Tips for new Teacher?

[joannanoble]

As a pianist of 13 years, I have been asked to teach some kids and teens in my local church how to play piano. I am fairly comfortable with working with teenagers, but I am very unsure how to teach a five year old the basics.

Any tips - about anything teaching related - would be greatly appreciated!

[teosoleil]

Not a teacher, but keep in mind reward-based exercises (like treats and candy!) and making piano fun for them (it already is, though) will help motivate them to work harder and view practicing as fun time.

Good luck teaching!

[keypeg]

Not a teacher, but keep in mind reward-based exercises (like treats and candy!) and making piano fun for them (it already is, though) will help motivate them to work harder and view practicing as fun time.

Not necessarily.  Above all, avoid candy or at least discuss with parents.

[timbo178]

Re teaching 5 years olds. Have been teaching for a while and I prefer older kids - upper primary and secondary school. Any younger including pre-school I avoid, as I know it's not my forte.

I teach a mother and daughter, and earlier in the year, I agreed to teach the pre-school son as well (10-15 min lessons), while telling them if they wanted to find a more suitable teacher I wouldn't be offended.

Did my best. We sang songs. Played simple pieces: Old McDonald, Mary had a little lamb, Row row row your boat, 12345 Once I caught a fish alive etc. Improvised on black/white keys while I accompanied. We played games, including rhythm games. Tried to see if he could clap or stamp to a steady pulse (he could for a seconds). We explored the sounds on the piano: high and low, loud and soft. We imagined different animals for sounds (the growl of a bear, a bird singing for higher notes).

Didn't work in the end. The kid responded to many things that we did, but increasingly lost enthusiasm for lessons, so the mum thought it would be best to leave it for a while, then come back to it when he's a bit older.

Point is, I'd also appreciate any tips for teaching younger kids. I think I'll read up more on Orff/Kodaly/Dalcroze and see what more I can incorporate.

[Bob]

Just start teaching.  Use these students as guniea pigs (Not so nice, but they're aware they're not getting a veteran teacher and they're probably not paying you a huge amount.)  You gain experience that you can't get in any other way.

Then pick up ideas from books and forums, etc. Try to add them into your teaching.

That's about it.  That's what I've seen in many educational settings.  Not much different whether you do that on your own or in a class. 

If you want, focus in on a particular style like Orff/Kodaly/Dalcroze mentioned above.  Suzuki.  The impresses people who will hire you.

[thesuineg]

Just don't get impatient and you won't get fired.
For learning notes though, the number one most important thing is to teach them to practice. Slowly, not about being able to play certain phrases fast, but connecting phrases slowly first so that its an entire phrase. Not sure how to explain it, but its the fastest way to learn. just....play slow is the main thing
And learning music, as long as they do a single dynamic change somewhere thats logical im sure everyone will be impressed lol. and the talented ones especially

[hsalix]

I was exactly in your position last year, as I had been studying piano for 13 years too when I started teaching:)  It's tough in the beginning, but eventually you start feeling pretty confident, I promise.

5 years old is a little young in my opinion, especially if this is your first student.  But if the kid is smart and the parents are involved (i.e. makes them practice daily, communicate with you, etc), it may work.  To teach the basics to my young students, I simply give them the first book of Step-by-Step by Burnam and read with them the first pages where they explain everything very clearly in a child-friendly way: fingerings, treble and bass clefs, when to use the right hand/left hand, etc.  It takes roughly 15 minutes to read it all, but after that, they know enough to actually start playing.  Now, for a 5-year-old, you might want to break it up in two parts: I would read some of it, then play for the rest of the lesson (show them where the C is, ask them to show you all the Cs they can find, etc), and revise and continue during the next lesson.  For actual playing, I combine Step-by-Step with Boris Berlin's ABC 1, Burnam's A Dozen A Day Mini Book.

Teaching a 5-year-old can work in certain cases.  However, if you think that the child is not mature enough, they doesn't understand what the whole fuss is about, they will never want to get back to it later in their life.  Been there done that.

Good luck!

[joannanoble]

Thanks for the tips and encouragement! the last several lessons have gone really well. His dad (also a musician) takes n active part in making sure he practices. Even though the boy is five, he reads at a third grade level -very smart! I showed him where middle C is and explained how only A-G are used for notes. Then he flew with it and named every white key. I started him playing basic five finger scales with good hand and body posture. His dexterity, finger strength, and confidence is improving greatly! We started this week on the "black ones."

[ajspiano]

Few interesting comments in here..

