them. I’ve also got a few ideas in mind for putting together my own materials, which I’ve been thinking of doing for years (decades!) and have finally made a start on.
