I am all-in on groups. I only teach groups, and my groups serve a very specific type of piano student: one that thrives in peer engagement, that learns best through creative means, and one who engages in music-making for the joy it can bring. 

And you know what? I think 2021 is going to be a great year for groups. We are all going to be craving social interaction, taking new opportunities, finding joy in our pursuits, and needing a cost-effective and accessible solution!

However, weekly...

The holiday season is a great time for those one-off mini projects that help everyone get into the spirit of Christmas! Most people, whether they are music students or not, would agree that music is such a key part of the season! So how about offering your group classes a mini one-off workbook, based on the story of The Nutcracker?!

Normally our workbooks would only be available to those who subscribe to the KeyNotes program, but we have decided to make this available to ALL teachers! We...

INCLUSIVE

Are your lessons inclusive?

Like truly inclusive? And what does that actually mean?

Is this even an aim of yours?

Well I can tell you, it is certainly an aim of mine. Perhaps my number 1 aim. 

And I think if we, as music educators, truly believe in the empowering role of music in children's lives, it should be everyone's aim. We should want every child to have access to a high-quality music education.

Where does my passion for this stem from? 

I think music saves people....

As we near the end of our term/semester here in the UK, and government legislation is allowing us to go back to in-person teaching, I have turned my attention to what a group lesson needs to look like now, in the new (and temporary) norm.

Whilst I am writing a risk assessment to share with both my parents and other KeyNotes program users, I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts, with the understanding that all our contexts are different, not just in our countries and states, but in...

Never ever did I think I would be saying this, but my kids have had three months off school!

Three months!

And by the time they go back it will be six months.

What a journey it has been, and we are not yet at the end, but as with any good journey, there have been some learnings along the way. And those learnings can often be applied both to my parenting, and to my teaching. I analyse these with both my hats on and find some fascinating insights. But there is one main insight I'd like to share...

It seems that many teachers are slowly transitioning back to in-person lessons, which is wonderful news!

For me, however, and probably many others, this still looks a long way off.

So I thought I would give you some helpful tips in the meantime!

In my normal lessons, there is some length of time within the lesson where students are on headphones, practicing, and I am running around giving feedback. moving them onto extension tasks where necessary, etc. I carefully organise the time, and have...

How are you getting on with your group lessons online?

You are probably relieved to be able to continue your teaching, but know that compromises are being made. Well that's certainly how I feel. However I am determined to look on the bright side!

Perhaps most importantly, I love the fact that my students are able to get together, work with each other and continue to make music. But we can go bigger than that.

There are many positives that are happening in our online lessons.

Here are five...

You know something that I really didn't predict happening in the midst of a global pandemic? That it would mean I would start using PowerPoint again!

When I was a school teacher, using PowerPoint presentations to structure lessons, give visuals and lay out objectives and instructions, was very popular. In fact a little too popular if you ask me, and actually fairly soon we, as a teaching profession, were realising that students were moving around 6-7 lessons per day and being delivered...

This has been a big week for KeyNotes and for group piano in general, as I took to the stage and presented a seminar about teaching early stages pianists in groups. I had 45 minutes to summarise a huge topic to an audience who were quite possibly new to the concept. What were the most important messages to impart over this 45 minutes and what was the best way to impart them?

Well I decided fairly quickly that video was going to help enormously in enabling delegates to visualise group piano...

In every KeyNotes workbook we have a theme or a story, we learn pieces based around that theme or story and then we end the workbook by taking everything we have learnt and putting it into a composition.

So here in this video, we have been learning about Mussorsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". We have listened to some of the movements whilst looking at the pictures they accompany, students have played some original pieces and drawn pictures that they think are suitable for their piano...