This isn't going to be that applicable because you've already started, but with a child this age the first thing I do is just identify that there are groups of 2 and 3 black notes and then we IMMEDIATELY play a tune (teacher/student duet) that uses both hands for the black notes only.

This tune (stolen from bernhard) sounds like its title. So you can immediately start encouraging use of sound image, it also gets the child focusing on a sense of pulse/timing because they have to play together with the teacher. I usually just improv the teacher part which gives me the opportunity to test how well the child can keep/identify where the beat is amongst increasingly complex accompaniment. Also, where possible, I teach the PARENT how to play a simple version of the teacher part so they can do it at home.



Once we've done this we can start talking about identifying white notes by name (maybe just 2 notes on day one, C+F except where there is a specific difficulty and they do better with just D) I play "whats that note" which basically just means I play a note and they tell me what it is (and vice versa, where on occasion I will give a wrong answer to see if they pick me up) - and most importantly I present it like that "Now we're going to play a game! its called "what's that note?" ..these are the rules. I also use this as an opportunity to explore the pitch extremes of the keyboard which means they start identifying octaves and realising that there is high and low pitch and that they work left/low right/high. At the same time I also start saying "can you play the next note loud (or soft).

Then we might go back and explore "the chinese clock" in different octaves, and with different dynamics...

and then we might just free improvise, but I will give them some direction such as white notes, and with a certain simple rhythm so that I can play some chord progression underneath that will sound decent and in time. This will usually be quite a mess at this stage, and thats fine..  I'm looking for "noise exploration" not refined music... 

..also, parental involvement is COMPULSORY at this age, I have usually told parents that before they make it to the lesson and that if they are not able to be involved then they should expect extremely limited progress and either find a different teacher or come every single day.

[the89thkey]

Few interesting comments in here..

This isn't going to be that applicable because you've already started, but with a child this age the first thing I do is just identify that there are groups of 2 and 3 black notes and then we IMMEDIATELY play a tune (teacher/student duet) that uses both hands for the black notes only.

This tune (stolen from bernhard) sounds like its title. So you can immediately start encouraging use of sound image, it also gets the child focusing on a sense of pulse/timing because they have to play together with the teacher. I usually just improv the teacher part which gives me the opportunity to test how well the child can keep/identify where the beat is amongst increasingly complex accompaniment. Also, where possible, I teach the PARENT how to play a simple version of the teacher part so they can do it at home.



Once we've done this we can start talking about identifying white notes by name (maybe just 2 notes on day one, C+F except where there is a specific difficulty and they do better with just D) I play "whats that note" which basically just means I play a note and they tell me what it is (and vice versa, where on occasion I will give a wrong answer to see if they pick me up) - and most importantly I present it like that "Now we're going to play a game! its called "what's that note?" ..these are the rules. I also use this as an opportunity to explore the pitch extremes of the keyboard which means they start identifying octaves and realising that there is high and low pitch and that they work left/low right/high. At the same time I also start saying "can you play the next note loud (or soft).

Then we might go back and explore "the chinese clock" in different octaves, and with different dynamics...

and then we might just free improvise, but I will give them some direction such as white notes, and with a certain simple rhythm so that I can play some chord progression underneath that will sound decent and in time. This will usually be quite a mess at this stage, and thats fine..  I'm looking for "noise exploration" not refined music... 

..also, parental involvement is COMPULSORY at this age, I have usually told parents that before they make it to the lesson and that if they are not able to be involved then they should expect extremely limited progress and either find a different teacher or come every single day.

I start with a scale in the very first lesson (to be honest I rarely take students with no experience, so this was only 2 or 3 times), C major scale with one finger. Then I do certain stuff from the books that I think you are probably using, they are called Faber.

[pairra]

I teach five and four year olds all the time. They're actually my favorite age group.

so, my first lesson, which for most is about 15 minutes:

- intros, asking basic questions - name, age, ect
- icebreaker - something silly or fun
- have them tell me X amount of things they see when they look at the piano. X = age
- Black Keys -introduce 2 and 3 black keys, talk about patterns, have them play all the 2 bkg, then 3 bkg, then the 1 bkg that's all by itself, high and low notes along with left\right, then I have them play the Black Key Exercise. I say either 1, 2 or 3, and they have to play the corresponding black keys.
- Finger #'s - asking them to count, calling out a number to play, having them play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the black keys
- Music Alphabet - intro, then having them play and say the notes going up the alphabet
- Rhythm - Watermelon Soda (aka the rhythm of the first suzuki twinkle variation.) - listening, then clapping, then playing one time on each finger.
- Then we go over their homework, plus I tell them their parent's homework and how they're in charge of that.
- And then, that's usually it.