Teaching Kids to Practice
"We wrote this book for instrumental music teachers who are interested in methods for teaching their students how to practice. Although we crafted the materials to be particularly relevant for teachers who work with novice, intermediate, and advanced learners in school settings (band or orchestra students in, roughly, grades 4 through 12), we believe those who work in other settings will find the ideas to be valuable for their teaching as well. Our goal in chapter 1 is to provide a conceptual foundation for the practical ideas and examples presented throughout the remainder of the book. We describe how selected learning theories can help us understand what effective practicing looks like and what sorts of teaching approaches might be most effective for helping students learn how to become effective in their practicing. We also present a summary of the most compelling findings from recent research on this topic. Admittedly, some of the concepts and vocabulary introduced in the first chapter can be a bit dense and may require some careful re-reading to fully internalize. However, once they become familiar to you, you will find that these concepts will be very useful for thinking about the ways you can help your students become self-sufficient, independent practices. In chapter 2, we present an overview of general strategies that can be used to help students develop into independent practices, followed by several specific detailed examples of how sequences of practicing instruction could unfold in a large ensemble setting. For each, we organize the discussion so that methods and examples that could be most suitable for novice, intermediate, or advanced learners are clearly differentiated. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how teaching students to be effective practices will most likely impact their motivation to learn. In chapter 3, we provide several unit plans that could be adapted for use in classroom settings as well as examples of practice assignments and other assessment strategies. Again, these materials are organized according to which materials would be most suitable for novice, intermediate, or advanced learners"--