I want to teach group classes, but I have no idea where to start!

When teachers join our Facebook group, Teaching Group Piano, they are asked whether they teach groups, and if not what are their stumbling blocks to getting started.

There are two responses that come up the most often:

1. I don’t understand how you manage individual progress within a group.
2. I want to teach group classes, but I have no idea where to start! 

Let’s address the second one here and give you some suggestions!

Decide WHO you want to teach in groups. And how many.

So you have decided you want to try group teaching out, but who would you like to try it out with? How many per class? And how will you group them? We often suggest you start with your beginners (whether you bring your private beginners together, or just start with brand new beginners is up to you). However, it is a good idea to go even further than that and group your beginners by age. This is because a 4-year old has very different learning needs to an 8-year old or even a 6-year old! To make sure your lessons are age AND stage appropriate, we suggest you have 4-5 year olds together, then 6-9 and 10+, and of course you could also have an adult class!

How many you have is going to depend on a few things, but remember, the number you start out with isn’t fixed in stone! I started with four just to get my confidence up, and now teach 8 per class (I came from teaching 30 at a time in secondary school, so the confidence I was building was less about managing numbers and more about teaching a much younger age group than I was used to!).

Consider your teaching space.

Where will you teach your groups? For some, this is an easy answer that might be their home studio or commercial space. But some of us can’t use either of those and have to think a little more creatively! Places like church halls, community centres, children’s museums, schools, anywhere that will hire space by the hour, can work really well! I actually started my classes in a library! Luckily there was a room where we could make noise (pretty essential in a piano class!) but it just goes to show that there are many possibilities!

You will need enough room to set up your keyboards and then ideally some space for movement, maybe even a separate table for games/theory work.

What equipment will you need?

I have often been surprised to talk to teachers who believe that they need whole keyboard labs to start! Those ones where the teacher can tap into everyone’s keyboard and turn them off from a central control etc. Well I am here to tell you, those are absolutely not necessary! I myself have a very basic set-up of 61-key keyboards (touch sensitive), one for each student, an acoustic piano and headphones. Yes really, that is all I have! And you can build up your equipment to your ideal – you might start with fairly low spec keyboards (I wouldn’t go lower than them being touch-sensitive) and build to full-size digital pianos as your group studio grows (and thrives!). The important thing is just to get started! You don’t even need one keyboard each with complete beginners. We also see many benefits in teaching the 4-5 year olds with just the one acoustic piano, so you can begin that way! 

What will you charge?

This is a big topic of conversation amongst piano teachers, for many reasons! One is that there are so many variables that it is very difficult to compare. The biggest of these is context – where we are based in the world and typical costs of our area. Another is how many you are going to have in a class? How long are your classes going to be?

Here is what I do: I charge roughly half the cost of a 1-1 lesson in my area, for 30 minutes and I have 8 children per class.

I am not devaluing my offering by charging less than private lessons (another argument that goes around); it is logical that parents will pay less for a group class. If I only taught 3 or 4 in a group, I would make the percentage of the 1-1 cost higher than 50%. Plus you have to take into account any extra costs you incur such as room hire and purchase of keyboards. I also charge a materials fee per term to cover the cost of printing my books.

HOW will you launch?

This is a biggie. And I have seen teachers struggle with this one, perhaps due to lack of confidence or a real conviction on their parts that they are offering the very best for their students. But with a plan and a strategy for launching your classes, you will find it so much easier.

Here is the strategy that I suggest: Decide when you want to teach your groups, and which ages you want to launch with, then come up with a rough timetable. Mine was easy when I started, because I only wanted to teach on Saturdays. So I said, 12.30-1.00pm 4-5 year olds, 1.00-1.30pm 6-9 year olds. I filled those two classes pretty quickly and saw that there was demand for the older age group, so added another class at 1.30pm.

The main mistake I made at this point, was that I was offering free trials. These are very difficult to manage with groups as no-shows make it difficult to get the group going. So I switched to paid 3-week trials and haven’t looked back! If parents are paying for the trial, they WILL show up and answer your emails! Plus 3 lessons is a really good amount of time for students to fall in love with you and your lessons – I have a 100% conversion from my trials.

How will you plan your lessons?

This is and should be your next biggest concern, and I am always pleased when teachers ask about teaching and learning content, because they have seen that, even if they use the same method book for all of their individual students, everyone progresses at different rates so how can this be managed in a group? This is the right question to be asking.

First of all, you need an overarching plan. In a set time-frame, what is it that you want your students to learn? What do you want them to be able to do? Once you know this, you can plan the progressive series of lessons that each contain learning objectives that work towards the skills and concepts you want to cover.

In a traditional method book this is essentially done for you, and you don’t really have to think about it. You know that turning the page is progressing.

However when we are working with a group of children, we need to adapt our approach to include multiple learning styles, learner characteristics and different rates of progress. Your learning objective might be to be able to find middle C, but the content through which you teach and they learn, may not be accessible by every student. They will understand and be able to apply information and skills to a more or lesser degree.

This is all about managing multiple learners. 

So you can’t just progress along a line and assume that everyone is understanding everything in the same way. You need to be monitoring and then reinforcing all the time.

For this reason, we suggest (and in fact this happens in mainstream education all the time) that you work on a cyclical curriculum structure.

So going back to the objective of finding a C, you will do several activities over time that are different to each other but all lead to that knowledge and understanding. Plus you can add depth to how they are applying their understanding – find C with finger 1 as a next step. Or find middle C. Or find a C chord. You could have every student trying and achieving various iterations of the learning objective that befits their understanding. Adding depth or support to each learning point.

This brings us onto another big topic when it comes to group teaching: differentiation.

Because we want everyone playing the same song together, we need to have ways of adapting that song to be easier or more difficult for those who need it.

If you would like to use a teaching program specifically designed for group piano, KeyNotes Music includes all of the training and the curriculum to provide an outstanding group piano experience for both you and your students, which includes cyclical structures, differentiation, and a scaffolded approach that develops musical and creative pianists.

To learn more about our program, have a look at our teacher brochure.