Practice Challenge - 2020
Year-Long Challenge
First, our year-long challenge this year is going to be a Piano Maestro 40-Hour challenge. Any student who practices 40 hours or more in Piano Maestro over the course of the school year will receive a special prize (TBD) as well as some serious studio bragging rights. This adds up to a little over an hour a week, so making a 10-15 minutes of Piano Maestro a part of your every day practice might be the best way to reach this one.The chart below is tracking our 40 hour challenge (which is 2400 total minutes!)
Month-Long Challenges
We will have 4 month-long challenges spread throughout the year. These are good motivators because they are short-term and make for easily measurable wins for students who track them. Here's what it will look like for this year:September - Fall Into Music (from the Piano Parent Podcast)
All we have to do is practice 20 days during the month of September. This will help us to establish regular practice routines right at the beginning of the school year!
November - Pianovember (from the Piano Parent Podcast)
This is a world-wide competitive practice challenge where students can check the leaderboards to see how they measure up! All we have to do is mark a tally for every single piece practiced, every time it's practiced. We'll report those tallies to the Pianovember page each week to see how we stack up.
January - Select Song Challenge
In this challenge, I will choose a popular tune and every student will be given a level appropriate version of that tune. Once you've mastered it, you've completed this challenge! (Last year we did Happy Birthday, which we honestly might do again because I think all pianists should know how to play Happy Birthday on demand).
March - Bead Challenge
This is our performance preparation challenge that will lead us up to our Spring Recital. Our goal will be to play our recital picks 100 times before the recital date. For every 10 practices of their piece, students will get to choose a bead for their year-end lanyard which will be presented at the recital.
And that's the plan for this school year. We did a similar monthly approach last year, and we had a LOT of student engagement, so I'm hoping that will continue and maybe even grow. I can't wait to see everyone's progress this year!