December 2014 – Page 2 – Color In My Piano

I just sent out an email today to my mailing list for the Piano Teacher Institute online courses. Below are the details to announce that I am preparing another session of the “Intro To Piano Teaching” course. The dates for this online course will be January 5 through February 16.

This 6-week course is intended for piano teachers seeking to learn more about business topics, piano methods, pedagogy, and much more. The ideal registrant is an individual with the willingness to spend at least 4-5 hours each week reading/studying the weekly topics and interacting with other registrants in forums and videochat discussions. This highly intensive course is the perfect crash course for the new piano teacher or a great refresher for the experienced piano teacher.

Here are the weekly topics covered during the course:

Business Sense — business structures, bookkeeping, taxes, marketing, and more.
On Teaching and Learning — teaching objectives, learning styles, and developmental stages.
Developing Music Literacy in Students — music literacy, music education philosophies, a history and overview of current piano methods.
Piano Technique for Beginners — developing posture, hand shape, fingering, pedaling, and more.
Finding and Choosing Repertoire — leveling, publishers, anthologies, editions and more.
Lesson/Curriculum Planning — leading the lesson, making assignment sheets, effective practicing, and planning long-term for students.

You can learn more about the course and read testimonials by visiting institute.joymorin.com.

Registration will open on Monday, December 15 at 9am Eastern time, one week from today. Registration will automatically close after the first ten teachers have registered. Registration usually fills within 24 hours, so if you are determined to take the course I would advise that you mark your calendar and be timely about watching the registration page.

After the Winter 2015 offering, I anticipate that the next course offering will occur Summer 2015.

Thanks for your interest, friends!

Announcements

Studio Project: Musical Christmas Paper Chain

5 December 20149 November 2015 Joy Morin

I love Christmastime for many reasons.

As a piano teacher, I love that it gives students the opportunity to play a variety of familiar tunes. Playing tunes that are already in their ears really helps build their music reading skills.

I keep a lending library of Christmas books and loan them out to students each year. I give students a book that is at or slightly below their current playing level so that they can quickly and easily learn a few selections from their book.

This year, I added a new tradition: When students complete a piece, they get to sign their autograph and write “2014” in the Christmas book. It will be fun for students to see the names of students who learned the pieces in previous years.

Last year, we started a different tradition: a studio-wide project to build a paper chain to decorate the studio. The idea is that when a student learns a Christmas piece, they get to add a paper strip to the chain. It is a fun collaborative, inclusive project that allows the entire studio to participate.

[Credit: I gained both of these ideas from a Facebook forum for piano teachers.]

This year, I created this simple PDF sign to explain the project.

Feel free to download this PDF on the Printables > Other Resources page (near the M’s as “Musical Christmas Chain project.”), or here:

Musical Christmas Chain Project (155.5 KiB, 4,762 hits)

Learning all those Christmas pieces during December will be useful for the January Piano Party, when students will each perform a holiday piece. As students perform for each other, we will play “Name That Tune.” Students keep track of their guesses on this worksheet and mark the stars for each correct answer at the end.

Click here to read more about the January Piano Party from 2013.

You can download the Name-That-Tune worksheet by visiting the Printables > Games page and scrolling down to “Name-That-Tune – Christmas Edition”, or here:

Name-That-Tune - Christmas Edition (45.6 KiB, 6,294 hits)

I hope you and your students are enjoying the holiday season!