The Bead Challenge
The way it works is students mark on their practice tracker every single time they play their Recital and/or Progressions piece. For every 10 practices, they will earn a bead for their lanyard that we'll make in the last week of lessons. The goal is to practice those performance pieces 100 times before the show.
Students who get 10 beads will have completed the challenge, and will earn a music charm to attach to end of their lanyard, but they don't have to stop there! We'll be adding beads for every 10 times they practice their recital song through the end of March, and those lanyards can get as long as they like.
While this practice challenge does have a fun incentive, as always, the goal is to encourage effective practice, and in this case good performance preparation. Parents can help students by ensuring that the repetitions of the song at home are played well, keeping dynamics, expression, rhythm & tempo in mind, and visualizing ourselves at the performance, not just blowing through the song umpteen times a day without intentional progress. And if you have a student who experiences stage fright or performance nerves, be sure to check out this blog post with tips from a fellow teacher, Jenny Lee Hodgins.